As New Zealand Music months comes to an end, we look back at some of the most memorable collaborations between (or involving) local artists. 

Aotearoa has a long and proud tradition of mucking in, lending a hand and sharing the bloody load. Given that the theme for NZ Music Month has been all about community and collaboration, what better time to look back at some of the greatest and most memorable collaborations in New Zealand music history? Spoilt for choice, we’ve trawled through our Gotyes and our Kimbras, our Scribes and our P Moneys, our Chris Warners and our Mutton Birds, to remember some of our favourite local collaborations of all time. 

‘U Can’t Resist Us’ – King Kapisi featuring Che Fu

It is a bold decision to name a song ‘U Can’t Resist Us’, and it only really works if the “Us” in question is made up of two of the country’s most enduringly beloved and era-defining hip hop acts: King Kapisi and Che Fu. Released in 2003, off the back of two pivotal album releases (King Kapisi’s Savage Thoughts in 2000 and Che Fu’s Navigator in 2001), this collab maintains the pair’s knack for using music as an art form and political tool, and also as a vessel for being extremely crack up. The accompanying music video needs to be mentioned too – a browned-up vision of rural farm life in Aotearoa. One minute King Kapisi is in a sheep yard, the next, Che Fu reclines in a pile of wool. Swanndri-clad Nathan Rarere and Oscar Kightley join them to cook eels next to a waterfall. It’s all pure chaos and totally delightful. I still can’t resist this collaboration. /Charlotte Muru-Lanning

‘Getting Stronger’ – Adeaze featuring Aaradhna

Is there any other combination of voices in New Zealand music history that can make you feel quite as bad about your own voice than Adeaze and Aaradhna? Horribly strong memories of trying to record myself singing on a tape deck to this song when it featured on Now That’s What I Call Music 16. Thankfully I am ‘Getting Stronger’ and can now just enjoy this heavenly tuneage with my trap firmly shut!!! / Alex Casey

‘Moonshine’ – Savage + Akon / ‘Savage Love’ – Jawsh 685 + Jason Derulo

Two collaborations, more than a decade apart, each of which still seems impossible even now. Two sons of South Auckland, connected to the islands, whose talent somehow cut through imposing barriers to connect with R&B singers at the absolute apex of their powers. Savage’s Moonshine was not the first time an NZ hip hop artist had connected to a US star – bandmate Mareko’s debut featured Inspectah Deck and the Beatnuts – but it was the first which had true crossover potential. During that golden era for NZ rap, it felt like one of the most pure and head-spinning moments – Akon was a massive global star, with multiple smash singles. Now he was singing and making a video with Savage?

Siren beat came more than a decade on, and through a very different path – where Moonshine was the product of NZ hip hop mafia connections, Laxed (Siren Beat) was a product of pure user-generated virality. It became a YouTube, then TikTok hit, before Jawsh 685 became one of the first NZ-based usernames to ink a big US deal. A couple of months later, Jason Derulo, a gold-plated pop star, cheekily used it uncredited and uncleared for the bed of a social media single named Savage Love. The song’s popularity led to all that be cleaned up for an official release, one which led to a worldwide smash of the lockdown era – peaking at #1 in over 20 countries. That it has never been repeated for Jawsh only makes it more special. /Duncan Greive

‘Randolph’s Going Home’ – Shayne Carter and Peter Jefferies

The story behind ‘Randolph’s Going Home’ is recounted in harrowing detail in Shayne Carter’s memoir Dead People I Have Known. After a freak accident on tour claimed the life of his friend and Doublehappys bandmate Wayne Elsey, Carter wrote and recorded two songs with Dunedin’s most funereal musician Peter Jefferies, which in retrospect served as a bridge between his earlier, punkier bands and the dramatic squall of the band he formed the following year, Straitjacket Fits. The vocal was recorded in the stairwell of Chippendale House, a bit of trivia that you can never unhear, and never not think about how absolutely haunting it must have sounded to anyone passing by. /Calum Henderson

‘Brother’ – Smashproof feat. Gin Wigmore

To give you an idea of the tremendous impact of this song, 2009’s ‘Brother’ smashed the record for the longest consecutive run at number one by a local act – a title that was previously held by America’s Cup cringe 1986 anthem ‘Sailing Away’. I highly recommend you read this terrific interview about the genesis and legacy of the song, and then enjoy the following factoid: it was Jess Peters, aka the fake reporter in ‘We Gon Ride’, who suggested that Universal feature an exciting new artist called Gin Wigmore on the track. The more you know! /AC

‘Slice of Heaven’ – Dave Dobbyn and Herbs 

The other day, wandering down a bleak supermarket aisle, I realised I was singing out loud and had been doing so for several minutes. It takes a lot to get me to sing, especially in public, but Dobbo and Herbs did that. They always do that. Released in 1986, ‘Slice of Heaven’ might be the catchiest song ever written. The moment the very first synth-flute loop hits your synapses, you’re under its spell once again. But this isn’t just a timeless unofficial national anthem, it’s the song that soundtracked a movie, became an Australasian hit, and helped launch a troubled West Auckland theme park. Name another New Zealand duo that can claim to have done that. /Chris Schulz

‘Feel Inside (And Stuff Like That)’ – Flight of the Conchords feat. Everyone

Where were you when Dave Dobbyn sang about bubble mixture? Probably on the couch watching Red Nose Day in 2012. 

Red Nose Day isn’t really a fixture on the local calendar these days, but it used to involve an annual charity drive and a live TV broadcast featuring a strange array of talent (remember when Mark Richardson did stand-up comedy? It was for Red Nose Day!). But the pinnacle of Red Nose Day came when Flight of the Conchords joined forces with seemingly everyone in the local entertainment industry (Dave Dobbyn! Savage! Brooke Fraser!) for a charity single almost entirely written by children. ‘Feel Inside (And Stuff Like That)’ is an earworm for the ages, combining the nonsensical lyrics of primary school kids with the musical talents of Bret and Jemaine. It’s one of the best NZ musical collabs of all time and a timely reminder that we’re long overdue a Flight of the Conchords revival. /Stewart Sowman-Lund

‘Good Morning Baby’ – Bic Runga & Dan Wilson

When we think of New Zealand musicians making it big on the world stage we probably think of Lorde winning a Grammy, Steriogram having a music video directed by Michel Gondry or Wing appearing on South Park. Here’s one that gets overlooked: Bic Runga had not one but two songs on the American Pie soundtrack. Not American Pie 2 or American Wedding or one of the bleak spinoff movies – the American Pie. This is huge, and not only because it means Shane Warne – a noted fan of the franchise and the character of Stifler in particular – must have listened to Bic Runga multiple times.

There’s ‘Sway’, the big hit off her debut album Drive, and then there’s ‘Good Morning Baby’, a duet with Dan Wilson from Semisonic, recorded at the peak of the band’s ‘Closing Time’-inspired popularity. Runga’s harmonies take a backseat to Wilson in the mix as the verses float by on wispy clouds of distorted guitar, but a subtle switch sees her voice come to the fore as we arrive at one of the 90s’ most underrated choruses: “Good morning baby, I hope I’m gonna make it through another day (uh-huh)”. /CH

‘Freaks’ – Timmy Trumpet and Savage 

EDM-hip hop crossovers were thin on the ground here, this country can be too reverent. That’s probably why Savage had to head to Australia to make the barn-burning big room anthem. Essentially a novelty song, and unlikely to be fondly remembered by Savage, it nonetheless goes incredibly hard and New Zealand should aspire to have more dorky high-calorie, low-nutrient singles like this. /DG

Strawpeople + Various Artists (Fiona McDonald, Bic Runga, Stephanie Tauevihi etc)

A true curiosity of our musical past, Strawpeople made a career out of collaboration – Mark Tierney and Paul Casserley hauled in a range of women to sing sleek, moody electronic pop which today sounds inflected with a kind of Antipodean trip hop. Their biggest hits came from working with Fiona McDonald, the sometime Headless Chickens vocalist whose siren sound seemed tailor-made for their beautifully textured production. Perhaps most notable of all was the fact that each member was arguably more accomplished outside the band – Casserly was a driving force behind of New Zealand’s most idiosyncratic and original comedy in Eating Media Lunch, while Mark Tierney was an acclaimed cinematographer and also contributed deranged NFL coverage to Deadball, the little-read sports blog precursor to The Spinoff. /DG

SXMPRA and Lilbubblegum aren’t household names yet – but their streaming numbers prove they’re already in the big leagues. 

Kalem Tarrant is feeling a little dusty. He’s sitting outside a Symonds Street burger joint at a Monday lunchtime with Luke Winther, whose dark sunglasses indicate he’s feeling the same way. The pair, known to fans as SXMPRA (pronounced “Sem-pra”) and Lilbubblegum, performed together in Wellington on Saturday night.

Afterwards, Tarrant admits, “We got up to some stuff.” No, he wouldn’t care to elaborate on what that “stuff” might be.

The pair are local musicians who make “phonk” – a dark subset of Soundcloud rap that also includes elements of metal, jazz, drum n bass and funk. Tarrant, 23, rents a flat in Wellington, and Winther, 19, lives with his parents in the West Auckland suburb of Te Atatū Peninsula. They’re in the middle of a quickfire world tour that’s taken them through America and Canada. Afterwards, SXMPRA headed to Europe solo, taking in stops in Poland, Germany, Berlin and London.

Tomorrow, the pair fly to Australia for several shows together before returning to Auckland for another one. The days, they admit, are beginning to blur. 

Success is happening, fast. They’re racking up millions of streams, eclipsing some of New Zealand’s biggest artists. Tarrant just released the song ‘LET’S RIDE!’ with his idols Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, a song that includes lyrics from the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. It appears on a soundtrack mixtape for recent blockbuster sensation Fast X. Lately, he’s been building hype for another single, a remix of his Spotify-smash ‘COWBELL WARRIOR!’ recorded with the US rap juggernaut Ski Mask the Slump God.

In February, the pair stepped off a plane in Los Angeles and headed straight to a Grammy Awards party held for rising stars. They were still in their hoodies. “We were drinking margaritas, Red Bull vodkas … two Kiwi kids at the Grammys,” says Tarrant. They were so nervous Winther admits they skipped the red carpet. “I was just wearing a T-shirt and jeans. It was buzzy as.”

Both SXMPRA and Lilbubblegum are products of the internet age. Their success hasn’t been achieved through traditional methods. Neither has a particularly large fanbase in New Zealand. They don’t film glitzy music videos, get radio airplay or receive much recognition from the local industry. Instead, they built their audiences from their bedrooms, recording music on broken equipment in wardrobes then releasing songs online as quickly as possible. 

During Covid lockdowns, both found their music spreading across social media, mostly through TikTok and Instagram. That’s why they haven’t bothered with full-length albums. “The attention span of people is shortening,” says Tarrant. “Because of TikTok and all this bite-size content, it’s important for us to be pushing singles, piece-by-piece-by-piece. It keeps us in peoples’ faces.”

Winther agrees: “You might have one or two songs that do well from the album and the rest kind of do average.”

That strategy is working. Streaming numbers for both rappers are through the roof, their Spotify numbers easily putting them in the upper echelon of New Zealand artists. ‘COWBELL WARRIOR!’ – a concoction of thudding baselines and Tarrant rapping like Bone Thugs on triple-speed – now boasts 110 million streams. “This dude was making these flashy, epileptic-type videos, and he put my song behind that with the lyrics on screen and it took off,” says Tarrant about how it went viral on TikTok. From there, it blew up. “It’s just this big chain reaction.” 

Winther, too, is also enjoying huge streaming success, the monotonous chants of his jazz-infused single AF1 nearing 76 million plays. He also found success on TikTok. “It was car videos, like JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) videos, a little bit of dancing, just everything, to be honest,” he says.

On Spotify, both are doing bigger numbers than Six60 and L.A.B. They’re rare examples of local acts able to make Spotify’s notoriously low streaming payouts work for them. “A million plays is about $US4000 – so about $NZ6000,” says Tarrant. That would mean earnings of $NZ660,000 for ‘COWBELL WARRIOR!’ alone.

Ask them about that and they’ll shrug their shoulders and mutter, “Mmm.” Tarrant says: “That’s what the internet can do for you.”

On Spotify, the dominant streaming service, only Lorde and Benee are bigger. Yet the pair have arrived at Symond Street’s Burger Geek sans label representation, management or entourage. No one’s there to put restrictions on my questions or moderate our chat. Fans don’t stop by to say hi. Ask them if they’ve received help from the local music industry and Tarrant replies: “That’s a controversial question … you have to achieve pretty extraordinary shit for them to even turn their heads.” 

Their audience is overseas, and they both say that is just how they like it – even if it means many more dusty days recovering from life on the road ahead of them. “I’m very much a homebody,” says Winther, who enjoys returning from tours to rest up in his childhood bedroom decorated with Skyrim and Back to the Future posters. “New Zealand … is a real tough crowd,” says Tarrant. Winther agrees. “Our music … we try to aim for it to be more global.”

How’d all this happen? Tarrant began making music after becoming disillusioned at film school in Hamilton. He took the soundtrack of his childhood – his parents played a lot of AC/DC and Metallica – as well as his love of distorted, chaotic Soundcloud hip-hop and began rapping into his Xbox headset, converting them into songs on his broken laptop.

Tarrant had no plans to release anything. He just wanted his favourite artists to release music quicker, so he began aping them. “Fuck it, I’m gonna make music like this so I can listen to it,” was his attitude, he told Sniffers.

His mother would often be in the next room while he recorded angry, aggressive lyrics over glitchy, distorted, bass-heavy beats. “She’s just sitting in the lounge, watching TV, and I’m in my room screaming at the microphone,” he says. Tarrant would pop his head out to tell her: “I just recorded a good one.” As his songs racked up plays on Soundcloud, he quit film school and moved to Wellington to focus on music full-time.

Around the same time, Winther was at boarding school. He began sneaking into Dilworth’s music room to make his own songs when he should have been doing his homework. “I didn’t tell anyone,” he says. At home, he’d close the door to his wardrobe and rap to beats supplied by his mates on his iPhone 5 in the dark. A sock placed over a microphone helped distort his vocals.

We’re sitting just around the corner from Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studios, where megawatt radio stars like Adele and Drake have recorded and rehearsed in the confines of its acoustically-calibrated walls. Both say they’d feel too much pressure to make music in a proper studio like that. Instead of making perfectly formed songs glimmering with studio sheen, they prefer to craft music that sounds rough around the edges. Genre titans $uicideBoy$, a cult New Orleans favourite who recently performed at Coachella, are the inspiration. “They’ve definitely set the bar for people like us,” says Tarrant.

They still make music the same way as when they started. That, they say, is the best way to create the vibe they’re going for. If they’re feeling it, their fans will too. “It’s like a release,” says Tarrant. “This is a product of me, of my emotions and the way I’m feeling at the time. I guess it can be the same sort of thing as a painting.” It’s a canvas that’s deliberately aggressive, and Tarrant readily admits their shows can be full-on. “My fans, they like a little bit of violence,” he says.

Next weekend, they’ll get the chance to do that in Hamilton and Auckland when they perform small but breakneck shows together. The pair’s sets are so full-on, so energetic, and require so much breath control to rap at the pace that they do they can only perform for 30 minutes at a time. That, they say, is enough for everyone to get what they want out of their shows. “It’s moshing, it’s energy, [fans] come to let off steam,” says Tarrant. Winther nods as he listens. “It’s good fun.”

SXMPRA play Hamilton’s Last Place Bar on June 2, and Auckland’s Neck of the Woods on June 3.