“I’m aware of what The Funkoars guys have been saying about me,” Colwell says straight out. “Look, I’m just making music and trying to do what I want to do. I’ve been listening to heaps of different shit, not just hip hop anymore, so stuff like The Presets and Miike Snow. I’d be listening to non hip hop stuff and it would occur to me, ‘Wow, this would sound really sick with some rap on top of it!’, so I thought, well, why not try and do it. I don’t really care what The Funkoars are saying about me. At the end of the day, I actually like those dudes and I’ve always been friendly with them in the past. I understand that they’ve got a bit of an old-school hip hop attitude that some of the older hip hop heads and purists still have – that is, if you do something even slightly poppy or commercial, it’s immediately frowned upon.”
Colwell, on the other hand, is all for evolution. The rapper’s got it tattooed on his arms and it’s a belief he’s stuck with ever since he can remember. Sure his debut album didn’t exactly reveal his experimental side, but the last few years have taught him the importance of being open-minded and forward-thinking.
“I understand that whole old hip hop mentality of ‘keeping it real’ and purely hip hop the way it was 20 years ago or whatever – but it’s also 2011, not 1994. I don’t understand how adding a bit of electro or pop is something to get hurt over! I’m not afraid of change, I even have the evolution chart tattooed down my forearm with words, ‘keep evolving’ written on it. I love hearing other artists going through changes. Kanye West was making straight-up hip hop until he did 808s & Heartbreak which was completely different and he wasn’t even rapping on that! It wasn’t for everyone, but you still have to respect him for even having the balls to try it! He wanted to do it, and he did it. If you don’t like it, just don’t listen to it!”
Admittedly, it’s his debut album What You See Is What You Get that Colwell rather avoids listening to at any cost – claiming the 2008 release “should have been a demo instead” – but that doesn’t mean he won’t revisit a couple of its tracks on his upcoming tour. You’ve got to keep the fans happy, after all, no matter how much some aspects of your past make you cringe today!
“See, that’s more of a traditional hip hop album because at the time I was just listening to straight-out hip hop and rap,” Colwell points out. “I see it as a very immature album. I even did like 17 songs on it where about five of those shouldn’t have even made it on there at all. Now it just feels to me like a demo more than anything, but there’s still some good moments on there I guess. I just can’t listen to it now…I haven’t grown into myself as an artist yet to be able to do that, I don’t think. The way I recorded it, and my voice technique and my delivery – it makes me cringe now. But I guess some people still consider it an underground album and I know lots of people love it. Honestly, though, this album [ Falling & Flying] is the one that I consider the real debut album. I wanted to really go for it, I wanted to make it perfect in all areas and I wanted to make sure there is not a single track that even resembles a filler – every song had to be a banger!”
And it is. Featuring not only his best mate Pez, but a string of impressive names including Josh Pyke on Throw It Away, Gossling onBoys Like You and Miracle In A Costume, and M-Phazes on Hope You Don’t Mind, Colwell says some of the material on Falling & Flying was so personal it almost never made the cut.
“The deeper and more personal, the more naturally and easily it comes to me. A couple of the songs I was in two minds about even releasing them because they’re really personal, but I realised that I was just being honest and I respect honesty in other artists, so I decided to leave them. One of them is I Hope You Don’t Mind, which is the last track on the album and very intense – it’s me talking about my insecurities and letting it all out. The other one is called Boys Like You, which is probably my favourite song. It’s talking about my ex-girlfriend who cheated on me with my best mate. It was an issue for me at the time but now I don’t care anymore. It just set me off at the time and I wasn’t interested in being in a relationship, so it’s also about the single life and just having that really interesting experience. I’m glad it happened in some ways because bad shit often makes for good music!”
