Australians love to (at worst) tear down anyone daring to succeed or (at best) greet them with calloused apathy, so it’s easy to forget that there are actual fans out there who, because they view an artist with blind adoration, unintentionally make things hard for people like Colwell. “I don’t know if people know it or not, but it’s a pretty big battle daily for me to go out in public – it’s so full on,” Colwell says without a hint of arrogance. “Some days are worse than others, but it’s always tough. I try and look at the positives; I mean, it’s when they’re not interested that you should be worried. I’ve tried full disguises and shit, and that doesn’t work. I’ve gone out many times in a wig and it never works. I have all these tattoos that stand out so I shoulda just done a Daft Punk thing and been like a robot.”
Colwell is in no way talking rap-shit and going on an ego-trip here, he sounds genuinely anxious about the way his personal life has been forced to transform, while suggesting that having to be 360 every day is arduous. After an unnecessarily public break-up with fiancé Crystal Bale last year, Colwell admits that he will do all he can to keep his latest relationship out of the slimy hands of gossip media. “It’s been watching relationships change – even family members – things have changed a lot. It’s all part of it, you put yourself out there so you have to be ready for it,” he says. “‘Cause [my new girlfriend is] from London, I think she finds it all pretty funny. It doesn’t affect her as she didn’t really know me as that – we were just hanging out – so I think it’s a bit of a trip out for her when we go out … When you’re growing up you think about being famous and shit like that, but you don’t really have a clue what it’s actually like. To be honest, I don’t enjoy the fame and I don’t enjoy the attention, and I tell myself that I’m getting to make music and that’s the positive. I don’t even like leaving my home these days.”
Hiding away at home provides little respite for Colwell – if he dares to switch on his computer. Some corners of the hip-hop scene in Australia – driven mostly by fans – seem to have attempted to emulate the East Coast/West Coast-style rivalries of the USA. We come off like a whiney little sister though, poking and name-calling for no real reason, playing tough guy dress-ups and failing to notice that in the States, the people involved in the great rap wars of the ’80s and ’90s didn’t do it because it was cool, they were trapped in a cycle of poverty, desperation and despair. No one wants to be shot, no one wants to be stabbed – just ask the Cypress Hill lads. Our greatest role play was via Sydney’s Kerser, who was allegedly the target of a drive-by last year in Ferntree Gully. “Yeah, Ferntree Gully,” he laughs. “A drive-by in Ferntree Gully? Man, Kerser’s from Sydney, so I don’t know how many enemies he has around the place. To have a drive-by at a Ferntree Gully pub sounds a bit out there, I don’t even know if that’s really true, ay.”
Still, some rivalry has always existed, just maybe not in such a Tarantino way. “When I started rapping in the scene, it was fucking tiny and even back then it was all politics and shit; there was so much bitching going on,” he says. “I was a part of it back, then but I chose to stay out of all of that now. People don’t understand that when you’re a rapper here, the scene can be so hard to deal with because there are so many different opinions and shit. It’s like everyone has a fucking rule book and is telling you what’s right and what’s wrong with your music.”
Colwell lights up when talk turns to his latest album. “I’ve been going really hard on it,” he says. “I’ve got a bunch of tracks but I’m still working away on it. I have my own pressure on myself to get it out there, but I won’t release it until it’s exactly how I want it to be, no matter what anyone says.”
With Colwell no stranger to collaborations, guessing that a few high profile artists might appear is an easy one to make. “I’ve done a song with Daniel Johns. I’ve also done a song with Chris Cheney and another one with Julian Hamilton from The Presets. I was such a fan of all of these guys, it’s huge for me to get to work with them and actually have them respect my music. My manager also manages The Living End, so I met them and performed with them at the Big Day Out. With Daniel Johns it’s crazy – my publisher is his brother, and I said how awesome it would be to work with him and he said he’d probably love to. People are gonna be blown away by Daniel Johns – the way he sings and the way he sounds now is so different and so incredible.”
While Colwell is excited by what he’s doing, he’s also a little afraid of his own honesty. “The album’s gonna be called Utopia, so I guess it’s a lot about how fucked up people are on earth and the negative side of things, but there are a lot of positive things as well,” he says. “I wanted it to be another step above Falling & Flying, like the next step is Utopia. Everyone in the scene have been putting out similar themes – Bliss n Eso with Circus In The Sky and Hilltop Hoods with Drinking From the Sun – so I figure space is taking it to a whole other level. It’s goes from sounding like a Radiohead song into an electro beat; the sound is crazy, there really are no words. It’s also really honest, I’ve touched on certain issues that no one ever really talks about to anyone and that I’ve never really spoken about to many people. It’s gonna be interesting to see how it’s perceived.”
Colwell’s heartfelt lyrics are what people attach to the most and he knows it’s a double-edged sword. It’s one thing to poor your heart out through rhymes and metaphor, but it’s another to have some stranger ask you to expand on things for all to read. It’s a bizarre line to walk as both artist and interviewer – artists generally want to just talk about the music and not their personal lives, but their lyrics are filled with their personal lives; their experiences inform every word they write, so what’s left to ask about, the key change in the middle eight? “Yeah I’ve thought about it a lot and some of the issues I’ve touched on I don’t feel comfortable talking to anyone about,” he says. “I guess if people wanna know about it, listen to the song, but it’s not something I’m gonna address. Like with my last relationship – it was so public, everyone knew everything about my girlfriend and what we were doing. When we broke up, it was fucking annoying having everyone asking shit. With this relationship, I’ll keep it sacred by keeping it to myself and by keeping it in a form of reality that everyone else isn’t involved in. I know that’s kinda stupid to not wanna be asked about things when you’ve put them out there, and I’m not gonna flip out, but there’ll be a lot of things from this new album that I’m not gonna chat about. I like to keep my personal life private – I’ve learned that now.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
