Something in the water: Allday, Hilltop Hoods, Beccy Cole – Why our Hills produce so many superstars

Rapper Allday grew up in the same area that spawned the Hilltop Hoods and Beccy Cole. Now he’s playing at the Adelaide Festival. So what’s the Blackwood area’s musical secret?

Tomas Gaynor recalls walking the streets of Eden Hills as a kid, the beats of Eminem and Dr Dre bouncing through his head, his family home on a dead-end street never too far from his stride.

He liked hanging out with friends, playing soccer, he even didn’t mind going to Blackwood High School (a scholarship to Mercedes College didn’t quite work out).

Above all that, he just loved music. All kinds.

His mum would listen to Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, while he would also listen to old and classic rock music, the kind on 24/7 repeat on the likes of Mix 102.3.

It was a happy childhood and one that allowed his creativity to run free.

His was a pretty quiet existence in tree-lined suburbia on the fringe of the city. But it worked to his advantage.

“It was a pretty fun childhood,” Gaynor says.

“There was lots of exploring stuff, walking around with a lot of kids in the neighbourhood, having fun.

“That’s kind of where I was getting into rap music, and I guess graffiti and all that stuff.

“Growing up somewhere boring is really good for your creativity.

Hills artist Allday poses for a selfie with fans at the Sunny Dayz music festival.

“I’m just like, thinking and being independent and having my liberty as a human being just walking around … like your brain just runs wild so I think, for me, it was a really great place to grow up, and it really helped me become creative.”

There must be something to this; the same area spawned hip-hop legends the Hilltop Hoods, and Golden Guitar winner Beccy Cole.

Hills mega act, The Hilltop Hoods, Suffa (Matthew Lambert), DJ Debris (Barry Francis) and Pressure (Daniel Smith) in 2022. Picture: Evan Morgan

In his spare time he would write lyrics and then, after a while, set about recording them.

“Back then not everyone had laptops … and I didn’t have enough money to get the gear so it kind of was a bit slow for me to actually get to record music,” he says.

“I was writing music since 11 years old until I was maybe 18 before I got to record it.”

After dabbling for a short while in stand-up comedy – it didn’t last (although he was a runner-up in the Raw Comedy national final) – he had a lucky break.

He won recording time in a studio after competing at the Northern Sound System in a community centre in Elizabeth.

From there, he began creating mix tapes and, before it became a thing, YouTube videos.

“I was very lucky,” he says.

“If it didn’t happen, God knows, I probably wouldn’t be doing music. I’d probably be just a very medium-range, unsuccessful comedian.”

Instead, the now 31 year old is getting ready to return to his hometown in March, from his adopted home in Melbourne, for a one-off show for the Adelaide Festival, as one of Australia’s leading hip-hop artists.

Beccy Cole, who grew up in the Hills, on stage last year.

Under the rap moniker Allday (his fans knowhim as Allday Chubby Boy), he was signed to OneTwo Records in 2013, a smaller label formed by Australian hip-hop artist Illy and Melbourne’s UNIFIED Music Group.

Shortly after being signed, single Claude Monet was released, which attracted more than 1.6 million views on YouTube.

In 2014, he released his debut album Startup Cult which hit No. 3 on the ARIA charts, just behind the likes of Sia and Ed Sheeran.

His track You Always Know the DJ was voted number 35 on the prestigious Triple J Hottest 100 and Right Now came in at 65.

“It’s pretty damn cool,” he says now.

“The Hottest 100 is always special. I remember, we would always have the Hottest 100 parties and be listening and then all of a sudden, I had left Adelaide for like, six months or less than and by the time I came back to visit in the summertime and the Hottest 100 came on and I was like, in it.

“I always remember that moment, from just going to the parties every year to being in it.

“It’s just an unforgettable feeling.”

His second album, Speedings, released three years later, featured a frequent and unusual collaborator, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and also popular Australian alternative acts Mallrat and Japanese Wallpaper.

Peaking at No. 6 on the ARIA Charts, the track In Motion featuring Japanese Wallpaper was voted number 44 in the Hottest 100.

Then he went off to the US, moving to Los Angeles in 2017.

“It was just all right. Even the accents are annoying. Just shut up,” he says, laughing.

“I actually love Americans and I’m a big basketball fan … I was just playing a lot of basketball and watching a lot of basketball.”

The Veronicas, Lisa and Jessica Origliasso, with rapper Allday, Tom Gaynor, in Sydney. Picture: Justin Lloyd

His third album peaked in the charts in 2019 with its title, Starry Night Over the Phone, a play on Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhône.

Billboard Magazine recognised Gaynor’s album artwork and awarded it No. 16 in The Best Album Covers of 2019.

His childhood in Adelaide, too, was never far from his mind, as the song Lungs suggests: “Takes me back to Adelaide, where the haze don’t block the stars. When the teachers said watch him cause he’s angry but he’s smart.”

Returning to Melbourne in 2019 to renew his visa, he met his girlfriend, Memphis … and then the pandemic hit.

A return to the US was off the table.

He went, he says, “stir crazy”, confined to an apartment with no yard for months on end.

“I think it was one of those things where I didn’t realise how depressed that made me til afterwards, you know?” he says.

Luckily he found an outlet. Its name: TikTok.

However, instead of just uploading music, he made comedy videos with Memphis.

“People in the industry are saying, ‘Get TikTok’, and ‘You have to be on this new app’ or whatever and it felt a bit like, oh, well, if we’re gonna do this, let’s at least have fun,” he says.

“We’re just sort of mucking around and … some of the stuff we made was like a David Lynch movie or something.”

Allday on Instagram.

The guitar-heavy album he recorded during the pandemic.

Still at a time when the industry was in a shutdown and the live music scene all but a distant memory, this kept the connection line open with his fans.

“I’ll do anything on social media platforms in order to sell that music,” he says frankly.

This shouldn’t really surprise anyone, he has always kept his eyes open to the possibilities of new technology platforms, which has allowed him both commercial and creative freedom.

A decade ago, Gaynor was publishing covers and original music on YouTube.

“YouTube felt like it was the music discovery platform,” he says.

His music releases were gaining traction, some videos with tens of thousands of views, others with hundreds of thousands.

It also gave him control over his content.

“I’ve been able to keep a lot of my own money that I earn from music, but I’ve always had to adapt with whatever website or whatever app is big at the time, and figure it out,” he says.

In the end, he made it through the pandemic, finishing off his fourth studio album, Drinking With My Smoking Friends, which reached No. 13 on the ARIA charts.

It was, by his own admission, a significant creative departure, which was heavy on guitars and bass. Respected music publication NME reflected that it was as if that kid in Adelaide had, instead of his rap heroes, “found The Stone Roses, You Am I and Oasis instead”.

Rolling Stone Australia called it “his most unguarded album yet”.

Gaynor himself says: “I think maybe that guitar album I did, I probably wouldn’t have done when I was in the real world.”

Rapper Allday in a promotional shot.

Gaynor’s genre-blending music has improved over the past decade: His audio is crisp, his lyrics are original and his rapping style unique.

It’s a potent mix he brings to the Adelaide Festival in March which is, finally, free of the shackles of the pandemic.

In a night billed as a celebration of Aussie rap and hip-hop, he’ll be joined by two rising stars in the Australian hip-hop scene – Malyangapa and Barkindji artist BARKAA and Gomeroi rapper Kobie Dee. He’s clearly looking forward to it and says that, as he gets older, he is more comfortable experimenting with different sounds.

“I’m lucky to have this audience who appreciate the things I’ve come up with,” he says. It’s also a deeply personal process for him.

“Music is a community thing. It’s all good to do it for yourself if that’s the way you want to do it but I also enjoy being able to share with people who it connects with,” he says.

“I get a lot of pleasure out of people enjoying music, and that’s what I like. I’ve always been pop leaning and I probably always will be.”

For now, he’s putting the finishing touches on his new album, which is due out soon, while making a conscious effort to lighten up.

“(My producer) actually said to me, ‘You’re theoretically this good rapper that makes fun rap, but you don’t make much fun rap, you make depressing songs,’” he says, laughing.

“He’s like, ‘Maybe we should just do this simple thing for a while’, so that’s kind of the goal at the moment. You don’t want to like, look back and be emotional about everything you want to be able to live in the moment as well.”■

Allday will be returning home with BARKAA and Kobie Dee to perform at the Adelaide Festival at Hindley Street Music Hall on March 17, 8pm