NRL 2024: Sydney Roosters rap group to drop 20-track album despite teammate split

Three-quarters of the Sydney Roosters rap crew will be departing the club at the end of the season but that hasn’t stopped them banding together to produce a 20-track album set to drop soon. Watch the stars in the studio.

The Roosters rap group is flying the coop but star centre Joey Manu’s home music studio will keep the soon to be former teammates together long after the season is over.

It’s a feat not even the club’s famous recruitment and retention strategy was able to achieve.

Manu, who is heading to Japanese rugby, along with Wallabies bound Joseph Aukuso-Suaalii, Canterbury signing Sitili Tupouniua and Siua Wong have recorded over 20 hip hop songs for an album set to drop in December.

There’s only one problem, and it isn’t the fact the group is about to be torn apart by their new contract commitments.

The teammates can’t come up with a name for the hip hop group.

“We don’t have a name yet. The name has been harder than making some of the songs because we can’t agree on it,” Tupouniua said.

“That’s what has probably kept us from dropping anything sooner.”

Joey Manu, Sitili Tupouniua, Joseph Aukuso-Suaalii, Siua Wong are set to drop a rap album in December.

They’ll also spend the summer finalising a track list and shooting music videos to go with the album.

“We will drop something in the off-season before the boys head off to Japan and the Wallabies and I go to the Bulldogs,” Tupouniua said.

“But we have to make sure we release the right one, we don’t want to release anything that is trash.”

The group’s album isn’t Manu’s first foray into the music scene.

He released Party All Night on Spotify late last year after the catchy rap song turned into a hit among his New Zealand teammates during the Pacific Championships.

“I took that song into Kiwis camp and they loved it. They kept telling me ‘put it on the speaker, play it again’ and getting around it,” Manu said.

“So after we won the Pacific Championship the boys wanted me to put it on Spotify so they could listen to it. I think the numbers are doing all right. I’m not too fussed about how many streams it gets.”

The song has had almost 130,000 streams on Spotify and Manu reckons he’s got coach Trent Robinson to thank.

“He plays it all the time apparently in the car into training,” Manu joked.

“He sings it, he knows all the lyrics and everything.”

It wasn’t long before Tupouniua, Wong and Suaalii wanted in on the action.

Joseph Manu's Instagram post celebrating the release of his song Party All Night.

“During long car trips we would freestyle in the car and try to rap, we’d be mucking around and freestyling in the change rooms all the time,” Tupouniua

So Manu set up a studio in his home where he and his teammates could get together on days off and after training to record their rhymes.

“We just started sending beats to each other and everyone started writing their won rhymes,” Manu said.

“I ended up getting a little set up in my house so it’s easier for us to record. It’s been a fun process, it’s been really good to have the boys around and it gave us something to do.”

Wong said the teammates took inspiration from some of their favourite artists like RnB superstar Drake and UK grime rapper Stormzy.

But their songs tell their own stories, ranging on subjects from the trials and tribulations of being an athlete to their own personal journeys and relationships.

“We’ve got our unique sound but we listen to a lot of RnB, hip hop and Afro beats artists,” Wong said.

The Roosters stars plan to drop their album in December. Picture: Sydney Roosters

“We pick apart those sounds and tunes and whatever we like, we implement those sounds and techniques to come up with our songs.

“Joey will send us the instrumental before we go into the studio and we are supposed to come up with the lyrics.”

While the teammates hoped their music ambitions will keep them together after this season, there is one Rooster in particular that has a future as a solo artist.

“I reckon if we went solo, Sitili would be the one who can actually carve out something with the rapping,” Wong revealed.

“He’s actually got a good voice for it. I don’t know if his lyrics or rapping is actually that good but he’s got the right tone in his voice for it.”

Coach Robinson even wanted the budding music artists to record a Roosters hype-up team song.

The request shocked the stars to the point that they thought the premiership-winning coach was playing a prank.

“He had asked Joey to come up with a team song,” Tupouniua said.

“But in all honesty we thought ‘no way, he’s got to be joking’. Then one day at training he asked us how we were going with the song. It was like ‘sheesh, he was being serious’.”

But a Roosters rap team song could be in the works as a parting gift to the club – that and a premiership.

Manu pledged to record a song as a tribute to the club’s departing players including Jared Waerea-Hargreaves and Luke Keary if the Roosters made the grand final, the road to which will begin with a victory against Manly on Saturday night at Allianz Stadium.

“We’ll have to come up with a hype-up song for that week, something to get all the boys up,” Manu said.

“We have probably already recorded one that we use.”