Rapper and podcast star Spanian casts spotlight on Sydney’s criminal underbelly in new memoir
As a youth, rapper Spanian couldn’t stay out of jail. Now he reveals how he turned his life around after he infamously terrorised students and teachers in Sydney’s east.
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Rapper turned viral counterculture personality Spanian was two months old when he took his first ride in a stolen car.
His mother was a massive Cold Chisel fan, and his father assisted a family friend to steal a red Ford Bronco which belonged to Jimmy Barnes.
Scattered in the back of the car were demo cassette tapes – a priceless find for a fan – but his mother had her eye on the prize of the babyseat for her son, a mini “throne of Australian rock royalty.”
It is the opening tale in his memoir The Unfiltered Hood Life, which chronicles Spanian’s violent youth and young manhood spent in and out of jail from the age of 15, and battling drug addiction.
In the four years since his release from NSW’s Bathurst Correctional Centre, which he is determined will be his “final” prison stint, he has become an underground rap sensation and podcast star.
As he walks the streets of Sydney’s innerwest – politely dodging requests for a photo from “randoms” who recognise him – we figure out the babyseat would have belonged to respected drummer and songwriter Jackie Barnes, as both men are 35.
“I always remember them saying when I was a kid that I’d been in Jimmy Barnes’ kid’s babyseat, but I never figured out whether it was his son or daughter,” he said.
That opening chapter is titled “Seeds Planted”. When he was 15-years-old, he fulfilled that prophecy, which he describes in the book as a conscious choice to become a criminal.
Spanian was already a thief – mobile phones, laptops, cars – when he infamously terrorised students and teachers at Dover Heights High School in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in 2001.
The expelled student burst into one classroom after the next, brandishing a kitchen knife, in an attempt to scare the classmate who had dobbed him into the principal for stealing a mobile phone.
He held the knife against the throat of a boy who jokingly claimed to have given him up to the principal. He floored the teacher who intervened with a sidekick to the gut.
After being chased through the grounds and the surrounding streets, workers on a nearby building site stopped him with their shovels and held him until the police arrived.
That terrifying crime would result in his first incarceration, at the Cobham Juvenile Justice Centre in Sydney’s west.
In his memoir, as an adult reflecting on his teenage self, Spanian reduces that seminal and ignominious moment captured by television and newspaper crews to “funny”.
“What happened is I didn’t plan it at all, it just grew out of control, everyone’s reactions kind of egged me on,” he says.
“What I really wanted to do was scare people so no one dobbed on me for something in the future.
“And when I seen (sic) those teams of psychs (psychiatrists), they were astonished that I couldn’t help having a chuckle about it, and they were looking at each other like I was some maniac.
“(I thought) they were just being dramatic. OK, there was a knife but apart from that, it was a little kid running around screaming at people and everyone ran away.”
After countless sessions with counsellors and psychiatrists both in and out of prison, he claims to be no closer to understanding the impulses which drove him to commit violent assaults, car thefts and ram raids to steal ATMs. But he believes it is “very, very important” for his future, to find out.
“That’s some deep psychology … I’ve got no idea. I just think there was something legitimately wrong with me, to be honest,” he said.
“I think the way I was a kid, as a teenager, goes beyond a male attraction to violence. The way I was with knives and hiding in bushes and creating (toy) sniper rifles goes beyond for even a kid who likes violence.
“I’ve seen many, many psychologists and psychiatrists during some pre-sentences. I had a team of psychiatrists come from some fancy place in Melbourne and they spent three days with me at Long Bay, a lot of effort was put in.
“I didn’t fit into a category … but they said I ranked extremely high on the psychopathy meter, spectrum, whatever you call it.”
Spanian sees the book as documenting an era of Sydney’s underbelly in the 2000s, a criminalised subculture of disenfranchised youth from Sydney’s inner city suburbs.
It goes into detail about what they wore, how they talked, the codes which governed their anti-social behaviour.
And he spells out the specifics of how he jacked cars, scored drugs and consumed them, how he felt powerful when threatening someone with a knife or box-cutter.
The only details he shields are the real or full names of family, friends, associates. He refers to himself by his first name Anthony only a handful of times in the book.
He insists The Unfiltered Hood Life is not a how-to guide for those who may see Spanian as a counterculture role model.
His message in the book and his top-rating podcast The Search appears to be “don’t do as I did.”
“I’m no more worried about this book than Ocean’s Eleven or some movie being a guide for people who want to rob banks,” he said.
“All of the things I talk about doing are completely non-existent crimes anymore. Cars are unstealable nowadays, nobody’s stealing ATMs, it’s legitimately history.
“And if it wasn’t over, I wouldn’t be talking about it, because I’d be explaining in detail the things that people would currently be doing and a lot of people would be upset with me.”
His “hood life” and emergence in the past four years as a “content creator” who gets stopped on the street daily by admirers of his raps, The Search podcast, his social media posts, his merchandise range, have sparked the interest of filmmakers.
One Australian streaming network executive approached Spanian in a restaurant to express his interest in telling his story on screen.
“As far as I know, there’s a lot of people who want to make this movie. One guy came up to me in Spice Alley and I spun him to my manager who told me ‘Yeah, that’s one option. We’ve got a lot of options,” he said.
The Unfiltered Hood Life by Spanian with Christopher Kevin Au is released by Hachette Australia on December 1.
Originally published as Rapper and podcast star Spanian casts spotlight on Sydney’s criminal underbelly in new memoir
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