ARIA Awards 2023: Australian hip-hop takes centre-stage for genre’s 50th anniversary
Not so long ago, hip-hop was given the cold shoulder at the ARIA Awards: it wasn’t until 2004 that a category was created for the genre’s leading lights. Today, they’re some of the biggest stars.
Not so long ago, hip-hop was given the cold shoulder at the ARIA Awards, the annual celebration of Australian music.
Of this long-running snub, artists who embraced their outsider status may have echoed Groucho Marx’s famous quip: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”
But the past two decades have seen a great leap in the cultural and commercial impact of hip-hop on millions of listeners, and its shift from underground to mainstream will be capped at the ARIA Awards in Sydney on Wednesday night.
During the ceremony, some of the genre’s most influential artists will gather for a collaborative performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, the art form that originated in New York City in 1973 and found a global audience.
Among the performers is chart-topping Sydney trio Bliss n Eso, rising talent Barkaa (aka MC Chloe Quayle), and veteran rapper N’fa Jones.
As co-founder of Melbourne trio 1200 Techniques, Jones and co were the first Australian hip-hop act to take home trophies at the 2002 ARIA Awards – best independent release and best video for their earworm of a single, Karma.
When Jones and his bandmates performed a high-energy take on Karma during the ceremony, it was a landmark moment in Australian music that helped put the genre on the map before a national TV audience.
Of the awards that 1200 Techniques won in 2002, Jones told The Australian: “We were definitely there to represent hip-hop, and not be like, ‘Hey, look at us, it’s just us’. I mean, there was no urban category (at the ARIAs); they made one after that.”
The urban music award endured from 2004 until 2019, when ARIA elected to split it into two categories denoting best hip-hop release and best soul/R&B release.
“We thought it should have been straight away,” said Jones. “But hey – it’s a learning process, isn’t it?”
The 50th celebration is a timely pick for ARIA, the peak music body: the lead nominee among industry voters this year is Genesis Owusu, the Canberra-based hip-hop artist, whose second album Struggler is up for seven awards on Wednesday.
“He’s flying the flag for Australia; he’s flying the flag for multiculturalism and African Australians,” said Jones of Owusu. “For myself, being African Australian, I always imagined seeing younger artists coming up, because there weren’t many around when I was doing my thing. To see him doing so well is great.”
The genre’s box office popularity was underlined on Tuesday when Sydney-raised hip-hop artist The Kid Laroi took the major step of announcing an Australian stadium tour, starting February 2 at Melbourne’s AAMI Park, having sold out arenas nationwide on his debut headline tour last year.
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