Hilltop Hoods: Australian hip-hop kings talk 2026 tour and ninth album Fall From the Light
As they prepare to drop the needle on their ninth album, the chart-topping Adelaide trio reflects on strength, vulnerability and how they never expected to be rapping into their 40s.
It’s a Wednesday morning in mid-July, and although prominent Adelaide music venue The Gov won’t open its doors for a few more hours, these three men have earned early entry.
It helps that large portraits of their faces have been spray-painted onto a mural on the outside of this building – but in truth, their cultural significance is such that there are few doors in the South Australian capital that wouldn’t be opened for Hilltop Hoods, the nation’s most popular and successful hip-hop act.
Once upon a time this felt like a big room, way back when Suffa (Matt Lambert), Pressure (Dan Smith) and DJ Debris (Barry Francis) were an underground musical act toiling in an emerging genre that the local record industry viewed as commercially radioactive.
Filling The Gov to its 700-person capacity is a dream long since realised, and although they speak fondly of its role as a pillar in the Adelaide scene, it now seems comically small compared to the large rooms they’ve been playing in capital cities for more than a decade. This feat puts them in rare company with Australian acts such as Kylie Minogue, Tame Impala, Cold Chisel and Parkway Drive, who each entertain arena-sized crowds whenever they venture out on tour in their homeland.
During gigs at The Gov, the most devout fans are literally within touching distance of the artists on stage, and so it was in 2006 when Hilltop Hoods played a show that was filmed by a Triple J production crew for later broadcast.
Wearing baggy jeans, loose-fitting T-shirts and the confident smirks of young men on the make, the cameras captured the two rappers – Suffa and Pressure – strolling out from the backstage area to boldly begin the show not with bombast or braggadocio, but with a curious, scene-setting story led by Suffa:
We found this club on a side street, but I was kind of iffy
We could hear some fly beats, but from outside it looked shifty
I said this to Pressure, just before I finished my sentence
This bouncer came out and dragged us both through the entrance
This guy was huge and I was stumbling with my speech
I finally mumbled that we just stumbled in from the street...
DJ Debris kept time by playing a kick drum sound on an Akai MPC workstation, and for the first 90 seconds it was this bare-bones combination of stark rhythm and vocals that held the crowd’s attention – until Debris dropped the needle on the piano-led musical bed powering The Sentinel, a five-minute narrative that appeared as the final track on 2003’s The Calling, the group’s breakout third album.
Today the men watch themselves perform on this stage nearly two decades ago via YouTube concert footage playing on Review’s phone. Now in their 40s, they indulge in a living time warp while the younger Hoods strut their stuff.
“Interesting – we started with an a cappella,” says Smith.
“That’s crazy,” says Lambert, shaking his head. “What a weird way to start a show. What were we thinking?”
“Good audio,” quips Francis.
When Review describes this subdued act of stagecraft as a bold choice, Smith replies, “We used to do a lot of things that were bold, and untried …”
His bandmates laugh. “I think that is just naivety – but that works,” says Lambert. “You have a confidence in it that we probably wouldn’t have now, to do that sort of thing.”
Says Smith: “Even back then I don’t think we would have done that if it was a bigger arena or festival stage; it was an intimate gig for people that had signed up specifically for the free ticket.”
“Well, that was 20 years ago,” says Lambert. “Almost.”
The filming of that hometown show in 2006 took place a couple of years after Australian hip-hop had begun to move from the margins to the mainstream, thanks in no small part to the Hoods’ creative nous, which saw their music reach new audiences through clever, hook-filled songwriting backed by musical muscle.
As well, there was an unashamed desire to establish a new culture rather than copy what had taken root in the US, where hip-hop began in New York City in 1973. But the local art form was no flash in the pan. It took time, and resistance was strong.
A quartet formed in 1996 by friends from Blackwood High School in the Adelaide suburb of Eden Hills became a trio in 1999 when DJ Next left the group in the year it released its debut album, A Matter of Time.
Suffa, Pressure and Debris encountered their share of cultural cringe, too, just like forebears such as Def Wish Cast and 1200 Techniques, who were among those carrying the torch for so-called “skip-hop” when the genre was confined to tiny pockets of lovers and practitioners gathered near the centre of our capital cities.
Sometimes it takes a single song to break a dam wall, though, like The Nosebleed Section, the Hoods’ landmark 2003 track. Never released as a single, its cultural imprint remains wide and deep. Airplay on youth broadcaster Triple J led to national popularity and, later, crossover into commercial radio, a sure sign the cultural cringe had evaporated.
The trio’s success triggered a flood of fellow artists, from Bliss N Eso and Onefour to Baker Boy and The Kid Laroi, all of whom found large audiences here, with the latter – aka Sydney-born Charlton Howard, now aged 21 – becoming one of the most globally popular Australian performers working today.
We meet a few weeks ahead of the release of Fall From the Light, the group’s ninth LP and their first since 2019’s The Great Expanse. Despite a drip-feed of singles – including four of 12 tracks from Fall From the Light – a Hilltop Hoods album release is one of the few remaining capital-E Events in a recorded music market where Australian acts generally struggle to match the ARIA chart dominance and pop culture mind-share of overseas artists.
During our interview in The Gov’s front bar, the trio speak expansively and reflectively about their rise to prominence. As you might expect, the two rappers talk much more than their DJ bandmate.
When asked whether it was harder to climb the throne of Australian hip-hop than it is to hold it, there’s a little bristling.
“Holding it comes naturally,” says Smith, while his bandmates frown. “We’re still loving making music. We do put a lot of stock in ourselves to maintain a level of quality, and it gets harder the longer you do it to make sure that every album or song is as good – or better than – the last. We do talk about that a bit, and reflect on it.”
Lambert begins: “I don’t really …”
“Think there’s a throne,” adds Francis with a laugh, reading his friend’s mind.
“I don’t agree with the premise,” continues Lambert. “For me, that veers into a world where it’s more competition. I find the work was hard on the way up – but once you’re at a certain level, it’s always just a grind.”
“Up until Nosebleed – the obvious turning point in our career – we were kids just doing what we loved,” says Smith of their 2003 breakthrough. “It was a lot of hours working a day job, and then spending every spare hour at Debris’ house, making tunes in the studio.”
“He must have been real sick of us, dude,” adds Lambert.
“But it didn’t feel like a grind – because I was a young-un’ and didn’t have children,” says Smith, prompting them all to laugh.
On the theme of ageing, Review has brought a prop: the printed lyrics to a track recorded with Obese Records leader and fellow hip-hop artist Pegz, aka Tirren Staaf, which appeared on his 2005 album Axis.
In their comedic verses, the Hoods cast their minds far into the future: “Damn, I’ma be old and dirty, fat and bald by 30 / And by 70, definitely, cold and scurvy,” begins Pressure, before later rapping, “But I ain’t full of shit (nope) – that’s my colostomy bag / Rocking shows at retirement homes / This trendy geezer don’t know when to quit, like a smoker with emphysema.”
Suffa, meanwhile, envisaged them kicking on well into old age:
Can’t fade the greats, we’ll still be hard rhymers
With Debris on the decks trying to scratch with arthritis
We’ll be old timers, cold rhymers with Alzheimer’s
We’ll be bald, blind as 50-year-old coal miners...
When Review passes the paper across the table, they begin scanning the words, or attempting to; Smith holds the page at arm’s length and says, “I should have brought my reading glasses.”
DJ Debris clocks it first. “This is For Life,” says Francis, nodding. “Pretty classic song, man. I listened to it the other day.”
“That’s funny; I forgot that song existed,” says Smith, who then looks across the table at Review. “Are you saying that these lyrics have come true?”
They all laugh. “I still have a head of hair, and teeth, so we haven’t quite got to the outcome of that.”
Lambert finishes reading his rhymes and smiles. “I’m happy with that verse,” he says, cackling. “That stands up!”
When that track was released two decades ago, did they have any sense that their nascent career might extend into their 40s?
“I definitely had a feeling, when we were in our 20s, ‘This will only last till our 30s’,” says Smith. “And in my 30s, I thought, ‘This will only last till our 40s’. Now I’m in my 40s, at this stage I think it will last until our 50s, in some way, shape or form. I stand by those lyrics as well. I think we’ll still be doing it, even if it’s not at this level; hopefully I’ll still enjoy it enough to still be doing it.”
Lambert, the pragmatist, chips in: “We’ve got another four records to hand in with Universal,” he says. “This has been our slowest (gap) between records: six years. Our usual thing was two or three years at most. But this record reinvigorated me, personally; especially the last six months in the process. I feel like it’s just about to ramp up at the moment, with recording and touring.”
While we speak, tens of thousands of pre-sale tickets are being bought by fans for their upcoming arena tour, the Hoods’ first since 2022; the following day they’ll announce three dates have sold out, while adding second shows in Adelaide and Melbourne. In parallel with our interview, a beatific, long-haired bloke named Dylan Liddy is practically levitating with joy around The Gov. He has been the Hoods’ manager since 2007, and their booking agent since 2004.
Fall From the Light upholds the band’s reputation for polished, engaging and accomplished albums balancing light and shade. Led by bold arrangements and production, it circles themes including social media voyeurism (as heard on Naked), anxiety for the future (Don’t Happy, Be Worry), destiny (Something Bigger Than This) and the grounding love of their families (album closer The Moth).
Lambert bares his soul in This Year, a solo track which baldly details his occasional experiences with chronic low mood. In it he mentions the antidepressant Lexapro, and it concludes with his desire to identify and treat his depression in an attempt to help his children.
“Pain is a burden you pass down,” he says, quoting the song’s final line. “I think I carry a lot of my dad’s pain, and I don’t want to do that, and so I actively took it on as soon as I identified it. I do the work because I don’t want my kids to have to do the work later on.”
How did hearing This Year hit his bandmates?
“It made me realise that I don’t perceive as much as what I think I do – in terms of Matt not hiding it, but masking it, I guess,” says Francis.
“We’re often in group settings where (it’s hard to say), ‘Hey fellas, I’m depressed!’ ”
They all laugh, clearly comfortable with what’s often a difficult subject for men to discuss among mates.
“I was quite emotional when I heard it for the first time; Matt held those cards to his chest for a very long time,” says Smith. “It’s such an incredibly powerful and important song, because its vulnerability is its strength.”
This Year joins the likes of Shredding the Balloon (2012), in which Lambert addressed his problems with alcohol abuse and prompted a two-year break from booze (and perhaps now acts as a prelude to his newest solo song, which deals even more directly with mental illness).
In 2014’s Through the Dark, Smith told the story of his son Liam going through six months of leukaemia treatment at the age of eight. (He’s fine now, aged 21; Liam loves life, and has come to love the song his dad wrote about his darkest hours.)
“I’m proud that we have songs like This Year and Through the Dark in our catalogue, because it’s a deeper substance and we are multifaceted human beings,” says Smith. “There’s more to us than just Cosby Sweater.”
Yet from the new album, it’s an earlier single titled The Gift — a heartfelt, uplifting and relatable song about a lifelong love of music, crafted by three master musicians and their collaborators — which appears destined to be added to the trio’s bulging list of classic tracks alongside the likes of I Love It, 1955, Leave Me Lonely, Exit Sign, Cosby Sweater and the initial dam-breaker of The Nosebleed Section, each of which have clocked north of 70 million streams on Spotify alone.
Based on their musical upbringings, The Gift is a song that is rooted in the present while fondly looking back at homes filled with diverse record collections belonging to their parents and siblings.
Pressure’s verse cites hearing records by Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Tupac:
We inherit the gift
Bestowed on the road that we tread as a kid
The sound of guitar in the house from my father
No doubt was the start of the lesson I lived…
Suffa mentions artists such as Janis Ian, Rush, Hush and Lead Belly:
My dad used to put on the blues
I could hear his head bangin’ on the wall in the next room
And after he had passed
I realised it was music that he had passed…
For Smith, “it was really beautiful being able to have a bit of an ode to our parents; my mum teared up when she heard that song. It felt like giving back a little piece of all the wonderful things that they had done for me through my childhood”.
“They’ve got the seven-inch vinyl sitting next to their stereo in their lounge room now,” he says, beaming. “I’m very proud that we could give back something.”
“And his son messaged me when it came out as well,” says Lambert, nodding at his fellow MC. “Liam.”
“Did he?” asks Smith, surprised.
“He was very emotional,” says Lambert, smiling. “It was very nice.”
“He never gives me compliments – I’m glad he gives them to you!” says Smith, laughing.
With the permission of all parties – including Liam – Review can share what the young man wrote.
“Uncle Matt, I’ve got a lot to say but I’ll save it for next time I see you,” he wrote. “But geeee wiz, The Gift made me cry uncle Matt. Keen to see you.”
With a poetic flourish echoing across the decades, Liam signed off as “the kid bangin’ his head in the next room”.
The writer travelled to Adelaide with the assistance of Island/Universal Music Australia. Fall From the Light is released on August 1 via Island/UMA. The six-city Never Coming Home tour begins in Hobart (February 14) and ends in Perth (March 21).
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