Having previously released cassette-only projects from Prowla, MC Que and Raise, 1997's Money Walks EP marked Australian hip hop label Nuffsaid's first project on vinyl. The following year, Prowla, Jase and Jors began working on a limited-edition magazine to celebrate their work as a graffiti crew, which soon spawned the idea of recording a soundtrack to accompany its release. The resulting album, Rock Da City, proved to be an important turning point for the quality of local rap, as it showcased a diverse range of MCs over different styles and tempos, yet retained a consistency in sound thanks to the programming finesse of Jase and the ear for unorthodox samples that Prowla brought to the table. Here are some recollections of those sessions from some of the people involved.
Jase: Back then I was working on the Atari ST and Roland W-30. I was the only dude who knew how to work Cubase, and it was a lot easier for the whole arrangement and sequencing of shit. So I basically became the whole engineer and arranger of all the tracks, except for Plutonic Lab's one. It was real interesting how many layers we used to use in the making of one track. Bass from one record, chords from another, horns from another, bass change-ups and little effects from totally different records.
Balans: It was a rhyme I wrote that I wanted to sound like a government letter or some corporate law manual type-shit. I remember saying to Jase, 'Just use that piano loop.' I wanted a simple beat and he tapped it out pretty quick on his keyboard. It's a dope, sinister beat. I said I wanted a beat like Touch The Mic by 7L & Eso with Virtuoso. I always thought my vocals could've been pumped up more on it, I would've liked to have done it again. But Nuffsaid put it out on wax so I have to give credit - they got off their arses and did it. This was way before we'd thought about a name for the crew, and Trem came up with calling us Lyrical Commission. He was gonna write a track saying he was the janitor of the Lyrical Commission mopping up MCs and shit, which would have been good value.
MC Que: The song was about the change of going from living in the city to living in the suburbs - but still being south - and relating to my heritage of being Chilean. That was kind of the connection - being southern hemispheric. The music was catchy, it was kind of melancholy. I dunno if it kind of pulled at people's heartstrings or something? I guess back then I was less conscious about what I was doing. It was a kind of nice re-entry back into music with that song.
Dedlee: I was supposed to be the first person to record for the RDC comp, and I ended up being the last. Prowla said, 'We're gonna do this compilation. Everyone seemed to like 3 Strikes, [from Prowla's Money Walks EP] so you've gotta do it.' I got some ideas together and I had an eye on that beat, because Prowla was gonna use the beat on Money Walks. It was supposed to be used for Verbal Control, 'cos I heard him rapping the verse over the beat over the telephone and thought, 'This is unbelievable!' When we started talking about the RDC compilation I said, 'Is that beat free? That's a monster loop.'
More and more people got their stuff down and I was still muckin' around with my verses. Once the last person had recorded, Prowla said. 'We might not be able to get you on. We've only got two minutes of side A left.' I said, 'Two minutes is all I'd need.' It was originally three verses that got chopped together very quickly. We went to my workplace at the time – an AM radio station – and recorded. I did some terrible cuts, using one of those Gemini mixers with the worst fader you've ever seen, at the radio station as well. After it was done, I was like, 'I dunno if that's a track?' It was very much a last-minute affair.
Plutonic Lab: The second joint I got to release as a solo artist, the first being on The Four Element Effect compilation LP. Before then I had produced my crew Macronauts from around '93-'97, we released a couple things in that time, but by '99 that shit was all over. I was living in a warehouse in Melbourne's city center, and was just making beats on an ASR-10 [sampler] and a turntable for no other reason [other] than I was just really into it, no real intention to release anything.
Prowla would come over to the warehouse to either rehearse with Madlock [Plutonic Lab's band at the time] or listen to beats and hang out. I think he just liked the melancholy [quality] that beat had. I tracked it out to two tracks of Prowla's digital recorder, adding a bit of EQ through the Allen & Heath mixer he had. Pretty basic really, grimey as fuck. It would be this track that started it all and got me involved with Nuffsaid over the next five years.
J-Red: I knew of Prowla but it wasn't until I met him that I realised that he only lived a couple of streets away from me! Before I knew it I was riding my BMX to his joint and we'd just scratch. There was word of the Rock Da City comp goin' on and I was just keen to get on a track. The only recording I'd done in the way of scratch tracks was using Cool Edit in '95 on a shitty PC – You can't even multi-track on that! So the opportunity to record a track was a blessing.
I didn't get to meet Diverse, he recorded his cuts in NSW and I just put them together here. I just took down a bunch of records that I thought would work together, wrote out a little script of what to do, and then bang! I was very hell-bent on, 'I've gotta do every cut separate and it has to be a one-take sorta deal.' I want what goes on the track to be the initial feeling. For me to punch shit in and do it one after the other was a dream. I was mainly a battle dude back then too, I wasn't really concentrating on recording, but that's what fired me up to do more.
Lazy Grey: This is '98, it was our first little 'rap tour' for our cassette at the time – On Tap.
Len One: We did that gig [at the Corner Hotel in Richmond] and I think Prowla was blown away by us and just gave us a spot. I was just blown away that they'd even have me and Lazy on it.
Lazy Grey: We all got the train out to Noble Park, and when we got off at the station you can't get a ticket because the machines are fucked, you can't make a phone call cause all the bloody phones are fucked, so we just started walking and finally found a phone out the front of a snack bar.
Len One: MC Que was out the back punching the punching bag, and I was thinking, 'This is some gully shit!' We did [Boney & Stoney's] Freedom Fighters the same day as States of Mind. That was the first song recorded for the RDC album. I kinda wrote my verse for States of Mind on the spot, so I couldn't be fucked writing another verse. I had that old chorus and Lazy had those verses that he wrote on the plane on the way down. We just put it together there on the spot and it worked!
Lazy Grey: The RDC compilation is the best to have come out of Australia. I really look back and say, 'Those were probably some of my happiest little times in the hip-hop world.'
Raise: A graff track about how passionate and dedicated true writers are. When I was introduced to it [graffiti] in London I was hooked like a drug! It's all I thought about, cared about, a way of life few will ever understand. Peace to Run For Kover crew, twenty-five plus years. I still love the chorus - Rakim, J-Live, Rammellzee – dope!
Like most of The Essence [released on tape in 1996] I took my loops to Prowls and Jase – a bunch of W30 discs – and said to Idem, 'Let's put that with this,' and he'd program the track. I left my discs with Jase to produce a few tracks for me, and when I heard my Freddie Hubbard loop made famous on 32 Lines I was like, 'Damn!' Some made their way onto Money Walks too, but it's all good. They're classics and I was proud to be part of it.
Plutonic Lab: The Madlock instrumental was initially recorded live in my warehouse one night, direct to DAT tape, using whatever mics I had through a little Teac mixer I owned. We were good enough players, with excellent dynamics between us, to make it work. Personnel was Derm - keys; Chris Toro - bass; myself on drums; and Prowls on turntables. Me and Prowla added some sounds and did a bit of magic before it went to two-track again. For me, the release brings back memories of having very little in terms of gear but we just had that hunger and drive to make something work. All the shit on RDC has heart, you can hear it.
Jase: I was starting to check out more electro and breakbeat stuff, and that was my first ever try at a breakbeat track. Before NuBreed formed, the three of us said to each other, 'We'll do a track each before the years end. If we can get three or four songs out, we'll start working professionally.' My donation to the cause was the Rock Da City track.
It sort of blew-up after that – got signed to Zero Tolerance label – which is DMC Records. They were gonna put that out as a twelve inch. The track order on the original RDC CD is all wrong, so they put the UK remix on one side and Troy's track [Soul Terrain], when they gave me the test-pressings it was like, 'What the hell is Troy's song doing on there?' [laughs] We ended-up giving them another song.
