American hip-hop superstar Lupe Fiasco has confirmed he will be taking his high energy live show to stages across Australia with dates scheduled in February 2010 in Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and a very special show at the Royal Melbourne Zoo as part of Sound Safari.Lupe exploded onto the hip-hop scene in 2004 with a mind-blowing verse on Kanye West’s ‘Touch The Sky’. Since then he’s gone from strength to strength, with the release of not one, but two Grammy nominated albums - 2006’s Food & Liquor and last year’s critically-acclaimed LP The Cool. The album’s major single ‘Superstar’ became an instant classic and ironically solidified Lupe as a superstar himself.
Lupe’s latest hit, the brilliant ‘Shining Down’, is the first track off his third studio album and has begun the huge wave of impatience for his new LP – Lasers - which is slated for release in early 2010, just in time for his highly anticipated return to our shores.
‘The reverberating din of stamping feet demands an encore… Within the rhymes of Superstar, Fiasco calls it himself: “All the reviewers say, ‘You need to go and see that.’” ‘
-Inpress Magazine, February 2009
Lupe will be joined by Melbourne’s Phrase with his full live band, whose highly acclaimed LP Clockwork has taken him from underground buzz to now being heralded as one of the city’s most remarkable musical exports.
PHRASE's debut album Talk With Force ushered in a new era for Australian Hip-Hop with its raw subject matter and unrivalled sonic foundations courtesy of the CROOKED EYE production team (J-Skub, Daniel Merriweather & PHRASE). The breakthrough single from the album entitled “Hold On” solidified PHRASE’s position at the fore-front of the Australian Hip-Hop movement. 2006/2007 saw PHRASE perform almost 100 live shows across the country, touring and performing with artists like Snoop Dogg, Bliss N Eso, Mobb Deep, Pegz, Method Man & Redman, Rahzel, Scribe, Mark Ronson and DJ Premier. The achievements of PHRASE in this short 2 year period have been nothing short of phenomenal – from being a young rapper with a hope and a dream to being both an Aria and Apra award nominee and later taking out two awards at the 2007 Urban Music Awards, PHRASE’s story is definitely one for the history books. Now almost 3 years since his debut, "CLOCKWORK” is scheduled for an April 24th release and promises to once again break the mould of what people expect to hear from an Australian Hip-Hop artist.
Adelaide’s Lowrider emerged a few years back into the city’s live music scene and started building a huge stir with their impeccable fusion of traditional funk and soul with slamming beats. The band’s frontman, Joe Braithwaite, soars like an eagle above the amazing instrumentalists – each of whom are utter phenoms in their own field. Their two LPs – 2007’s Lowrider and 2008’s Diamond Amongst the Thieves - are both some of the most critically acclaimed local releases of the past few years. They have forged a reputation as one of the country’s most electrifying live acts, and through little more than word-of-mouth have sold-out four national tours in 2009. With the highly anticipated release of their third album due out shortly after Sound Safari, they are surely going to be one name on everybody’s lips.
Any aficionados of live Australian music should be very well aware of the beast that is True Live. Their unique fusion of hip-hop mixed with influences from classical music and soul has built them a huge cult following nationally and their band’s live show is unanimously recognised as one of the most dynamic in the country. Their debut album, 2005’s The Shape of It, produced the cult classic TV and propelled them outside of Melbourne’s acclaimed live music circuit and onto iPods across the country. They followed this up with 2009’s Found Lost, an album which saw them receive near-perfect reviews from countless media and continued their thriving love affair with community radio. With their unique take on modern music, maybe they’ll forever be a band that live as underground legends and commercial misfits, but some things are better kept a secret.
The incomparable Diafrix combine rhythms from their African background with contemporary hip-hop to create a sound that has seen their debut album Concrete Jungle labeled as one of the best Australian releases of the past year. After years of smashing bandrooms from shore to shore, 2009 was the year when the band began their stranglehold on the country’s music scene with the release of an amazing debut LP to rave reviews, becoming ambassadors of Make Poverty History and securing the coveted Age EG Award for Best Homegrown New Artist, all while packing out venues nationwide on an almost weekly basis.
Opening the live proceedings will be Space Invadas, the brand new project from the superlative Katalyst and Steve Spacek. Combining timeless soul with contemporary production and sci-fi themes, they’ve begun creating a stir in no time at all thanks to high rotation of two different singles on triple j at the end of ’09. These guys are surely one to watch in 2010.
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