Interview: REMI

Remi has never been afraid to get deep and personal. The Melbourne rapper has brought his private life into his lyrics and music in the soulful music video for his latest single For Good, featuring Sampa the Great. We caught up with Remi to chat about the meaning behind the music video, his upcoming album ‘Divas and Demons’, and his national tour starting in May.

Congratulations on your new For Good music video!

Oh, thank you very much!

How have you been celebrating it?

Ah, celebrating? Ah, I guess the closest thing to celebrating has been doing this Groovin’ in the Moo sort of thing. It’s been heaps of fun so far, everybody’s been showing love, heaps of good people in the lineup. I guess that’s the best way to celebrate anything…

You also just announced your national tour across Australia, are you excited to get back out again?

Yeah definitely you know, its been a while. The last performance we did was about July last year or something? June, July? So, that’s too long, honestly being away from people that you know, really feel your music and show love all the time. So, really looking forward to getting back out there!

You created the music video of For Good to show the female and male perspective of your chequered past, how did you come about that idea?

I guess it’s just experience you know? You do something, you mess up but you write about it (laughs). It all kind of goes from there, y’know, I guess your storyline and like your own life. That’s just hip hop, it’s just being authentic and talking about sh*t that’s actually happened to you. So, that’s actually happened to me and I wanted it to be portrayed in the correct light. That’s about the extent of it, there’s no rocket science about it.

Sampa the Great has a beautiful voice, how did your collaboration happen?

We met ages ago while she was on tour with Hiatus Kaiyote, she played at Northside Records, Collingwood. We linked there, as you said she is incredible, and so we got along really well. She happened to be going to Melbourne one weekend, we had the song there, asked her if she would be keen to get on it and she killed it. She came through, finished everything everything in about 25 minutes and rolled out. It was awesome!

How long did it take to produce the video?

Uh…it was pretty quick to be honest. I think it sort was like, two weeks max. It was only two days of shooting and then the rest was just in post production, editing together and stuff. We just had a really good team, everybody was super professional and super on point, so it was nice and quick.

Did you have fun in that short time?

Yeah, definitely! James Ruse, who shot it, he’s one of my good friends. So, every time you’re working with friends it makes everything so much easier and more fluent…and apart from being a good friend, he’s also a super talented guy. So it was really flat out to see him having my back!

You’ve shared the stage with some amazing people such as Danny Brown, Vic Mensa, and De La Soul. Who would you perform with if you could choose anyone?

Umm, I don’t know…damn, I really don’t know! I mean that’s very hard there’s a lot of mad talented people. Maybe The Roots, yeah! The Roots, they would be great.

Do you have any hints as to what will come next from your upcoming album ‘Divas and Demons’?

We’re actually pretty unsure to be honest. I’ve got so many different songs that we like personally. We never really like singles, it’s not just going to be singles. We just kind of wrote to make an album more than anything, y’know? To create a timeline about mine and Sensible J’s life, so we’ve got all these songs that we really like and we just don’t know what way to take it. All I can say is that it’s going to get relatively emotional or darkish, that’s all I can say (laughs).

So, it’ll keep to being a bit more personal to both yours and Sensible J’s life?

Yeah, definitely. I mean it’s kind of my story over the last year or whatever. But J’s done some really amazing things with the music throughout this whole album. As well as collaborating with a few awesome people like Simon Mavin, who played keys on For Good, we have Silent Jay, another one of my really good friends who came through and played keys on bunch of the songs as well. I don’t know, J’s just kind of told his own story through the music and just made it super emotional and super beautiful. I’m just really excited to show everybody.

Where are you most excited to visit while on tour in Australia?

I’m gonna say Perth. Not because it means more than anywhere else, but because we haven’t been there for I think…it’d be almost two years coming up to this May. That’s way too long! I really do love a lot of my friends in Perth, I have a lot of really good people out there. So it’ll be good to get back there for both work and for social kind of role and spend some time with loved ones, which will be dope!

Your tour with Seth Sentry, are you excited for that as well?

Yeah definitely! Seth’s a really good guy. We collaborated on his last album and stuff, it’s cool we get roll out at least once together and do some shows. It should be fun!

Sounds like you’ve definitely got a good year going already!

(Laughs) Yeah, can’t complain!

Check out Remi’s tour dates below and check out Seth Sentry’s tour HERE

Remi ‘For Good’ Tour

THU 19 MAY
The Foundry, Brisbane
FRI 20 MAY
Newton Social, Sydney
SAT 21 MAY
Howler, Melbourne
FRI 27 MAY
Jack Rabbit Slims, Perth
SAT 28 MAY
Fat Controller, Adelaide

Get Tickets HERE