Interview: Remi

Melbourne emcee Remi has had a seriously huge year, touring nationally in support of his first album cut For Good, and again in support of Seth Sentry. All while running a label and venturing closer to the release of his sophomore album ‘Divas And Demons’, a vastly introspective look into Remi’s and his music partner Sensible J’s current lives. Ahead of his next national tour in November, and before his inevitable world domination, we chatted to him about this upcoming project, the process this time round, and how he got into music.

Just to start off I wanted to say I’ve been obsessed with the tracks you’ve been dropping from the album so far! How excited are you though to be releasing this project?

Oh man, I’m really excited. For Sensible J and I it’s been the longest time we’ve ever spent on one body of work, so we’re excited to just get it out there and see what that much time creates, how that’s received by the people.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I can tell so far, where ‘Raw X Infinity’ commented on society around you, ‘Divas and Demons’ seems to tell much more of your own story and your own experiences. Is that fair to say?

 Yeah man, that’s definitely the major change for sure.

What prompted that shift? Was it hard to be that open with your personal experiences?

I didn’t really have an option. It’s the way that I was feeling throughout this entire album. I’ve talked to a bunch of different artists about this – when you’re writing, as in writing words, all you can really talk about is what’s in your head. Everything that’s on the album is just what was in my head and I just had to get it out.

A lot of it was hard to say. Most of that was just me in my room getting this stuff out and then taking it to the studio afterwards. It was stuff I had to get out, I had to be myself, and we had to make an album, so that’s the stuff on the album (laughs).

Is it weird to hear people relate to the your personal stories?

Yes and no. The more feedback I get about the songs, especially Substance Therapy, just shows you how many people are on the same page, and I think all the issues on the album are very much human problems. People have come to us and brought up their own experiences, and it doesn’t make me happy that everybody’s so sad, but it does make me realise that at least we’re talking about something that’s relevant to a lot of people.

Some people might need to hear the shit that we’re saying, and that’s my favourite type of music to release cause I know music has helped me unbelievable amounts. Obviously it’s what I do in my life, and same with J – we both talk about how we’re in dark periods and a lot of the time the only light we’ll get is from music. Whether that music is depressing, narrating your depression or even the complete opposite, making you forget about your problem, that’s to me the most important part of music, so to be able to make music like that is an honour for sure.

Definitely. For this album you’ve actually enlisted the help of Silent Jay and Simon Mavin from Hiatus Kaiyote to replay some of the music that you lay down, how do you feel that’s affected the sound of the project? 

It’s been really positive because both J and I are fans of Silent Jay and Mavin. J nailed the beats, for me at least, but he still had ideas about how he wanted keys to be played or how they could change, so Silent Jay and Simon were able to come through and take it to that next level.

For us too, it was really a musical element that we’d never had before and it was just a crazy thing. It was awesome. I’m so proud and so happy, because I never thought we’d hear the music like that. It added almost a freshness to the tracks for both of us, especially after the time we’d spend making all of the music originally. For someone to come in and make it new to you, that’s really special. That often doesn’t happen – afterwards you’d just be like ‘get this fucking music away from me!’ (laughs)

The first time this happened for me was For Good, after Sampa The Great had done her part on it, and Simon Mavin had done his part, it was just like listening to a brand new song – a remix to what J and I had done. I was just listening to it on repeat in my room, so excited like ‘oh my god this is so fresh!’. Keeping in mind that this is months and months after we had begun this song, so that’s so rare.

Would you go as far to say that this is the proudest you’ve ever been in terms of your music then?

I’m not sure. I fucking love making music with J, so to say that I’m most proud of this is kind of hard. I was probably most proud about the first thing we were able to do you know? Instead, for me I’d say this is the most powerful release. I feel like it’s open to more people, and that’s the most perfect music, one that connects to everybody.

It breaks down walls with ignorance and all that, and we’ll never stop talking about the way people with colour, women and queer people are treated, but when your talking about feelings, that speaks to everyone no matter who they are, and that’s really important.

To show we’re basically just normal people is the main thing for me, I don’t want people to get it flipped that just because we’re musicians we’re something special, that’s not the fucking case at all. We’re lucky as hell we get to roll around does this shit as a career, so the more that I can give back the better.

Yeah, I wanted to touch on that! Despite growing so much in the past year alone, in my experiences you always seem to have time for your fans, hearing people out at shows and welcoming them, how do you stay so grounded despite the fame?

I think I’m just lucky about who I hang out with. My friends are f*cking amazing, and the people who I end up hanging around just don’t give a f*ck who I am. They just don’t care about what I do, and I think that’s a weakness in any field. If you’re talking to someone or putting them on a pedestal simply because of what they do and not who they are then you’ve lost.

That thing about them can go, it can leave at anytime, so the people that care about you for who you are, that’s who I want to be around. It even works vice versa, people don’t want me to be acting like that either. Think about it right. What we say a rock star is, is a d*ckh**d. What we say a rock star is, from a male perspective mostly, is a misogynistic drug addict who has mad demons and doesn’t want to be around anybody.

That’s not a cool person, that’s a junkie! We literally put junkie on a pedestal just because they have a guitar. I don’t ever want to be that person, I don’t want to use or manipulate or be a c*ck in anyway. I’d hope my friends would just slap me if I became a d*uchebag, actually I’m pretty sure J would slap me…yeah, J said he’d slap me.

That’s incredible! Just to delve into your past a little bit, you said in a previous interview that your parents used to play the greats like Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson, and that those artists made up most of your upbringing. When did hip-hop actually get introduced to you?

I can’t even remember really. The earliest hip-hop memory I have of being like, ‘what is this, I need this’ was actually on Rage though, which is so crazy because we’re about to go on program Rage (laughs). I was in my house with my little brother, and Outkast’s Ms. Jackson came on and I was just in love with it immediately. I was like, “what is this sound, who are these fresh black people!?”, I’d never experienced anything like that in my life so it was incredible.

I watched that film clip and I looked for that song forever and then one day when I was older I bought the Hip-Hop Compilation Part 1 and on that it had a pretty good smattering of where hip-hop had been and where it was up to. LL Cool J, Tupac, Biggie, Luniz’s I Got Five On It, so that was the first thing I was bumping heavily. Then my best friend Jimmy at the time, he was always feeding me mad hip-hop because we were always going out to the Blue Light Disco’s and all that at the time, he’d put me onto The Chronic 2001 and a lot of 50 Cent, all that kind of stuff.

As far as music that really shaped me, I loved hip-hop and I would find it everywhere, so as I was getting older I was starting to get into stuff that is more my taste now, Mos Def, Black On Both Sides, Foreign Exchange. Then I met J and he showed me all this music I’d never heard before, from Slum Village to Common to De La Soul, the stuff that I really love now, and I guess the stuff speaks more to the music that we make.

Did you always intend to go down the more conscious route because of what you listened to, or was that just something that happened? 

When I first started I was rapping more for the rhythm, everything that cats were doing on their tracks just sounded so cool. When Raw X Infinity came around though, it was then that I realised I had really just been rapping about nothing. Maybe little dribs and drabs here and there that were a little deeper but nothing really. So J and me were at the table one day and we just said it’s time to talk about something real, something that’s real to us. In fact, that’s when everything really came naturally.

I think conscious is the wrong word for us, it’s more just the shit that we go through. If we had Jay Z money, we’d be rapping about Jay Z shit! But we don’t, we’re middle class people with colour problems so that’s just what we talk about.

So the other big news is that you’ll be going on a huge national tour with another one of my favourite emcees, Baro. I think the last time you guys were on tour together was supporting Allday back in 2014, so how exciting is it to get back on the road with him?

He’s exceptional you know, that’s my little brother, he’s one of my best friends, so I can’t wait. Just being able to do music with your friends is the whole reason we do this sh*t. We’ve had a really good year of that so far, being able to bring Made-Made Mountain with us on our first tour, we’re just on that tip. Roll with your friends, have a good time, let’s make it like a whole night of just good vibes and that’s really what I feel this tour is going to be.

Yeah, I can’t wait! Just to wrap things up, after you drop the album is there anything else planned for the rest of the year?

We’ll be doing a bunch of festival shows and stuff like that, but more importantly J and I are going to try and get back in the studio. We’ve been kind of fighting for time to be able to do that, not for any reason, but because we needed to tour for our sanity. The rest of the year is probably just going to be made up of doing press, making sure as many people can hear the album as possible, and just making as much new music as we possibly can. So pretty much the same shit we do all the time! (laughs)

Remi ‘Divas and Demons’ National Tour

FRI 18 NOV
Karova Lounge, Ballarat
FRI 25 NOV
Railway Club, Darwin
SAT 26 NOV
Rocket Bar, Adelaide
WED 30 NOV
Transit Bar, Canberra
FRI 2 DEC
Newtown Social Club, Sydney
FRI 9 DEC
Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane
SAT 10 DEC
Republic Bar, Hobart
SAT 17 DEC
Howler, Melbourne

Get Tickets HERE