There are very few people who can say they’ve had it as hard as hip hop artist Andre Knight, aka Bukkcity. He knows this, that’s why through his music he only projects a much filtered version of the gritty reality that was his life in the States. David Long finds out some more.
Talking to Bukkcity, you realise this is a person with many a story to tell. Knight was born in Canberra, ACT, though he has no recollection of this as he moved to New Jersey, USA, when he was only one year old. Here he grew up in what some would call the ghetto, or the projects. Bukkcity ran with all the other teenage boys, stirring up mischief wherever they went. Only thing was when you’re in the projects, the mischief you stir might be a little more hardcore than the average teenage boy. As Bukk says, “When you’re mixing with the wild crowd than you’re going to be doing some wild shit.”
Despite this, Bukkcity is friendly and loves to have a laugh. He happily explains to me why he made the move back to Australia and his obstacle in trying to make music. “Coming back [to Australia] wasn’t initially to do music, it was to get away from things that were going on over [in the USA], so I just wanted to come here and start a new life, start over. When I did get into hip hop and started making music, it was a little bit awkward because previous American artists had left a bad taste in the hip hop scene’s mouth – they expected every American that comes is going to be on that level. The attitude was ‘you’re American therefore you must think you’re great.’ In turn, they would have resentment against you, without even giving you a chance,” says Bukk. He tells me that he “felt like the black Eminem in this country. It wasn’t the colour issue, it was the respect of lyrical content and acceptance.”
This hasn’t held Bukkcity back one bit. He’s released numerous mixtapes, and has just put out his first mini-album titled Same Place. Bukk says “The first single is ‘Nobody Wanted This’, which features samples from Sarah Blasko, which I’m directing at situations like what was happening in Iraq. It’s not political, but more my take on the situation. There’s one song called ‘Normality’ where I talk about what’s normal to me, and I go through all the things, police brutality, seeing my once close friends become casualties, and I talk about other stuff that happened back then. There’s a variety of topics and content.”
It’s not every hip hop artist who can talk about international affairs with such authority, I asked Bukkcity why he chooses to incorporate these themes into his music. “Music to me is a form of expression. I had an opinion about the situation and I wanted to put it down. It’s something that everyone can relate to. For example, it was no secret that in Iraq there wasn’t any weapons of mass destruction and there wasn’t anything going on. But still, against the will of the United Nations and everyone, the US still decided to go in. So I’m just basically putting down my take of the situation.”
If you’ve heard any of Bukkcity’s new songs, you’d notice that they’re not all strictly ‘hip hop sounding’ in a traditional sense. Though Bukk’s label, Unda K9, proudly displays the phrase ‘To define hip hop would be to restrict it’, and he couldn’t agree more. “There’s no real definition of what hip hop should sound like. Am I rapping? Yeah I’m rapping, so put an underground beat on my raps and it’s a straight underground hip hop track. So basically all we talking about is the production, and the production of it is rock influenced, it’s a little more organic and laidback. That’s just the type of production I felt comfortable with putting on these topics for the debut.”
Bukkcity is becoming known in the industry for doing something a little different. His second release caused a little controversy, as it was titled Underbelly: The Mixtape and it dealt with matters that the TV show had, at a time when the first series of Underbelly was at its prime. People assumed Bukkcity was promoting this type of gangland behaviour (not like the show already wasn’t), but it was simply an idea to promote the Mixtape – not forgetting that Bukkcity is living in Melbourne. “I wanted something current, and at that point there was the big controversy of Underbelly being banned in Victoria. Everyone was downloading it and was like ‘what episode you up to? what episode’s you got, Can I burn it? So I watched the whole series and I was like cool man, I’m going to base it on that. So I knocked out the whole thing on a weekend, then had it out on Monday.”
Bukkcity is headlining the Reverb 09 tour which starts of in March at Kings Cross and will travel right up the East Coast stopping at a lot of regional places. Bukk says he’s “excited to be on tour, it’s great to be onstage. A lot of artists these days are like ‘I just want to make it in the studio and put it out on the radio’ and they’re lazy man. You gotta get on stage, you gotta tour and do as many gigs as you can.” I joke with Bukk and tell him a saying I heard that being in a studio is like jacking off, and playing live is like sex. He responds “There you go, and sometimes I like to combine the two you know, get onstage and have sex (laughs). Talking about war with a shorty in a thong, ha-ha, it’s not happening”.
Bukkcity plays the Reverb 09 tour at The Woodport Inn, Erina, on March 14 and the Cambridge Hotel on March 27.
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