Fit For A King

Three years and ten months have passed since Sydneysiders Solo (MC) and Adit (producer) dropped Horrorshow's first LP, Inside Story, and they haven't had a release until this month. The time without new material in a market with short attention spans would be career suicide for an act whose notoriety hadn't stacked enough clout across the homegrown market. Bryant-Smith, sitting outside his home, is interrupted when a passerby fan recognises him and shows him love. Horrorshow, it would seem, are still getting their dues and running their own race.

“I'm stoked,” claims Bryant-Smith. “And it speaks volumes as to how strong the connection is between our fans and feeling the music that they weren't concerned with us coming back with a smash single and the (record) label was willing to wait, which really gave us that sense of having that calm and enthusiastic energy and I think our music means a lot to the people that listen to it, they really invest themselves into it and get passionate about it. And that's great. That's what you want from your supporters in a climate as you explained where attention spans are so short.”

A slow-building album can sometimes wander off course from its original conception. So when asked if King was close to how they had envisioned it, Bryant-Smith replies, “Hell no! For this record we wanted to do more classic-sounding hip hop, like a boom-bap feel to the music... a throwback to the classic era of what we grew up on.”

Producer Adit keeps active in the studio, responsible for producing Spit Syndicate in the One Day collective and most recently indie-electronica band Left. The beats he churns out are very exploratory, which finds Bryant-Smith having to readjust his pace.

“He's definitely stayed real busy in the studio. Adit is more in the frame of seeing what comes out and maybe following that. So while we started out with a very concrete plan, Adit started experimenting and realised that he wanted to do other stuff and not feel limited, you know, constricted by that original vision. He kinda followed those more spontaneous moments and then I readjusted. So there is that play in there from the original idea but it's definitely been expanded on with stuff we didn't picture happening.”

Bryant-Smith played the tortoise in this race. Such a poet, as evidenced in the very touching tribute, Down The Line (Mana's Song), but a poet who puts in work at his own pace. “I'm just a pretty slow dude. Like, most shit that I do in daily life I do it pretty slowly, whether it's making a bowl of cereal or writing a song,” he admits.

The process between the pair is always a negotiation, he explains. “In the making of this record there have been beats laying around for ages waiting for me to write to them or me being on a certain tip and not really having the beats that match that but having another five beats there that I was supposed to catch up on. You know, it's just a constant negotiation and there's gotta be that mutual respect and teamwork and a good level of trust between us that the other one is going to come through. And history shows that we do come through in the end.”

But if everything is for a reason, Bryant-Smith admits there is room for self-improvement and senses a strong need to exercise more diligence on his division of labour.

“One thing that I have to take from the process of making this album, and if I want to better myself as a writer and as an artist, I need to up my productivity. I need to learn how to not take four years to write a song. There are other times when certain guest verses I have done, like the spot for the Hilltop Hoods, I was only given one week to write that verse, when I got the call when I was in Adelaide recording it. So I have shown myself that I can write quickly and the results are going to be strong. I just think there's this extra thought when it comes to Horrorshow, like 'this is my body of work, this has got to stand the test of time.'”

Despite the album's wandering focus, the yin and yang of MC and producer and time spent figuratively off the shelf, the feedback from fans and peers alike has been affirming for the boys striving for their product to reach the higher shelf. King Amongst Many topped iTunes and hit #2 on the ARIA Charts on debut and has been tipped early as a defining album for the pair. But what's most important for Adit and Solo is gaining that respect from their peers, to be king amongst their own in hip hop.

“(King) definitely defines how I'm looking at what we do right now, which is to say, that I want to believe artists should be striving to make the best art they could possibly do. You should be trying to push and really master your craft and be regarded as king, what we call 'king' in hip hop. Someone who is regarded as king has undeniably put in the hard work and earns the respect of his peers. And as participants in hip hop I think that's what we're aspiring to. The title is really indicative of where I see us at right now. We tried to make the album of such high calibre that we have a place hopefully among those who are considered king in hip hop and if it doesn't happen on this record then that was definitely our underlying intention for every song that we do.”