Rap Queen

"I'm very excited!” Chelsea Jane says with real enthusiasm. “It's my first festival so I'm very, very keen.” While the Sprung Festival is a first for Jane, her inclusion on the line-up also represents a first for the festival itself.

“I think I'm the first female to ever be on the line-up, which is pretty cool! There's a massive thing on Twitter at the moment about Australians supporting female MCs and whatnot. Everyone has been pretty supportive. Obviously you get a bit of hate but there's definitely a lot of growth to happen for female MCs, I believe. I think it's easy to get people's attention as a female MC but it's harder to hold their attention. I think girls need to really put themselves out there a lot more and just cope with the hate.”

This is a common thread for women in any position of public spotlight, particularly at the moment. Jane says that she tries to ignore it all but it can be pretty difficult. “Just like sexual comments and being treated like an object as opposed to an artist,” she says. “It's hard. A lot of people say that you'll never be taken seriously (as a female) and it's a shame that happens but that's the reality.”

Despite strong role models in the early days of hip hop in the states like Roxanne Shante, Jane's somewhat late entrance into the world of rap music in Australia means she has missed out on these influences, and finds herself in an extremely male-dominated genre and industry. 

“To be honest, I've only been rapping for two years, if that,” she says bluntly. “I grew up in a small town in South West Queensland – Charleville – and there is...” she laughs. “It's just so behind in music and I was never watching TV or listening to music growing up; I was down on the farm! I was in boarding school so Toowoomba was pretty much the biggest place for me! When I moved to the Gold Coast I started to get into it. I've always known I'm pretty creative but I never knew how to channel it. Once I started writing it all happened really quick.”

Jane's biggest influence in the Australian hip hop scene is a bit of an unlikely candidate in the bigger scheme of things. “My biggest influence was (Adelaide rapper) Prime. He dropped his album and that's when I decided I was going to make an EP. I mean, I was just writing stuff in my room and it wasn't until then that I decided I was going to make an album.”

Her interest in Prime's music also led to the production of her own EP. When she sent Prime a tweet about her favourite song 8am from his album Good Morning, the producer of the track, Mules, intercepted the tweet. The pairing led to Jane winning the 2013 Hilltop Hoods Initiative. “He said, 'Some handsome motherfucker produced that!'” she laughs. “So we did the whole EP together; we just get along so well.”