Luck Be A Ladi

Ladi6, otherwise known as Karoline Tamati, is frequently and non-ironically described as “New Zealand's answer to Erykah Badu”. It's not an unfair comparison. Her breakout 2010 album, The Liberation Of..., owes more than a little to that big-haired queen of R&B and similarly rests on a theme of self-discovery and purchase. It threw Tamati into the headlights of the NZ and Australian musical consciousness and made her and her partner/producer Parks household names. With last year's album, Automatic, however, Tamati is keen to put that time of invention behind her.

“It's definitely the kind of record we've wanted to make, but never really knew how to do it I suppose,” Tamati admits from her home during a break following the Auckland leg of the Big Day Out. “It's definitely the first record where we've kind of nailed the sound we've always been going for. The last two records we did before that [The Liberation Of... and 2008's Time Is Not Much] were... not that we're not proud of them, but they definitely were more learning steps, I think. We didn't really know where we were going stylistically and musically. I mean, we had so many different influences on how we wanted to make music, and they all kind of got thrown together with those two records. It's only now that we feel like we've harnessed all that and hit on the kind of music we want to make.”

The result has been a truly worldwide exposure of Tamati, her band and her music. No stranger to travel – the recording of The Liberation Of... came from time in Berlin – Tamati, Parks, drummer Julien Dyne and keyboardist Brandon Haru took the latest album around the world, finding ground anywhere that appreciated roots music. Although, as she makes clear, the new singular vision of Ladi6 took a while to catch on. “You know, because we'd decided to focus on the hip hop angle, it meant that a lot of what we'd been lumped into wasn't who we were anymore. Like, you work and collaborate with other artists and sometimes that becomes what you're known for. I sung on Shapeshifter tracks, sure, but that doesn't mean that that's the kind of music I want to make. We got put on this one reggae festival in France, and I was like, 'What?' We had to play Automatic, which is all hip hop and beats, at this reggae festival, and it didn't really work.”

Both Tamati and Parks, with the help of US production magician Wajeed, came into their own and produced an album of exciting, moving hip hop that holds onto its roots. Live, the album is apparently just as enticing. “It's so fun to play live! Like, it's the first time in a long time I've gone, 'Shit, we only have 45 minutes, how the hell are we gonna cut the set down?' It's just so fun to play. It's only been a few days but I can't wait to do it again.”