Among The Stars

Singer Nai Palm has a quick-fire, curious brain and a bowerbird interest in world cultures that translates directly into the music of Hiatus Kaiyote as well as her distinctive look. And it means that a conversation with her can flip, thrillingly, at any second.

“I feel like amber is like a mild form of time travel,” Palm begins. “I have an alchemist in Coburg who’s from Lebanon and he gets like frankincense from Somalia and he makes amber and he’s got all these rare essential oils and it’s fully like being in a bazaar in Morocco but it’s in Coburg.”

Hiatus Kaiyote’s ‘multi-dimensional, polyrhythmic gangster shit’ sound is a result of that cultural melting pot of Melbourne where, says Palm, “It all comes together in this really beautiful way where people are open to ideas. I feel like there’s less of that competitiveness here [than New York], and different movements interact with each other, which is really cool. Aside from, like, the Indigenous culture that’s been here for thousands of years, as far as cities go, in the history of colonisation, Australia is actually pretty new compared to a lot of places. I feel like there’s less of a heritage to try and preserve, and because of that, creatively, people aren’t as bound to certain to traditions and they explore more contemporary settings so it’s more hybrid here.”

The sounds and culture of hip hop are a big influence on Hiatus Kaiyote, though many people might not hear it. “We’re a lot closer to, like, Dilla-esque kind of stuff like Slum Village or Mad Lib. People wouldn’t really classify us as hip hop but at the same time the people overseas that are rapping our shit hard are like Jazzy Jeff, who won the first Grammy for hip hop, you know.”

Since Q-Tip lent his voice to a verse on the track, Nakamarra, and the band was nominated for a Grammy for the song, Nai Palm has been hanging with a new set of mates. The first time Palm met Erykah Badu, “She walked up to me and she was like, singing Nakamarra. It’s crazy, totally crazy. But at the same time it makes you realise that all these artists that you admire, you can relate to them because they like the shit that you like.”

Meeting superstars is something Palm has learned to feel comfortable with since that time she was hanging out with ?uestlove backstage at the Jimmy Fallon show, when Black Thought rolled through, half drunk at 2pm, wearing sunglasses. “He had this full, staunch ‘I’m a superstar’ vibe,” Nai recalls. “But then he got given a backpack with speakers in it for his birthday, and he was like, ‘Let’s play some shit through it!’  I’d just recorded a track, the Taylor McFerrin track [The Antidote] a couple of days before, so I put