Melbourne MC Charlie Threads Talks Family, Growth & His Big Plans For The Local Hip Hop Scene

Sometimes I get a bit lost in trying to find the artist with the biggest platform: the rapper that owns enough clickbait for you to go, "Oh, shit, pRhymetime on another level." I think the constant chase of trying to impress and meet expectations can at times mislead a mere conversation about what we all know and love: hip hop.

So, this week, I spoke to an artist that has had my attention for the past two years, an MC that mightn’t have reached the likes of Chali 2na or Pharoahe Monch yet, but I’ma put my rep on the line here: mark my words, it’s a matter of time. Before his new EP drops on 29 October, Charlie Threads tells me what music and this project mean to him.

"The personality that is Charlie Threads was born through freestyling," the MC tells me. "I had friends that weren’t musical but loved music, and we had this [friend's] house called Dooley's, where his mum was super-lenient. Like 15 or 20 of us would hang out downstairs smoking, chilling, you know, doing our thing.

"Eventually, beats started to be in the background, like instrumentals. We got to freestyling and battling. I didn’t realise I was any good at the time; I was rappin' about sitting at the bus stop but, this one time, I wrote a 16-bar verse and spit it to my 20 mates, and after looking up from my phone every jaw was to the floor ... That was the moment I fell in love. I felt like I didn’t even try that hard … Everything in my life at that point was an effort; I found a lot of things in life really difficult, but this was natural. It didn’t just feel like a skill, it felt like a gift — I had to keep doing it."

This can’t help but make me think of the Dungeon Family and Goodie Mob, little crews from Atlanta that did just this: hung out, smoked, talked shit and made music. If you’re unfamiliar with those crews, you might know them now as Andre 3000, Big Boi, Cee-Lo Green, Killer Mike, Janelle Monae and many others… It’s refreshing to hear a creative life comes from simple pleasures of company.

At only 20 years old, Threads has been dominating the local scene here in Melbourne for a while now. His music is maturely charismatic, his dialogue and vocabulary are intrinsically broad and he has a perplexing habit of portraying a simple concept in a complex manner, an approach we all have in some respects to a simple life perhaps.

"My music is the truest representation of myself," he explains. "I don’t think I make hip hop, I just make music. Hip hop was a vehicle into music for me sure ... But I don’t want to be boxed into a genre that remains the same. I want my music to evolve and develop and grow. I’m not just a lyrical rapper, I’m a musician.

"From that ‘label’ perspective, 'musician' allows me to approach music the way I want, not the lame, 'You’re a rapper, now do a rap,' thing listeners might perceive. Mac Miller or J Cole, for example, they’re always switching up their styles. I believe, to be a success in this industry, people either have to want to be you, believe you or both."

Charlie hasn’t always been working on his own. Part of local RD Crew (Raw Diversity), his history extends well before his recent found success with Alice Ivy. Melbourne seems to have a playful habit of hiding the actual artists behind its hip hop-painted alleyways.

"Oh, the RD Crew?" he muses in recognition. "I had mutual friends with Baro, so I knew, when I was going to drop a track, I wanted to make a connection or some sort of reception with him and Markus. When I dropped the track Thankful, I got an email from them asking me to be a part of the collective. I didn’t even think; it was a straight-up yes! That was like getting a call from Cole or Miller to me ... I still had to prove myself over bars [that’s lyrical, not alcoholic for you playing along at home] to the four other members but, when I got in that family, I never wanted to leave. I’d been looking for that belonging, that meaning and identity, and that is what they mean to me: family."

Alice Ivy recently released Get Me A Drink, featuring Threads and E^st, which found a massive reception and earned high rotation on triple j, and is currently sitting with over 657,000 plays on Spotify. That sort of success is undeniable when a 20-year-old only has an EP and a few mixtapes under his belt.

"Man, our [his and Ivy’s] friendship was really natural after meeting at a show; we just happened to be on the same line-up," he says. "What Get Me A Drink did was allow me to witness firsthand the difference between a rap and an actual song. It completely changed my perception! I was able to actually understand how my verse could affect a track, but also how the track affected my verse.

"I realised the complex relationship both components have artistically, and I learned how that collaboration is a bridge to carrying the message, emotion or generally who/what we’re trying to portray. Working with Ivy put me on the right path, man; I want to be influential. Not just a rapper, but influential… I want you to fuck with me but I want your parents to fuck with me too, you know what I’m saying?"

As such a young musician, I can’t help but wonder how the talent finds his guidance. While we live in a world with information access at our fingertips, a complex and exploitative industry can’t be easy to navigate…

"I don’t really let that shit affect my creative process," he asserts. "Those thoughts are the wrong side of the brain and I want to trust my artistic thoughts … I’ll worry about the packaging later. Being a true artist is trusting the process; the outcome is irrelevant in its creation.

"I trust my team and my fam around me; they’ll tell me what they think of the outcome and, sometimes, family fight! But that’s also how I know we’re all on the same page and wanting the best for my music."

As I mentioned earlier, this MC has a number of mixtapes and EP’s under his belt... so many projects, in fact, I’m eagerly awaiting the announcement of a debut album. It seems the argument remains, however, that EPs are the way forward in our current scene, and I can’t help but ask why. The mixtape was of value back in the day because it was how we’d record. A tape would capture a mix or a cut you couldn’t find anywhere else, creating value through exclusivity and unique material. But with the advancement of technology, that’s no longer the case... you don’t even need to bootleg; you can stream that shit for free without even leaving your house, so is there a tangible value in a smaller project over an album?

"Man, it’s more cost-effective," Threads concludes. "I have to fund all my own work and I don’t have the resources to create a whole album, so the EP is an obvious step for me. It’s a taste, an insight, a demonstration for y'all to see I should be making a fucking album!

"Honestly, look at how the industry works now, man: you can have a single on SoundCloud and tour the fucking country. It’s incredibly disheartening to work on something for a year then watch it not meet expectations for whatever reason. I don’t look at it as playing it safe … I want to flood motherfuckers with music! People don’t have the attention span to listen to an album from track 1 to track 12, so this is just my way of demonstrating not only can I bring game, I’m going to fucking dominate it."

Threads speaks with such raw passion. It’s refreshing to hear before the monster that is the industry swallows him whole. Now, I’m not sure that I personally believe that doom-and-gloom attitude — nor that he’d let it — but I have noticed, however, that musicians are more than aware of how their art can be exploited.

"This EP was for me too, you know?" he reflects. "It was a learning curve ... I know what I need because I found out what I didn’t. I’ve always been the baby-faced young kid but I’m a young kid with an old soul..." — he breaks into Mobb Deep’s I’m only 19 but my mind is old verse, laughing — "Sure, it’s hard at times, but most of the older cats that I hang with are industry execs or suits, and they don’t get me. That’s an artist hanging out with a lawyer; when they see dollars I see manuscript.

"Half the time they haven’t even heard my shit and I’m s'posed to listen and react based on how many years they been here? That’s not what my art’s about! Drake said it: 'I’d rather give my 50 per cent to someone I fuck with…'"

So, how can one enforce change? How does music indeed challenge your beliefs and how can we continue to escalate positive change through an audible education? This rapper is so early into his career, yet I can almost hear him grasping at the stars through his perspective on the rap culture. Threads has the audacity — nay, the attitude; nay, the unfuckwithable inspiration — to truly make me believe he is the fuckin’ dopest in the scene.

"I want to change this bullshit homophobic, racist prejudice within hip hop’s listenership," he says. "My message is of unity and creativity. Is that for everyone? Probably not! But the Aussie mentality of ‘taking everyone down a peg’ is so classic Australian, and why?

"It’s so common to bring someone down when they get shine; this is what I was talking about in high school. Why the fuck would you bring someone down 'cos you don’t like it? If you don’t like it, then don’t listen, but stop the tall-poppy shit. Australia is beautifully multicultural, so let’s try to put that to practice, hey? Start celebrating the fact that we are unique and individual."

Before I press play for the second time on the upcoming EP, Rainy Weather, I wonder if my first impressions were his intention, if the insight I have to his creative mind is indeed accurate to his expression.

"Where I’m from [Gembrook], it’s always cold and rainy," he explains. "I wanted the project to play off my previous release [Palm Trees], and what I remember really clearly about home is rain falling on paddocks. When I came to the city, I would always stare at the condensation on train windows, stopping and starting raindrop trails down the glass on my journeys around Melbourne. I wanted to create a body of work where I could capture that brooding mood, a soundtrack to staring out the window of rainy Melbourne and audibly capturing the dew-soaked paddocks of home. This is a cohesive seven-track body of work that is me telling you who I am."

I encourage you to get on a train, put your headphones on, and get lost in the world of Charlie Threads. After all, it’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey.