Being Cavity Searched, Drake's Personal Barber & Being Cross-Format Entertainers

The Meeting Tree is made up of two familiar figures from the Australian hip hop scene: Raph Lauren (aka Raphael Dixon), the producer half of Jackie Onassis, and Joyride (Rowan Dix). Dix is a polymath — a singer, musician and DJ (he's served as Spit Syndicate's tour turntablist). He has a solo album in the pipeline that should consolidate his rep as a homegrown Nate Dogg. Moreover, both Dixon and Dix are members of the Sydney hip hop supergroup One Day, along with Dixon's Jackie Onassis cohort Kairen Tan, Spit Syndicate and Horrorshow. In 2014 the crew unleashed the crossover album Mainline on Elefant Traks.

The Meeting Tree launched last year via Instagram. From the outset, they've devised eccentric (promotional) stunts. The Meeting Tree live-streamed a 24-hour 'long lunch' from an inner-city pub. And they've slyly trolled the innocuous Chet Faker. The Meeting Tree performed at 2015's Groovin The Moo festival as part of One Day, but this year they'll join the line-up as "marshals", bringing their own brand of cray.

"The vision is art for art's sake. Yeah — for art to be created, nature must be destroyed!"

Such is The Meeting Tree's rapport that they favour conducting a phone interview together, Dixon arranging a three-way call. "Sorry about all the noise — there seems to be friggin' helicopters flying over the house," he says. Dix pipes up, "The microphones that they put in these new phones are so good." The Meeting Tree constantly play off each other. Some of what they say is flippant, some serious, and much ambiguous. Nonetheless, if you imagine that developing a comic electro project is a gimmicky diversion for them, you'd be wrong. The Meeting Tree are artists. "The vision hasn't changed since it began," Dix states. "And the vision is art for art's sake." Dixon continues, "Yeah — for art to be created, nature must be destroyed!" Finishes Dix, "How do you think they make paint?"

The story goes that r u a cop — featuring Peking Duk's Adam "Adamio" Hyde doing some form of spoken word — was conceived less as a "riddle" than as a self-help legal manual. It's about sussing out an undercover cop. But, mostly, r u a cop is just a party anthem. Indeed, The Meeting Tree have put the trap into entrapment. It's no simple pisstake, Dixon maintains. "We don't find cops funny!" Having said that, there's no "serious story" behind it. Dix recollects, "The advent of the song r u a cop was actually in Perth on a balcony when a woman who was hanging out at our hotel walked out onto the balcony where we were smoking a joint and asked if we were smoking marijuana. And then everyone kinda turned in unison — this was on a One Day tour — and asked her if she was a cop!" The Meeting Tree's current tour is named Some Gronks Are Cops.

Hip hop has a tradition of missives directed at the police (cue: NWA's Fuck Tha Police), tension arising from institutional racism in the US. Dix speaks of his own "deep-seated distrust" originating when at 12 he was trampled by a police horse. "It broke my foot!" Dixon, too, has had an unpleasant encounter. "I got full cavity-searched by a cop once. A dog sat down. So they got me to take my clothes off and bend over while they searched my cavities. That's a true story." Still, Dixon insists that The Meeting Tree are "not anti-cops". "It's not that we don't like cops. We don't like the animosity between the people and the cops. A lot of police officers apparently love our music — and we love them."

"I got full cavity-searched by a cop once. A dog sat down. So they got me to take my clothes off and bend over while they searched my cavities. That's a true story." 

The Meeting Tree followed the r u a cop EP with December's Life Is Long: Slow Down!. The pair persuaded Spiderbait bassist Janet English to sing on its lead single — the synth-heavy I Pay My Tax (I Hate Myself). Dix reveals that The Meeting Tree came up with the collab idea as they were "listening to a lot of Australian classics — stuff that we loved from our early teens" during a long drive back from a gig in Queensland. Their manager, accompanying them in the car, set about making calls. The spoof video sees the homeboys hustle a scheme — their "Alternative Wellness Retreat", fostering the concept of slow living — to supplement their musical endeavours.

And more music is coming. Dixon announces that The Meeting Tree's third EP will be entitled I Was Born A Baby And I'll Die A Baby. The combo aren't interested in completing an album, Dix explains. "I think that the project lends itself to doing short-form releases — [we're] not so much a band as we are kind of cross-format entertainers. We like to put as much effort and emphasis on the things we post online as we do into our music. We acknowledge that the consumption of music has changed so much in the past five, ten or 15 years, that putting out an album will have the same impact as an EP. So we may as well pump out the EP — the same way that we'll pump out online content."

Canberran housers Peking Duk have been heavily involved in The Meeting Tree, mastering their music. The Meeting Tree have also toured with them. Once, Aussie hip hoppers rarely mingled with dance acts. But now Elefant Traks has an EDM signing in Hermitude. "In the past I especially think the hip hop guys were probably a fringe group that no one particularly liked," Dixon muses. "And you know what? They didn't like anyone else." However, that ended with the boom in festivals — the artists embraced, and befriended, each other.

The Meeting Tree have had hilarious adventures. As One Day DJs, they toured with Drake — meeting him at the Sydney show. Drizzy travels with a barber in his entourage, Dix spills. "We were kind of hanging out near where the barber was set up and he came in looking for his hair wax, so we had a brief chat. He was lovely enough. But the guy that we connected with more than Drake was actually [US support] 2 Chainz. 2 Chainz quite enjoyed making comparisons between me and his security guards." Dixon picks up the tale of how, until the last night, the US security personnel assumed Dix was another bodyguard — and an indulged one. "There'd been a bit of animosity backstage, and almost a bit of a quiet rebellion brewing, because they were annoyed that the Australian bodyguard got to drink at the shows. So we quelled probably the quiet riot by letting them know that Joyride was in fact not a bodyguard."

The Meeting Tree have a growing fanbase in the US -- where they'll soon be headed, Dixon divulges mysteriously. "We're going to LA in a month to spend some time just soaking it up." Catch 'em while you can.