Five Albums In & Thundamentals Are Finally Ready For A Concept Album About Love

In 2018 Sydney hip hoppers Thundamentals are celebrating their 10th anniversary. But, instead of indulging any nostalgia, dual MCs Brendan "Tuka" Tuckerman and Jesse "Jeswon" Ferris plus DJ Morgs (Morgan Jones) are looking ahead with a fifth album, I Love Songs. Most surprising? It's a concept album about love.

Thundamentals' defacto leader, Tuckerman, is running early for a 9.30am interview - rare in the entertainment world. "I actually write some of my music first thing in the morning, so I'm always up," he says seraphically down the line.

Like Hermitude, Thundamentals hail from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. In fact, Tuckerman cites Hermitude and A Tribe Called Quest as touchstones. Notably, Thundamentals supported the fabled Tribe in Sydney back in 2010. "It's just crazy - I can't believe that happened," Tuckerman rhapsodises. "I didn't realise Phife [Dawg] was so small; I didn't realise Q-Tip was so tall. Holy shit."

Thundamentals premiered with an eponymous EP in 2008. They'd issue a trinity of albums on the now-defunct Obese Records before signing to Universal Music and introducing their own imprint, High Depth. Last year Thundamentals presented Everyone We Know, reaching #2 on the ARIA Albums Chart. (The single Sally, featuring Hermitude singer Mataya, was voted #8 in triple j's Hottest 100 poll.) Nonetheless, in December beatmaker Kevin "Poncho" Kerr quit for a solo career (and to pursue an unexpected interest in cryptocurrency). Meanwhile, Thundamentals have continuously gigged, recently hitting regional hubs with their Decade Of The Thundakat Tour.

Typically, Thundamentals would take a year off to do individual projects. In 2015, Tuckerman dropped the successful Life Death Time Eternal [LDTE], sonically referencing Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Drake and Flume. He even performed at New York's CMJ Music Marathon. But, a decade in, Thundamentals seem to be driven by a creative urgency - and so they progressed with I Love Songs. "Personally, I just don't stop writing," Tuckerman states. "It's kind of like therapy - it seriously is therapy to me. If I don't do it, I start feeling super-guilty and weird and anxious." He shared his new songs with Thundamentals' other members - the autobiographical trajectory similar to LDTE. "I basically had just fallen in love and I was writing love song after love song after love song. They didn't mind a couple of the ideas I was putting down. We just decided to do another Thundas record straight away, rather than me do another solo record and they do collaborations or whatever they wanted to do. So it was a really organic decision that we made; just to put it together."

Thundamentals completed I Love Songs with local producer Carl Dimataga (lately credited as a composer on Khalid's American Teen) and guest vocalists Eves Karydas and Adrian Eagle. "I'm really happy with how it came together. It's been the least stressful songwriting process we've ever had - everything just kind of fell where it fell. Normally, the energy is quite anxious sometimes. This one was really relaxed and organic-feeling."

Led by the hooky I Miss You, I Love Songs is far from a conventional Australian hip hop album, with inflections of R&B, electronica and Caribbean music. Yet, in exploring emotions, the album concept also defies the genre's hyper-masculinity. Says Tuckerman, "What underpinned the entire project was this sense of vulnerability and not being so associated with the masculine or the feminine and just being yourself."

Indeed, Thundamentals recognised the significance of that sentiment in 2012 when they covered Matt Corby's soulful Brother for triple j's Like A Version. "We noticed that, [by] putting your vulnerabilities forward to people, not only does it make you seem more like a real person, but it actually showcases a lot of powerful elements of your personality - because, once you've got your cards on the table, per se, you've got nothing to lose; you've got nothing to hide. So showing your vulnerabilities is almost a way of showing how powerful you really are. People that are speaking their genuine truths about things, rather than hiding them, I feel is a way forward. I guess we did that in our songwriting for I Love Songs as well - just not being so attached to wanting to impress people with all our whims, but more going on the genuine story of how complex and fucked-up love can be." Tuckerman's favourite track is the epic World's Gone Mad, which extols living in the moment amid uncertainty.

Curiously, Tuckerman today vacillates on whether Thundamentals should even be tagged 'hip hop'. "I'd prefer to be seen as a band than a hip hop group, 'cause I think we are kind of spreading out into a songwriting place." Following Kanye West, a fresh wave of rapper/singers are repositioning themselves as "recording artists". Ironically, this observation then prompts Tuckerman to defend Thundamentals' hip hop "DNA". "I feel like I Love Songs is still as hip hop as it's ever been 'cause, if you think about it, we're doing something original in hip hop - which is more 'hip hop' than recreating what's already been made," he posits. "Originality is as important as just writing another trap song or writing another boom-bap song." And, of course, Thundamentals have studied the music's history. "There's a lotta kids that are coming up that really don't understand where hip hop actually came from, [in] representing minority groups and giving people an alternative perspective of mass culture," Tuckerman rues. "A lot of people don't know who Nas is, right? It's just crazy."

These days Tuckerman enjoys vibing to avant-soulsters such as James Blake and Sampha (Thundamentals have previously reinterpreted Frank Ocean's Ivy). But he still digs rock. "I really fuck with Gang Of Youths - like, I really love them," Tuckerman enthuses. Mind, he avoids listening to music while cutting records - to again ensure originality. "If someone says something really catchy, I'm scared that it'll land in one of my songs in a couple of months. So I steer away." Ultimately, Tuckerman maintains that the greatest influence on I Love Songs was his girlfriend. "I couldn't help but 'muse' her, I guess." Generally, Thundamentals tune into their own community, over 'trends', for inspiration.

Inevitably, Thundamentals will experience pushback to their deviating from Oz boom-bap - mirroring a generational divide in US hip hop between fans of traditional and cloud rap. "I think old dudes having a problem with new music is a bad fucking look," Tuckerman declares. "There's so much music out there - listen to the music you like and stay positive." He sighs, "So, yeah, I just don't like whinging people." However, the MC, "a middle-class white guy," freely acknowledges those concerns raised by J Cole about the "whitewashing" of hip hop culture after what befell jazz.

In March, Tuckerman circulated a Tuka single: the aerial Naked Heart. It was a one-off, he confirms. "I've got so much stuff that I'm gonna show with the solo work but, at the moment, the band is just killing it. I'm loving the guys so much that we're gonna keep going... But I'll definitely be back. I've got a really weird project that I wanna drop sometime next year. There'll definitely be another solo record sometime next year, too. So it's all there... It's like, Thundamentals, we're ten years deep and we're just going for it."