Rising out of Sydney’s inner west and taking the nation by storm in the eighteen months since signing to Sydney hip hop institution Elefant Traks, Horrorshow would have to be pretty happy chappies considering their unrelenting success. With two albums under their belts, The Grey Space and Inside Story, as well as having played to sell out audiences around the country touring on their own and also with Australian hip hop royalty such as Urthboy, Muph & Plutonic and Hermitude, the crew made up of MC Solo and producer Adit have struck a chord with their audience, inspiring both loyal support and deeply personal connections with their fans.
With an upcoming tour of capital cites titled The Walk You Home Tour, we caught up with MC Solo to get the lowdown on what it is about their music that leads to their fans taking it to heart.
Music Feeds: You guys always put a lot of effort into your live shows; there’s always a sense that you’re not holding anything back and by the end of it you look pretty fucked. Where does this work ethic come from?
Solo: If people are going to spend their hard earned cash on coming to see a rap show you want to make it worth their while. We always put a lot of effort into our tours you know and we’ve been working on a new set, and hopefully we can throw some new material into it. We’ve actually just finished recording a track with Seth Sentry so we have something we can do with him on the night. That’s something I always like to see at a show you know, people jamming out together.
MF: Your music is very personal and I know you get a lot of fans coming up and speaking to you and shit, just generally taking your music to heart and wanting to share that. What’s that like to have all these people to whom your music means so much?
Solo: That shit does happen from time to time and it happened a lot more on this last tour. I had a lot of interesting experiences on the last tour, just meeting people and hearing their reaction to the music and the part the music had played in their lives. It’s part of the danger of going anywhere near the topic of love. It’s not something that really happens all the time in rap music, but I think that’s part of the reason why the songs we have that go down that path have resonated so much with these kids. I mean these guys love the shit out of hip hop, and particularly out of Australian hip hop, and when they come across artists like us there’s a bit more emotion or depth to it. So they get a bit of the best of both worlds; they get to listen to beats and rhymes and on the other hand they get to cry over their girlfriend who just dumped them, you know what I mean, which I guess kind of makes sense when you think about me and Adit and what we’re like.
But yeah, I’ve had some intense experiences on this last tour. I had a couple down in Victoria who came and spoke to me at the merch desk after the show. They basically told me they’d been together for a number of years and then broken up and that they both really loved Horrorshow and that a lot of our songs were the music they would listen to together. So they had had this horrible break up, but they decided to go to the Horrorshow gig together and try and be peaceful and have a good time with each other. So it’s the end of the night when they’re telling me this story and they’ve come back together and I don’t know, I almost felt like a therapist or something you know.
That kind of shit is pretty crazy to deal with, where on one level all you really did was sit in your room and write a song about something that happened to you, but I think that’s kind of the whole point of being a musician. It doesn’t really freak me out or anything, I understand why that happens and I understand that process cos I’ve had that relationship with so much music, but it’s kind of a strange feeling to be put in a situation like that. I mean I’ve had people tell me about a time when they’ve been really ill and in hospital or people who’ve had people around them die and things like that, and just how our music helped them through things like that. It’s fucking intense, but I think really that’s probably the most validating or worthwhile part of what we do.
I love to play live and I love all the aspects of music making, but I think the really important thing at the end of the day is what music can mean for people and how it can help people make sense of the things going on in their lives, and to think that we’re playing a part in doing that for anyone is humbling. I feel proud of that.
The guys play at The Gaelic Theatre on Sept 3rd with Seth Sentry—don’t miss them.
