Matt Okine may be best known as one half of triple j’s larrikin breakfast duo Matt & Alex, but when he’s not working up a sweat in short shorts or racking up LOLs on the ARIA red carpet, he’s using his public status to speak provocative truths about our society, and dare we say morphing into the voice of a mother flippin’ generation.
After using his recent Best Comedy Album ARIA acceptance speech to call attention to the lack of support for women in the Australian music industry, Okine has now gone one step further, and skewered all of the biggest issues facing Australia right now in one rap that’s as moving as it is clever.
Performing at Sydney’s Giant Dwarf last week, Okine brilliantly summed up the state of the nation using a few tweaked verses of Kanye West’s Heard ‘Em Say.
While eliciting a few chuckles for his initial Yeezy impression and a few witty one-liners, Okine’s sincere delivery and razor-sharp lyrics hit home in a way that’s far from funny.
During the performance, Okine tackled a whole host of issues currently dividing Australian society, from the injustices of Australia Day, to our government locking up children inside camps on Nauru, to the draconian lockout laws imposed upon our nightlife by the nanny states, to rampant Islamophobia, to child sexual abuse crimes committed by members of the Australian Catholic Church, to people still thinking it’s OK to wear fucking blackface in 2016:
“How they still not know that it ain’t okay to paint your face?/And how we still having fights about Australia Day?/Like it’s that fuckin’ hard just to change the date/Guess that’s why I gotta drink, just to get away/See, I can’t give Mabo the time/’Cause they say the Queen’s blood is better than mine.
“…Sit around while the lawmakers watch us/And Border Force wanting this amount of papers/The government’s just trying to make us safer/But wait, ain’t the Church full of systematic rapists?/ So who’s supposed to be dangerous? The ones covering up crimes or covering their faces?
“…See, I know that there’s racists in the news/And they talk about places in the queue/But all they ever really had was a taste of silver spoons/And they’re flying first-class to Nauru/Tell that rape victim in her face that what she say, it ain’t true” (via Junkee).
Watch Matt Okine serve up a hot steaming cup of truth soup in the video below.
Meanwhile, maybe when he’s finished playing pool using loafs of bread against Hollywood celebrities, he might consider running for office?
He’d have our vote.
From "UnderCover" last week at Giant Dwarf. The theme was "I Might Be Wrong". I stumble on the very first line which is... Posted by Matt Okine on Monday, February 15, 2016