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Briggs

Rock music and sports, sports and rock music, stick to that and life will run pretty smooth for you in Shepparton. So what happens if you like rap music, gangsters, the NBA and the thug life? Simple, you do what Adam Briggs did and make your very own Hip Hop album and see what happens.

At the age of 14, Briggs knew there was something bigger than Australian rock music. There was something about rap that really pulled him in. Maybe it was the romanticised thug life, maybe it was the good beats that you could play in your room or maybe because it was so far from "Shep Life", it could help you dream.

REASON: All the way from a small little country town known as Shepparton...

(Cheering)

REASON: ..to the big smoke of not only Melbourne, but of this whole country. He is a Golden Era representative. He is a representative of his people. And he's a representative of these people out here tonight. So can I ask you all please join me and make noise for the man known as Briggs!

BACKUP SINGER: # I wish I was

ADAM BRIGGS: # That guy
# You could take to meet your parents
# Yeah, appearance let alone would have me barred in a minute
# Politickin' with your pops, have a talk over dinner, yo
# Drunk in the car
# Why not wait till you finish... #

ADAM BRIGGS: Rapping was... that was like the pinnacle for me. It was like, 'Yep, that's what I've always wanted to do. This is...' You know, 'Let's go.'

ADAM BRIGGS: # Drive on to the drive-through
# Six packs, jack, gin
# Oh, baby I love true meatloaf... #

TRIALS: I would describe Briggs as a Godzilla-type figure doing karaoke to R Kelly songs.

ADAM BRIGGS: # And arrested in a second 'Cause you moved last week. #

PAUL BRIGGS: And he's always enjoyed music and he's always wanted to express himself. Some kids choose sport, football. He chose the arts.

JAYTEE: Briggs is a pretty big, intimidating dude. But that's only if you don't know him. Actually, if you do him he's still the same.

ADAM BRIGGS: # Beer goggles, Roy Orbison
# On the bar like an ornament
# Next round, order 'em
# Bar staff avoidin' him
# Last round I slaughtered 'em
# Sittin' on the stool like a busted accordion
# And talkin' to this broad like I'm charming as... #

ADAM BRIGGS: That's my school, where a teacher told me I wouldn't amount to nothing. This is where we used to hang out. This is the cinema. And at one time my cousins borrowed a tricycle from there, because Snoop Dog had one when he was on the American Music Awards. Growing up in Shep was... It was interesting. It was good fun. It was pretty country. Real simple. We messed around, rode our bikes and I hung out with my cousins. I had a lot of cousins growing up. I had cousins I didn't even know how they were my cousins. But they're just your cousins anyway, you know what I mean? You know, we'd play footy. The best part of it was having a laugh with, you know, all my cousins, and that taught me heaps. I was the youngest of my generation. Like, all my first cousins were all late 20s, 30 plus, so I hung out with their kids - my second cousins. I just like music because, you know, all my cousins liked music. It was still, you know, pretty new to me, so I'd like see Rage. And I remember one night on Rage they played Ice Cube - It Was A Good Day. And I was blown away. I... That's still my favourite song to this date. It really took me by surprise that something could, like, grab me like that. Like, I couldn't stop listening to it. Like, I taped it...

ICE CUBE: # Just waking up in the morning
# Gotta thank God
# I don't know but today seems kinda odd
# No barking from the dog
# No smog
# And Momma cooked a breakfast with no hog... #

ADAM BRIGGS: And then Snoop Dog came on and I was... I lost it. I didn't know... I was like, 'Who's that? Is he our cousin?' (Laughs) Do we know him? That was another thing - at school, we had like a reading post. I'd be like, 'I finished my work! Can I go in the reading post?' 'Cause they had better headphones. And I'd go in there and I'd put on my Ice Cube tape and sit in with my book and just flip through it. And they must have thought I was the best reader. (Laughs) They'd say, 'He's reading at a 12th-grade level!' (Laughs) 'He's got Pride And Prejudice!'

PAUL BRIGGS: He would get some role modelling. Not necessarily from me, because I'm not... I haven't picked up the guitar and done that side of things, but my brothers have and other people in our family have.

ADAM BRIGGS: I started playing guitar because all my uncles would play guitar and my mates played. And I played a gig, and my mate Pete and my other mate Andy Milliner were rapping on stage. And I was like, 'What?! Someone else wants to rap?' You know what I mean? I lost it, man. I almost threw my guitar out that night. (Laughs) You know what I mean? I was like, 'Yes!' I mean, like finally... I got someone else now who knows what I'm trying to do, and we're like, 'Let's do something. Let's make some rap music.' Pete was a little bit older than me. And we had a crew called '912'. That was my house number and his house number put together. We were called 'Misdemeanour' before that, just 'cause we wanted to be bad. We thought it was dope. (Laughs) It wasn't dope. (Laughs) I was so happy doing it because I was like, 'We're on now.' It's like, you know, this is what I wanted to do. It's like I played guitar, messed around in bands, it was good fun, but this is what I've always wanted to do - I wanted to be a rapper.

BACKUP SINGER: # I wish I was
# That guy
# That
# Oh... #

ADAM BRIGGS: Looking back, Reason was like one of the first Aussie MCs I'd ever heard that... using an Australian accent.

REASON: # Sit and gather my thoughts
# Contemplate the future
# Imagined dream allows me to let off some steam... #

ADAM BRIGGS: I found out Reason's doing this show. I was a fan of Rea. And I was like... I hit up Dream nightclub and said, 'We're an act from Shep. Can we come down and get on the bill?'

REASON: The first time, you know, Briggsy appeared on a bill that I was on, we didn't actually have a say who the supports were gonna be. We got told by the promoters of the club that we've got some young MCs from out Shep way who kind of want to step up and be given that opportunity.

ADAM BRIGGS: We done our show to about five people. And then Reason hit me up after it and he was like, 'Dope.'

REASON: I was pretty taken aback by this... this big fella with so much energy and so much passion standing up there, proud of his... his world of Shep, and rapping in a way that, you know, is so comparable to some of the greats, some of the more powerful MCs, you know, that I've followed over the years. And he was only 19 years of age.

ADAM BRIGGS: We exchanged numbers and I thought nothing of it. I thought, Cool, got another hook-up.

REASON: I was about to organise a tour through Obese Records, and I thought, look, I'm gonna take a punt. I'm gonna contact this Briggsy guy.

ADAM BRIGGS: I guess he needed a new hype man. And I had no idea I was about to play the hype-man role. I thought I was just gonna be rapping. When he was like, learn my words and play the hype man and blah, blah, blah. That's how I cut my teeth - it was with Rea. You know, learning the ropes about gigs - how to hold yourself and whatever.

(Briggs and Reason rap)

(Briggs raps)

ADAM BRIGGS: I moved to Melbourne and I roughed it there. Like, I slept on my sister's floor until I got an apartment. And I got this apartment. I couldn't pay the rent. And somehow I stayed there for a year. I don't know... If they're looking, like, you know, never gonna find me. (Laughs) If they're watching this, they're never gonna catch me!

PAUL BRIGGS: We were nervous about him going into Melbourne and trying to find a place for himself, but we were also confident that his values would hold him in good stead.

ADAM BRIGGS: I done whatever to get the next meal, and it was just, like... All I cared about was making rap music. That was it. It was probably like... Even my mama says she doesn't know how I survived. I was like, 'Pfft! You're telling me! I don't know how I survived either.' 'Cause I was down in Melbourne, and I wasn't on the side of Melbourne where any of my family were - I was on, like, the St Kilda East side. So, like, all I had was... just my mates.

# FUNKOARS: What's Your Malfunction

ADAM BRIGGS: I met Trials. It was funny meeting Trials, man, 'cause I used to go to shows and people would think I was Trials.

TRIALS: We were at a gig and there was this guy at the front of the stage. He kept pointing at me and I was like thinking, Man, does this guy want to fight me? Like, what's... what's going on here? Basically he came a little closer and he's like, '(Whispers) Me and me...' I'm like, 'Oh, man, what does he want?' He got really close and he's like, 'Man! You look like me!' And I'm like, 'Man! I do look like you, man!' That was pretty much it - from there onwards, he was mistaken for me and vice versa.

ADAM BRIGGS: Sometimes I'd sign things, you know what I mean, with the C-word. You know what I mean? 'Trials, man, can you sign my hat?' I'd be like, 'C-U...' (Laughs) You know what I mean? So like I've probably ruined his brand a little bit. One of the main things was like... that drew me to T was I knew he was black. And I was black. So it was like, 'Is this another brother?' You know what I mean. There's other brothers doing it - making this kind of hip-hop, like... And that really tripped me out. I was like, 'Pfff!'

TRIALS: The relationship between me and Briggs grew the most when I realised he had changed his Centrelink address to mine. And I realised he was there for a while then.

ADAM BRIGGS: And when I went to Centrelink, they were like, 'You're homeless.' You know what I mean? Like, 'We have reason to believe you're homeless.' I was like, 'I'm not homeless. Look at my shoes! These are new! You know? I'm good! I'm living with my cousin, Trials!' It was ridiculous, man, and... no music got done. When I lived there for that month, there was no music done at all, eh. (Laughs) There was no music done! No music got done.

REASON: If you don't have the support cast and you don't have the network to keep pushing you up to keep promoting your music, and particularly on the premise, from the Briggsy perspective, where he still hadn't been signed to anybody - an MC from Shep now starting to find his way in the Australian hip-hop scene - that lull really was probably the best thing to ever happen to him, 'cause it gave him insight into not only where he could possibly go, but grounded him and made him realise where he was coming from. You know, I truly believe that that particular period of Briggsy's life perhaps will always be the most defining, because it made him realise, 'I don't ever want to go back there again.'

(Briggs raps)

REASON: Give it up for Briggs!

REASON: It was always something at the back of my mind with Briggsy as my support that one day he would want to step up and... not necessarily out of my shadow. Briggsy wasn't in my shadow - I was probably in his shadow, so to speak.

ADAM BRIGGS: I made Homemade Bombs, and I brought it out by myself. There's no label connected to it. I put a barcode on it to make it look official. But that barcode don't work. (Laughs) You know what I mean, like...

JAYTEE: Homemade Bombs was the first project I ever worked on Briggs' work with. And I'd sent Briggs a couple of beats after we met. And he didn't really jump on anything. I was sending him stuff that probably wasn't really suited to him. It was just stuff that I was doing at the time, and I was still kind of learning a lot too, so it was pretty amateur stuff. But I sent him one beat that he ended up using for a song called Silverback. And from then, I kind of kicked off, like, 'Right, this is the kind of thing he's into.'

ADAM BRIGGS: JayTee I met doing a gig in Melbourne. He was with Local Knowledge then. And we just clicked, and he wanted to give me beats. And, yeah, he started sending me beats, and he gave me one or two... One or two beats for my first EP Homemade Bombs.

JAYTEE: My first impression of Briggs was, you know, I found him pretty intimidating, as I think anyone would. But I think that the biggest surprise was he isn't how you would expect him to be at all. I'm sure he's a guy that gets judged on how he looks a lot. Like, this big intimidating kind of I'm-gonna-punch-your-face-in type of dude, when in fact he's... He IS like that! But at the same time he's actually really smart and a really together guy, and he sort of... he knows the deal. He's not, you know... he's not an irrational kind of just meat-head.

TRIALS: Briggs really coming into his own and getting out of a... you know, the support role was more than evident when he was in the booth doing the Homemade Bomb stuff. I was just lacing him with a beat, and he would know exactly what he wanted to do. Go in there and have so many rhymes prepared already that he would just smash it out. It was cool. We had no idea what songs we were making or what that song was gonna be for. He just had so many lyrics written down so... You know, it was just natural. He needed a little platform to get on, and as soon as we did give him that box he didn't stop screaming at everyone!

ADAM BRIGGS: I had 7-6 in the studio to help me make the product, help me create it. And then I had Suff, who believed in it, to, you know, let me, you know, put it out.

SUFFA: I just lent him a couple of grand to make sure he got his EP out, so he could start things rolling for himself. I mean, the label wasn't in effect by then, so I had no opportunity to, you know, get him a deal or anything like that. But I wanted to help him get it out, so I lent him a couple of grand to put it out... And he paid it back. He paid it back. To his credit. Well done, Briggs.

HAU: The first time I heard Homemade Bombs... ..I was working here at Triple J doing the hip-hop show. And I'm always looking for local product to listen to. And so, when I heard Briggs, it was great to hear him use his own accent first of all, and just have that presence. I mean, we talk about presence all the time. It's one thing to have presence in physical form, but to have presence when you're listening to something, because some people just don't have it, you know what I mean. But when I heard Homemade Bombs, I knew that Briggs... It was raw. I knew it wasn't 100% there. But you could tell this Briggs had potential, because he had that charisma, presence and the lyrics as well.

ADAM BRIGGS: Yeah! What about my EP Homemade Bombs? You got that?

(Crowd cheers)

ADAM BRIGGS: Lies!

# BRIGGS: Bad Move

ADAM BRIGGS: I'd written down goals for it. I wanted to do a film clip. I wanted to tour it. And I wanted to sell out on my first 1,000. The first thing I did was tour it, and that was, um... that was with the Funkoars on their The Hangover tour. And I paid for that whole tour myself, like, out of my own pocket. I paid for flights, got a little bit of money for a show. We pretty much just did it 'cause... for the love. I had to sell CDs at the shows to make it to the next show - for petrol money, for accommodation money. So, like, I used to tell the boys, 'We've got to sell 60 CDs tonight.' You know what I mean? And we were selling them at $10 a pop. By the time we made it back to Melbourne after doing a few... few rural shows and whatnot, I think I'd almost sold out on my first 1,000. So I'd knocked out two of my goals within, you know, the first month of pressing my EP. I was like, 'Pfff! Alright, what do I do now?' (Laughs) You know what I mean? It's like, 'Gotta work on the film clip.' The film clip came about a year later but normally you just forget about it, but because I'd written it down, and I had this goal to tick off, I couldn't close the chapter on Homemade Bombs until that video was done.

# BRIGGS: Bad Move

SUFFA: He toured with us here - our first State Of The Art tour. He played with us in Classified around Australia. And then he came with us to Europe. He opened for us at our London gig. Then he jumped on the bus and came with us when we were touring with Atmosphere in Europe.

ADAM BRIGGS: I worked out that they're going to England first and Germany, and I was like, 'I've gotta do that.' And I hit Matt up and I said, 'Matt, if I can get the funds, can I come?' And Matt's like, 'Yeah.' That was my first time overseas too, like... I hadn't even been around the country before I was in London doing support for the Hoods and two sold-out shows. It just like, never, never crossed my mind, man, that I was ever gonna do that.

PRESSURE: I think Briggs and our style of hip-hop - like, Australian hip-hop in general - goes down pretty well in Europe because they do like their hip-hop a bit more street level, a bit grimier.

ADAM BRIGGS: I had dudes come up to me, 'Blud! Blud! We didn't know you spoke like that, blud!' You know what I mean, like... There's... 'Cause like... And like in Germany they really like harder stuff.

PRESSURE: I think they just kind of dig that street-level sort of shit that Australian rappers come up with. We don't really have a polished pop sound in Australia. And I think it translates really well in Germany, and I know that Briggs got a lot of love when he was there.

SUFFA: He gets away with his hard sound in front of, like, crowds that may not usually be open to that sort of thing because of his charisma. If he just stood and delivered and that was it, I think he'd have a tougher time. But he has the charisma that makes people want to like it. And I think that's what works for him. Ambition isn't a problem with Briggs. And it never has been. When you've got that sort of ambition, it translates to work ethic and everything else. So... um, that's never been an issue with Briggs.

PRESSURE: And one of the reasons we signed Briggs to the Golden Era label was... because he's just got this presence. You know, he's everywhere. He's probably the hardest-working individual in Australian hip-hop, if not one of. He's the most self-motivated dude I've ever met. He's always ringing people asking for favours, you know, doing collaborations, getting amongst it, getting on bills to do support acts for international acts. And everywhere he goes, you know, everyone remembers Briggs.

REASON: When the Hoods took him on, I was humbled. I was as happy as he was that a group and a collective of MCs who I rate very highly, who are some of my best friends in the Australian hip-hop scene, saw the worth in this fella Briggs.

PRESSURE: The way we do it at Golden Era is we sit down with the artist and say, you know, 'We want to do an album roughly at this point during the year,' and we make sure they're good with that... with that release date. But he's always been pretty cool with that. He finished his album well before his release date I'm pretty sure on The Blacklist.

ADAM BRIGGS: I think I did Blacklist in about... ten months. I guess I had that fire, you know, when I come back from being on tour, and I was like, 'Yep, I know what I'm gonna do.' And I made this record, The Blacklist, and wrote a lot of it in the studio, spent a lot of time at Suffa's.

TRIALS: I think there's a definite progression between Homemade Bombs and Blacklist, purely because Briggs was... he had his lyrics and his ideas, and he was putting them into songs now and structuring in that way. And this song would be about that, and this song would be about that, and Wrong Brother would be about, you know, the dramas he'd copped at clubs and whatnot. It was so good to see him channelling these ideas and putting them into individual tunes. And you could tell as an artist he knew what he wanted to do. And he had me, JayTee, all the same crew stuff, all the same dudes making the same beats, and we know what Briggs likes 'cause he makes that pretty clear. (Laughs) So, you know, we just tried to feed him whatever he could stomach, and he smashed it all back out.

ADAM BRIGGS: I was just in there working, writing, going nuts... You know, working with T, working with Suff. JayTee was sending beats, Merlin from Germany who I hung out with was... sent me the Wrong Brother beat.

# BRIGGS: Wrong Brother

HAU: Homemade Bombs was good because it was raw. The energy was raw, and that's what you like about it, but Blacklist had that same rawness, but it was also... his skills were also sharpened, and he was able to conduct himself through the deliveries of the flows and the writing of the lyrics, and I think that comes along with hanging out with the Golden Era boys.

# BRIGGS: Wrong Brother

ADAM BRIGGS: Check it out - Briggs! Here you go. Well, that's my dressing room, man. I'm here in Melbourne at the Palace, AKA at The Metro. I'm about to do this Ice Cube thing. If someone would have told me when I was 15 and started doing this rap stuff that you're gonna support Ice Cube one day, I would have laughed in their face and told 'em, 'Go jump off a bridge.' You know what I mean? It's like, 'Whatever.' That's my favourite rapper from back when I was a little kid. That's the reason I wanted to make rap music. And now I'm touring with him, you know what I mean? I'm hanging out with him every night. It's like... I never asked for it, man. I never thought when I was making my joint and doing all these shows and doing shows for five people that I'd be doing shows for thousands of people with my favourite... with my favourite rapper. That's just...

PAUL BRIGGS: Coming back into Shepparton and having a baby changes your perspective about who you are and what you've got to do on this earth. It'll come out in his work, I would imagine. But it also puts some challenges up about how he devotes time to family and career, as everybody does.

JAYTEE: Yeah, when Briggs first told me that he's got a child on the way, I thought, Oh, that's it. Game off. No more shows. No more beats. No more music. But I think, in fact, it's the complete opposite. He's still really hungry to get out there. He's still calling me 50 times a day. 'Where's the beats? Where's the beats?' I don't see it slowing me down, man, because, if anything, I see it speeding me up. 'Cause now I've got... I've got a bigger responsibility than anything I've ever had. So I've gotta... I've gotta make something good. (Laughs) I've gotta make something good because I can't... You know what I mean? I can't waste time.

MAN: Side. One on the top...

ADAM BRIGGS: See, I didn't even... I didn't even flinch.

JAYTEE: I'd really like to see Briggs crack the mainstream. I think Australia needs it, Australian hip-hop needs it, 'cause I think he's definitely gonna bring something new to the table. And I'd really like to see him be successful, and that's not just because, you know, I do his productions and DJ for him. (Chuckles)

TRIALS: I could see Briggs heading on to the next record to absolutely smash it. I've heard the beats already he's choosing, the topics he's gonna put down. The dudes he's working with already are people that I've... you know, admired for so long. And it's cool that Briggs can just stand on his own two, regardless of anything, any politics, nothing, and hang with the best, you know, in the world, and that's the best kind of role model as I can see, man.

ADAM BRIGGS: It's about creating opportunities, and I never waited for anyone to give me anything. I made my own shows. I pressed my own discs. I sold my own CDs. I made my own songs. I found avenues to put things out. And that's what hip-hop is for me, man. It's been a tool to create income, an avenue where I can be creative, you know, without being destructive to myself or to anyone around me. If you're whack, you're whack, and if you're dope, you're dope. It doesn't matter... It doesn't matter what your skin colour is or where you're from - if you got skill, you got skill. And you gotta use that to your advantage. And that's what I've done.