Good Weekend story: ‘Showcase: Tkay Maidza’, October 2016
A short artist profile for Good Weekend‘s ‘showcase’ section. The full story appears below.
Wearing an extra-large Boston Celtics basketball jersey and towering black platform boots, hip-hop artist Tkay Maidza is bound to attract every eye in the room. It’s close to midnight on a Wednesday night in Brisbane in September, seven weeks before her debut album is released, and Maidza is performing alongside her drummer and DJ to 300 fans as part of the Bigsound music festival. Even with the boots and the raised stage, Maidza is only a little taller than the faithful in the front row. But what she lacks in stature, she more than makes up with lyrical ability and vocal dexterity.
In Fortitude Valley, a guerrilla marketing campaign is underway: Maidza, 20, appears on posters that bear only her face and her first name, or at least the abbreviated version of it. Born Takudzwa Victoria Rosa Maidza in Zimbabwe, she has lived in Australia since she was five: first Perth, then Kalgoorlie, on to Whyalla and then Adelaide, where her parents still live.
The transient nature of her upbringing is reflected in her career as a touring musician. Maidza’s travel schedule sees her constantly playing festivals and shows across Europe, the UK and the US. “I don’t really live anywhere,” she tells Good Weekend in a Fortitude Valley cafe prior to her headline performance. “I think it’s cool, because I’m always seeing something new. I’ve been okay with moving to a new city and having to make new friends, because I never settled anywhere, so I learnt not to be attached.”
Maidza graduated from high school at 16 and began studying architecture at university, before her YouTube covers and early demos – including the earworm track Brontosaurus – caught the attention of record labels here and overseas. Her debut album, Tkay, is an accomplished and balanced showcase of her songwriting in two styles: electronic pop and hip-hop.
“I know you feel the heat because I’m nothing less than fire,” she raps on lead single Carry On, which features a guest verse by acclaimed American rapper Killer Mike. “I’ve always been a fan of rappers that rap really fast,” she says, beaming. “I’m a person who has a really short attention span, so I want something that twists, or something you don’t expect.”
Just then, a young girl walks past the cafe and briefly makes eye contact with Maidza. Etched into the girl’s T-shirt are four letters that Australia will soon be seeing plenty more of. “Oh my God,” Maidza whispers, equally thrilled and embarrassed. “She has a Tkay shirt on!”
Above photograph by Paul Harris.
The second album by one of the least Google-friendly bands is short in duration – 39 minutes all up – but long on quality ideas.
Does the world really need another guitar-pop band? Brisbane has proved fertile ground for the genre of late: the Grates, the John Steel Singers and Yves Klein Blue all achieved national notoriety in recent years mining this rich vein.
The best track on Hilltop Hoods’ sixth album, ‘Rattling the Keys to the Kingdom’, is built on the familiar lyrical trope of rap group pitting itself against its many competitors.
Who: Miracle – born Blessed Samuel Joe-Anbah – is a Sydney-based MC and producer who signed a record deal with Sony Music after finishing high school last year. The Ghana-born 18 year-old also has a production deal with Sony publishing imprint Nufirm. His ‘s mixtape releases drew Sony’s ire at first, but now they’re all for it. “They see it as a good way for me to gain fans without their help,” he says.
I interviewed Yannis Philippakis [pictured right], singer/guitarist of the British pop act 
You kind of progress, but yeah, it’s always been there, it predates the band. It’s how I learned how to play the guitar. I used to mimic and ape the guitar lines I liked, and they usually were like staccato, tight little phrases, that’s how I liked it. As I said, I was never really attracted to chords, or distortion pedals. I like the idea of a transparent guitar sound; a guitar sound that’s unashamed to be a clean guitar. I think that you can get as much power out of a clean guitar as you can out of a distorted guitar.
Yeah, I think so, in some way. I think the critics, there is something that make critics recoil if you seem like a young, cocky upstart. When we started doing interviews and stuff, I really didn’t have that much of a filter on my brain. A lot of time I really didn’t know where I was, in terms of how things would be relayed in the press. I think that with time comes an understanding. I understand myself better now. I think as you get older – what were you like when you were 19?
What happened next is one of rock music’s strangest tales: James Williamson gave up on music entirely, graduated from California State Polytechnic University with a degree in electrical engineering, and went on to work for Sony Electronics for 25 years. Most of his colleagues had no idea of Williamson’s involvement with The Stooges, despite Iggy Pop doggedly working himself into a position of international notoriety as one of rock’s most outlandish performers. The Raw Power guitarist wanted nothing to do with it. It took a university essay written by Williamson’s son, entitled ‘Coffins In The Corner’ – in reference to his father’s guitar cases sitting up against the wall, unopened all throughout his childhood and adolescence – to provoke the guitarist to finally accept Iggy’s offer to reform the band in the wake of Ron Asheton’s death last year. It also helped that Sony offered him a generous early retirement package from his role as Vice President of Technology Standards. Now Williamson, aged 61, is touring the world, playing The Stooges’ celebrated catalogue to a new generation. The Vine connected with the guitarist ahead of the band’s appearance on the Big Day Out tour in January and February 2011.
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