Scribe has gone gold in Australia. The 'Not Many'/'Stand Up' single has reached the 35,000 sales gold mark, and his debut album, The Crusader will probably soon join it in gold status. This is a remarkable achievement, not least in that both sides of the single hinge on fairly specific references to lil' old New Zealand.
As it happens, Scribe features on one of two new hip-hop albums that arrived in the post last Friday. Magic City is the second album from P Money, Scribe's DJ-producer and the co-owner of his label, Dirty Records.
P Money's first album, Big Things, was let down by some of its local vocal talent. This time, he has drafted in a number of American rappers, including Roc Raider and Skillz. The album is intended to act as a showcase for his world-class production skills and as a bucketful o' hits. It largely does both.
The Americans certainly have the chops, but they're hired guns, and if they're really going to have much to say beyond hip hop stock-in-trade, it'll be on their own albums. Akon's beautiful, dancehall-style 'Keep On Callin'' is a notable exception. Mostly, however, they're just good tracks: especially 'We! Dem Ni99az', featuring Aasim and Capone, whose ominous bassline will doubtless figure prominently in P's DJ sets; and Sauce Money's 'Easy', which is built out of a whacking great sample from the Wailers' 'Put It On'.
Scribe, of course, has plenty to say, and his final track on the album, 'Stop the Music', is a quite extraordinary construction, its raging metal choruses bookended by gentle acoustic guitar and woven together with Scribe's trademark flow. If this is any indication of what these two are going to come up with for Scribe's second album, I'm all ears.
But one thought: at some point Scribe will need to stop having internal conversations and look outwards. Rap is a solipsistic art, but Scribe's a good enough writer to address the world around him.
The other album, Break it to Pieces, the debut by Tha Feelstyle, is quite a different affair. While P Money is all crisp, digital beats and iconic samples, this is warm, funky hip-hop. In keeping with the collegial feel of the local music scene these days, there's even a guest appearance from Dimmer's Shayne Carter, who does his Curtis Mayfield thing on 'Savage Feel'. It's a riot.
The world's best Samoan-language rapper is no spring chicken, and he certainly has plenty to say - indeed, there's a little précis of what he's saying under each track title in the CD booklet. 'Le Amatanga' "means the beginning in the Samoan language. A moment of reflection to understand this moment in time", while 'Tha Medicine' "is about self-counselling."
This is a nice album, and in its way a very important one, in the tradition of Ermehn's Samoans Part II (on which Tha Feelstyle featured as the elaborately-named Field Style Orator), which you might say began the story. When I interviewed Mareko last year, I asked him about that record and he agreed that he felt part of its storytelling tradition. Amid a flurry of local hip hop releases Ermehn himself has an album of brutal, convincing South Auckland gangster rap set for release via BMG - with or without one particularly defamatory track.
As Saturday night's Children of the Migration documentary further demonstrated, there is a generation or two of Samoans in New Zealand who feel they have a story to tell. And the rest of us ought to be grateful for their vitality.