Gauging the next generation of hip-hop in Papua New Guinea with one of its bright up-and-comers, Jay Sint
It's just one of the many questions we had for Jay Sint, an up-and-coming rapper in Papua New Guinea's hip-hop scene.
On the dynamic felt between him and his peers, he told Nesia Daily: "It's competitive but it's healthy competition between brothers… It's very exciting to come together."
Spurred on by the lyricism of local legends such as Sprigga Mek, Jay Sint and his crew of young, like-minded MCs found some national attention through a collaborative single released in late 2024, Block Party Dubplate — a song which found legs well beyond its original purpose as promotional material for a live event they were putting on in the nation's capital.
"So when people started vibing to it and listening to it, I'm like… It wasn't supposed to blow up like this," he said.
Funnily enough, despite having already happened, he still has people asking him for details about the show spotlighted on the track.
Speaking candidly with Nesia Daily, Jay Sint spoke about his family roots, music making, and which language he finds most natural whilst rapping.
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Life was so sweet for Alex Lloyd for a while. Amazing, even. The boy from Balmain's hit song had catapulted him to stardom. He'd met and married his great love, started a family and moved to London. But then, to borrow from the lyrics of that song that is so deeply woven into Australia's fabric, every wolf was at his door. "I ended up in a place where no one could really help me," Alex tells Australian Story in an exclusive interview. A legal fight over the authorship of Amazing sparked an unravelling. Resurfaced childhood trauma led to a marriage breakdown, extreme weight gain and ultimately an addiction to oxycodone that saw the four-time ARIA Award winner, including three for Best Male Artist, fade from view. But now, at 50, with his first studio album in 12 years in the works, Alex Lloyd is learning to "be OK with me" and is ready to do some amazing things. "Now, I'm seeing the world differently. 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His pain was managed, his depression eased and he was motivated, pulling back his drinking and running long distances. But, he says: "I had no idea what I was getting into with that drug … I didn't know how addictive it was." He took more and more — but it wasn't enough. He tried to get off it but couldn't. "Eventually, it's a very empty, lonely sense of impending doom," Alex says. It was in this state that Alex headed to Brisbane to do some gigs with multi-instrumentalist Salliana Seven. She describes Alex as an open soul and says he never tried to hide his addiction from her. His failed attempts to break free of oxycodone were heartbreaking. "I saw him at his lowest of the lowest of low," she says. "You know, suicidal." "As cooked as he was when I met him … he opens his mouth and I'm just blown away." Relief came with Suboxone, a medication to treat opioid dependence. It was a gruelling transition as his body adjusted, but his children, and his renewed joy for music, gave him the impetus to push through. "I think he's finally let go of the broken fairytale of his marriage," Salliana says. "I really feel that losing that just destroyed him on top of all the other trauma that he's had … He's moving through that, which is massive." As he works through his own long-buried trauma, Alex is hoping to help today's kids navigate tough times by working with the KIDS Foundation. "I really believe in and want to be an advocate for childhood trauma and giving kids skills at an early age to deal with it later because it hit me and I didn't even know what it was," he says. At a recent musical workshop, as Alex sits in a field with a guitar on his lap, a couple of teens share their fear of being judged, or trolled, for their music. Alex tells them that every artist must face those fears, and every artist falls on their face at some time. Getting back up is where the success lies. "You can't beat yourself up over everything," Alex says, as much to himself as the kids. "Otherwise, you'd just be stuck there forever. There is no such thing as mistakes, only lessons."
