Latest news with #OneFour
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
OneFour's message to the police: ‘We're different now. We're good people'
It seems fitting that the opening number on OneFour's debut album, Look At Me Now, is titled Change. A pulsing track that sees the group reckoning with the past and thinking about the future: 'And now the question is: will you remain the same?' raps Jerome 'J Emz' Misa over a heavy beat. 'Or are you willing to do whatever it takes to change?' Change has been the one constant in OneFour's turbulent 10-year history as Australia's most prominent hip-hop outfit, a period defined by upheaval, controversy, prison time and hype – anything but stability. Formed in 2014, the all-Pasifika rap crew from Mount Druitt in Western Sydney was initially composed of five members – brothers Jerome and Pio 'YP' Misa, Salec 'Lekks' Su'a, Dahcell 'Celly' Ramos, and Spencer 'Spenny' Magalogo. They quickly became the face of Australia's drill movement, a sub-genre of hip-hop that emerged from Chicago a decade ago. It is known for its faster, heavier sound and raw lyrics, often depicting gang culture. Adopting this style, OneFour infused it with a uniquely Western Sydney flavour, references to 'eshays' and 'lads' speaking to a subculture born from the very same streets they grew up in. It didn't take long for the group to tap into viral success, with songs like 2018's What You Know and 2019's Spot The Difference going platinum on the ARIA charts and racking up hundreds of millions of streams. As the buzz grew, so too did the accolades. ARIA nominations followed, while hip-hop superstars, including Skepta, Dave, A$AP Ferg, and the Kid Laroi, voiced their support for OneFour's warts-and-all portrait of street life in Mount Druitt. 'My district has too much drillers, like who wants it? Like who wants war with Sydney's realest?' Spot The Difference, OneFour But their meteoric rise was halted in 2019 when Lekks, Celly and YP were jailed for a pub brawl. That same year, a national tour was cancelled after venues began pulling out, something OneFour attributed to pressure from the police and confirmation that the group was being monitored by two elite police units – Strike Force Raptor, created to hunt underground criminal networks, and Strike Force Imbara, which investigates gang feuds. In a widely circulated voice memo supplied to the ABC, Sergeant Nathan Trueman from the Raptor squad promised, 'I'm going to use everything in my power to make your life miserable until you stop doing what you're doing.' The constant noise around OneFour only seemed to boost their infamy. Their shows continued to be cancelled while their streaming numbers skyrocketed (they have an impressive 2.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify). The release of a 2024 Netflix documentary, Against All Odds, broadened their reach yet reinforced the idea that the story of OneFour had become more important than the music they produced. 'Exactly right,' says J Emz. 'And that's why we needed a change. We're about the music, and we want people to know that.' I'm sitting with J Emz, Celly and Spenny in a back room of Sony Music's headquarters in Sydney's CBD. There are bowls of lollies on the table and slabs of soft drinks, but no one eats or drinks anything. This is the new look OneFour after a lineup change. YP left the group last year after becoming ordained as a Christian priest, while Lekks remains part of OneFour but was deported to New Zealand following his four-year prison sentence. J Emz sits opposite me, the group's elder statesman who does most of the talking. Alongside him is Celly, who was recently released after serving five years of his 10-year sentence for the brawl. Next to me is Spenny, who is softly spoken and polite but visibly uncomfortable with being interviewed. I ask them about that first track, Change, and whether the lyrics were born out of a challenge they set themselves. 'For sure, I don't think any of us can pretend we haven't made mistakes,' says J Emz. 'But we've grown up a lot. So much has happened in our career to knock us off track – some of that is our fault, some of it isn't, but we've gotten much better at holding each other accountable.' What does that look like? 'There have been some heated chats for sure,' admits J Emz, while Celly and Spenny nod in agreement. 'Sometimes I got to remind the boys what they're going back to if this doesn't work out.' No one knows that better than Celly, whose incarceration meant he missed much of the album's development. Instead, he worked on his lyrics in prison and recorded once he got out. 'The journey for me was different [with this album] being in jail; you can either sit there and waste your days or try to use the time wisely, so I started writing a lot,' he says. 'All you have is time to think about what you've done to end up there and what you'll do not to go back, so the minute I got out, I was straight into it.' 'I dropped that ball, time out, they threw me inside, I'm back on the bench.' Celly on Look At Me Now's Family The result is Look At Me Now, a sprawling 15-track album on which the group collaborates with several high-profile UK drill rappers, including Nemzzz, Headie One, and Abra Cadabra. The record also sees OneFour collaborate for the second time with the Kid Laroi on Distant Strangers. Laroi and OneFour first crossed paths when they were both coming up and have remained close throughout Laroi's success, with OneFour the opening act on his most recent tour of Australia. 'I get inspired by Laroi every time, any opportunity we get to be around him is a learning for us,' says Spenny. 'This is a guy on top, and he's still the same kid we knew from back in the day.' The release of Look At Me Now comes ahead of a nationwide tour in July and August that presents a familiar problem: they will play in every major city except Sydney. According to the group, NSW police continue to pressure venues by demanding extra user-pays-police (where officers are hired to police a private event paid for by the venue), leaving venues unwilling to host the band in their hometown. 'We don't blame the venues when they have to take a dive, but it's frustrating; our management has tried everything,' says J Emz. 'The police make it difficult for the shows to go ahead, so the venues have no option but to pull out.' In a statement , NSW Police said: 'We provide safety and security advice to venues, promoters, and other stakeholders ahead of major events. However, the decision as to whether an event will proceed lies with the relevant venue.' Loading J Emz admits that, for the first time, he'd encourage NSW Police to listen to their music. 'The message is: we're different now, we're good people,' he says. 'I don't want to be defined by what I did,' adds Celly. 'I served my time, suffered the consequences, and this is the next chapter.' Instead, the group had to settle for a special 'listening event' at a secret location in Western Sydney on Thursday night, where their album was played in full. The event was all-ages and alcohol-free, and while the group didn't perform, they were on hand to witness local fans hearing their debut album for the first time. The idea of OneFour, Sydney's most notorious drill crew, hosting a family-friendly album launch may seem at odds with their public persona. Or it's proof that they're hoping to change.
The Age
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
OneFour's message to the police: ‘We're different now. We're good people'
It seems fitting that the opening number on OneFour's debut album, Look At Me Now, is titled Change. A pulsing track that sees the group reckoning with the past and thinking about the future: 'And now the question is: will you remain the same?' raps Jerome 'J Emz' Misa over a heavy beat. 'Or are you willing to do whatever it takes to change?' Change has been the one constant in OneFour's turbulent 10-year history as Australia's most prominent hip-hop outfit, a period defined by upheaval, controversy, prison time and hype – anything but stability. Formed in 2014, the all-Pasifika rap crew from Mount Druitt in Western Sydney was initially composed of five members – brothers Jerome and Pio 'YP' Misa, Salec 'Lekks' Su'a, Dahcell 'Celly' Ramos, and Spencer 'Spenny' Magalogo. They quickly became the face of Australia's drill movement, a sub-genre of hip-hop that emerged from Chicago a decade ago. It is known for its faster, heavier sound and raw lyrics, often depicting gang culture. Adopting this style, OneFour infused it with a uniquely Western Sydney flavour, references to 'eshays' and 'lads' speaking to a subculture born from the very same streets they grew up in. It didn't take long for the group to tap into viral success, with songs like 2018's What You Know and 2019's Spot The Difference going platinum on the ARIA charts and racking up hundreds of millions of streams. As the buzz grew, so too did the accolades. ARIA nominations followed, while hip-hop superstars, including Skepta, Dave, A$AP Ferg, and the Kid Laroi, voiced their support for OneFour's warts-and-all portrait of street life in Mount Druitt. 'My district has too much drillers, like who wants it? Like who wants war with Sydney's realest?' Spot The Difference, OneFour But their meteoric rise was halted in 2019 when Lekks, Celly and YP were jailed for a pub brawl. That same year, a national tour was cancelled after venues began pulling out, something OneFour attributed to pressure from the police and confirmation that the group was being monitored by two elite police units – Strike Force Raptor, created to hunt underground criminal networks, and Strike Force Imbara, which investigates gang feuds. In a widely circulated voice memo supplied to the ABC, Sergeant Nathan Trueman from the Raptor squad promised, 'I'm going to use everything in my power to make your life miserable until you stop doing what you're doing.' The constant noise around OneFour only seemed to boost their infamy. Their shows continued to be cancelled while their streaming numbers skyrocketed (they have an impressive 2.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify). The release of a 2024 Netflix documentary, Against All Odds, broadened their reach yet reinforced the idea that the story of OneFour had become more important than the music they produced. 'Exactly right,' says J Emz. 'And that's why we needed a change. We're about the music, and we want people to know that.' I'm sitting with J Emz, Celly and Spenny in a back room of Sony Music's headquarters in Sydney's CBD. There are bowls of lollies on the table and slabs of soft drinks, but no one eats or drinks anything. This is the new look OneFour after a lineup change. YP left the group last year after becoming ordained as a Christian priest, while Lekks remains part of OneFour but was deported to New Zealand following his four-year prison sentence. J Emz sits opposite me, the group's elder statesman who does most of the talking. Alongside him is Celly, who was recently released after serving five years of his 10-year sentence for the brawl. Next to me is Spenny, who is softly spoken and polite but visibly uncomfortable with being interviewed. I ask them about that first track, Change, and whether the lyrics were born out of a challenge they set themselves. 'For sure, I don't think any of us can pretend we haven't made mistakes,' says J Emz. 'But we've grown up a lot. So much has happened in our career to knock us off track – some of that is our fault, some of it isn't, but we've gotten much better at holding each other accountable.' What does that look like? 'There have been some heated chats for sure,' admits J Emz, while Celly and Spenny nod in agreement. 'Sometimes I got to remind the boys what they're going back to if this doesn't work out.' No one knows that better than Celly, whose incarceration meant he missed much of the album's development. Instead, he worked on his lyrics in prison and recorded once he got out. 'The journey for me was different [with this album] being in jail; you can either sit there and waste your days or try to use the time wisely, so I started writing a lot,' he says. 'All you have is time to think about what you've done to end up there and what you'll do not to go back, so the minute I got out, I was straight into it.' 'I dropped that ball, time out, they threw me inside, I'm back on the bench.' Celly on Look At Me Now's Family The result is Look At Me Now, a sprawling 15-track album on which the group collaborates with several high-profile UK drill rappers, including Nemzzz, Headie One, and Abra Cadabra. The record also sees OneFour collaborate for the second time with the Kid Laroi on Distant Strangers. Laroi and OneFour first crossed paths when they were both coming up and have remained close throughout Laroi's success, with OneFour the opening act on his most recent tour of Australia. 'I get inspired by Laroi every time, any opportunity we get to be around him is a learning for us,' says Spenny. 'This is a guy on top, and he's still the same kid we knew from back in the day.' The release of Look At Me Now comes ahead of a nationwide tour in July and August that presents a familiar problem: they will play in every major city except Sydney. According to the group, NSW police continue to pressure venues by demanding extra user-pays-police (where officers are hired to police a private event paid for by the venue), leaving venues unwilling to host the band in their hometown. 'We don't blame the venues when they have to take a dive, but it's frustrating; our management has tried everything,' says J Emz. 'The police make it difficult for the shows to go ahead, so the venues have no option but to pull out.' In a statement , NSW Police said: 'We provide safety and security advice to venues, promoters, and other stakeholders ahead of major events. However, the decision as to whether an event will proceed lies with the relevant venue.' Loading J Emz admits that, for the first time, he'd encourage NSW Police to listen to their music. 'The message is: we're different now, we're good people,' he says. 'I don't want to be defined by what I did,' adds Celly. 'I served my time, suffered the consequences, and this is the next chapter.' Instead, the group had to settle for a special 'listening event' at a secret location in Western Sydney on Thursday night, where their album was played in full. The event was all-ages and alcohol-free, and while the group didn't perform, they were on hand to witness local fans hearing their debut album for the first time. The idea of OneFour, Sydney's most notorious drill crew, hosting a family-friendly album launch may seem at odds with their public persona. Or it's proof that they're hoping to change.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
OneFour on prison, police and their long-awaited debut: ‘We wouldn't be who we are today if we didn't go through that'
As evidence of what's changed for the Australian hip-hop act OneFour, the group's Jerome 'J Emz' Misa points to the blue sky behind him. 'Right now I'm going for a midday walk – I never used to do this back in the days!' the rapper laughs, his Zoom screen shaky as he puffs through the streets of western Sydney. 'Physically and mentally, I feel like there's been a lot of positive changes.' For one, while OneFour made their name as the first in Australia to embrace drill, a Chicago-born genre that tells often-nihilistic tales of street violence, J Emz no longer identifies as a driller. 'I'm an artist and a musician – and [my music] comes from that perspective,' he says. The group, who grew up together in Mount Druitt, were teenagers when they first started making music in a local youth centre. They're now in their mid-to-late-20s and have had 'a lot of time to reflect' on where young adulthood in one of Sydney's most disadvantaged postcodes took them. 'If you're Polynesian, you grow up in church, and you have certain principles and morals that you live by, that you're taught by parents,' J Emz says. 'But what we all had to go through in the street went against those principles or morals.' What they went through has been well documented. In 2019, the same year the group enjoyed breakthrough success with their single The Message, OneFour hit two major setbacks. First, three of the group's members were jailed over a violent pub brawl. Second, their lyrics were taken by New South Wales police as evidence the group were engaged in gang warfare. Strike Force Raptor, a specialised police squad created to tackle outlaw motorcycle gangs, made it their mission to stop OneFour from ever performing in Sydney – and have, so far, more or less succeeded. Despite the group's repeated denials of involvement in gang violence, the police have cancelled their tours, barred them from entering the Aria awards on the night they were nominated, and arrived with metal detectors and undercover officers to the premiere of their 2023 Netflix documentary. What should have been the start of a brilliant career sputtered and stalled, and maintaining momentum has been an issue. But it hasn't stopped them becoming heroes. As local hip-hop manager and tastemaker Christopher Kevin Au puts it: 'With OneFour, people are buying into much more than the music – they're attached to the story. The trajectory of OneFour has seen them become the ultimate underdog tale.' Now, OneFour are chewing over their journey on their long delayed debut album, Look At Me Now. 'The album is based on a story of overcoming the obstacles that we've had to experience, growing from the people we were when we first started making music to the people we are today,' J Emz says. 'Look at us now – and look at where we are with our careers now.' Today, OneFour are arguably the biggest act in Australian hip-hop (bar their friend and collaborator the Kid Laroi), with several multi-platinum singles to their name. While they have always been proudly independent, the group recently struck a distribution deal with Sony Music subsidiary The Orchard, lending them more institutional backing than they've ever had. It's at Sony's Sydney office that I meet three of the band's four core members for an initial group interview: J Emz, Dahcell 'Celly' Ramos and Spencer 'Spenny' Magalog. There have been some lineup shifts in recent years. As of 2023, all members of the band are now out of prison, though Salec 'Lekks' Su'a, who was born in Samoa but holds New Zealand citizenship, was deported to New Zealand after finishing his sentence. Last year the group's longtime manager stepped down from his role, and original member Pio 'YP' Misa (younger brother of J Emz) left to join the priesthood, a decision he discussed in a tearful Nine News interview. A condition of this interview was that YP's departure not be discussed, and with some awkward topics to skirt around, there is sometimes a stiffness in our conversation. But one thing the group is happy to talk about is the album. Look At Me Now packs plenty that will feel familiar to OneFour fans – eshay slang, gunshot samples, quintessentially Australian references to Coles, Penrith Panthers and Honda Civics, and pithy lines like 'They put money on our heads / We call that shit an op shop' (a reference to a recent alleged murder plot). But there's also a new introspection to many of the tracks. 'We show a different side of ourselves – we get a bit vulnerable,' J Emz says. That includes Phone Call, the group's first love song, featuring the R&B singer Mabel. But other tracks tackle big topics like the environments that raise us, how easy it can be to get caught up in the system, and what it means to pull yourself out of one sort of life and into another. There are bars about the young kids let down by our schools and the friends who've been sucked in by drugs and landed in prison. On the album opener Change, J Emz implores young listeners to learn from his mistakes; elsewhere, Spenny raps about waking up in cold sweats from the memories of things he's done. J Emz says he doesn't want to be a role model for anyone ('I don't want that spotlight'), but he's aware there is a younger generation who look up to OneFour, not just as hitmakers but as representatives of Mount Druitt and Pasifika people on the world stage. When I talked to fellow Mount Druitt hip-hop act Kapulet in 2020, he described the group's influence on the young people of their neighbourhood: 'Before, everyone used to want to be footy players. Now everyone wants to be a musician.' 'We know our music goes a long way, and it reaches a lot of people,' says J Emz. 'So when it came to the album itself, I feel like it is the right thing to do … to be that positive role model.' OneFour say the album is 'for those who want more' from life, and hope it motivates their listeners. They're disappointed they won't get to share it live with fans in their home town; while the group is set to visit the rest of the country as part of their album tour, a Sydney show still isn't possible: 'We've tried,' J Emz says. Instead, the group staged a listening party at a secret location in western Sydney on Thursday, where the album was played over a soundsystem. To date, the only times they've been able to perform in their home city are in festivals or supporting act slots. In their war against OneFour, NSW police have often hit venues hosting the band with prohibitive user-pays police bills that effectively force the gig's cancellation. Guardian Australia understands that the group's Sydney show with the Kid Laroi in November only went ahead after the payment of a six-figure police bill, funding several riot squads, horseback patrols, plus police at the perimeter of the show and at Parramatta station. In fact, across a seven-year career, OneFour have only played about 20 shows – a number any other artist would do within six months of an album tour. The official police line is that they fear 'antisocial behaviour' should OneFour be allowed to perform, which is exasperating for the band. 'We haven't had any major incidents involved with our shows,' says J Emz. 'Everything's gone safely. It's tough when you've been doing it for years, and it's just a matter of them [the police] just letting go of whatever they got against us.' It doesn't feel coincidental that this extraordinary level of police intervention has been exercised against a group of Pasifika men; for their part, NSW police have described their own actions as 'lawfully harassing' the band. When I ask the usually chatty J Emz if it feels like discrimination, he has only one word in answer, which arrives to the awkward laughter of his bandmates: 'Yes.' But OneFour are surprisingly positive about what they have gone through and what's to come. 'We wouldn't be who we are today if we didn't go through that stuff, if it was just a walk in the park,' says J Emz. 'I feel like that's why people resonate with our music and find it so authentic.' OneFour are, J Emz feels, 'a living example of what's possible with music'. Spenny agrees: 'Without music I would have ended up on a different path, a whole different lifestyle … music for me, changed me – and basically saved my life.' Now, he just wants people – and the police – to understand what most other artists don't have to spell out: 'We're musicians. We love our craft, and we're just trying to get our story out to the world.' Look At Me Now is out 13 June (Sony Music). OneFour are touring Australia from 21 June.
