- It's so cool being like the creator of the vibe,
being up there
and making something that people want to dance to.
We are the vibe controllers.
We get the party started.
We get people moving,
like it's an honour
to be able to do that.
Ko Tainui te waka Ko Hoturoa te tangata Ko Tararua te pae maunga Ko Waiwiri te roto
Ko Ohau te awa Ko Ngāti Raukawa te iwi Ko Ngāti Pākehā te iwi Ko Ngāti Huia te hapū Ko Kikopiri te marae
He kaipūoro ahau He kaipao ahau He kaitito waiata
Creator of vibes.
We're at the Brooklyn gun emplacements.
This is one of the spots I use to come up to as a kid and muck around with my mates, dope spot.
You see all of Wellington down to the city,
Harbour and down to Cook Strait.
And Wellington man, was a dope place to grow up.
It is really a cool creative capital, you know.
First 21 years of my life I was here.
I'm still pretty cadence to the Wellington music scene.
Yeah, even though I'm not here that much.
Today is the "Grey Lynn festival,"
which is a bit of like a iconic festival in Auckland,
that marks the start of summer.
It's the first like the outdoorsy
kind of festivals around Auckland.
Yeah, it's cool, whānau friendly kind of event.
Lots of tamariki running around.
It's cool 'cause you can see everyone's faces.
You know, if you're doing like big shows at night
and clubs and stuff like as real dark
and you can't really see what's going on,
but like these full daytime gigs.
I feel it was way more intimate,
even though it's like massive
and you're in the middle of a field.
That's a cool feeling and, you know, keeps me motivated
to get back in the studio and make more bangers.
In my whānau the Māori culture
was kinda lost a few generations back
during the period where it wasn't cool to be Māori.
Luckily for me, my mom fell in love with the culture
and fell in love with Te Ao Māori.
So I grew up going along to her te reo lessons
to various things that grounded me in Te Ao Māori
and helped make me who I am today.
- Well it was a part of a long journey around identifying
myself as Māori, I suppose.
I grew up knowing we had Māori whakapapa
and calling myself part Māori.
So it took a while to get to a place where
I felt able to say,
"I am Māori."
And then of course, you know, come to the marae.
And bring whānau, back to the marae
was significant for us.
I suppose I was affected by the whole cultural Renaissance
over the 1980s there was a time when it was buzzy,
thing that was happening around
the revival of the reo, in our customs, in our politics.
- Kog is a studio out in Titirangi
just on the edge of the Waitakere Ranges.
And Kog studio have been going
for like 20 years in New Zealand.
They've been a big part of all these amazing artists
like P-money and Scribe and Peter T and Shapeshifter.
Made a single, made a couple more singles,
funded singles with them.
I just got along with them so well
that we decided to keep working together
and kind of make a co-label and go release the album.
- It's important to have someone like Rei
because he represents the now.
Yeah, he is the current hybridization
of all these worlds that have come together
and this whole new Renaissance
that's coming through culturally in New Zealand.
No one else can take Te Reo Māori to the world
really apart from someone who comes from
the world of Te Reo Māori.
And that's unique, but mixing it in a way
with the totally cutting edge pop and urban music
is also something that no one's really doing.
And so he's the first of that wave,
which is a really nice place to be.
So a couple of years ago whānau I dropped my first fully Te Reo Māori EP.
Te Reo Māori that's an important part of who I am, and its also
an important part of who are as Kiwi's, am i right?
During my tour around the country,
it was so dope to see people singing
and rapping my English lyrics
as well as my Te Reo Māori lyrics back to me.
I think that's awesome that my music is helping,
you know, solidifying Te Reo in our culture in New Zealand.
When you actually are on stage seeing people
have this connection to your music,
that's a beautiful thing.
- The most important members of society
are those people that mediate or bridge between two worlds.
And that music is the art form that can do that.
But I think the interest, especially from the younger people
under the age of 30 is really, really good.
They're really open to it and
they're really wanting it to be really modernised
and current so it can drop into a standard DJ set
with all the international tracks.
- I don't make traditionally type Māori music.
I do it my way, I push it forward, I pushed the envelope,
I rap about things that no one else is gonna rap about.
- Yeah, so Hape is like a mentor to him.
That's why he's kind of standing on top of him.
- Yeah.
- Beautiful.
He tino taonga tō tātou reo rangatira. It's a language at risk,
so it's important to
keep it alive, keep it strong,
keep it moving into the future.
But I suppose everybody wants to find a point of difference,
something that adds richness and dips to who we are.
- Yeah.
- And so I'm really proud of you
that you
you express it through your music
and your beautiful kupu Māori.
- I'm a bridge,
I don't have to belong to just one culture.
Occupy this one space,
so I can be this in-between.
And I think that's a really important realisation
for people with mixed whakapapa to come to.