Kobie Dee - Storytelling and lifting up First Nations communities through the power of music.

In this episode, Caroline is joined by Kobie Dee, hailed as one of the most exciting voices in Australian hip hop. Kobie Dee, a Gomeroi artist from Maroubra in South Sydney, Bidjigal Land.  Through songs like "Statistic," "Father's Eyes," and "Still Standing," (to name a few) Kobie is using his love and passion for music and performing to create powerful messages and stories, using hip hop music as a vehicle for change.

In this episode, Caroline and Kobie Dee yarn about Kobie’s music journey, where he draws inspiration and how he creates powerful messages and stories, using hip hop music as a vehicle for change. They yarn about his passion for guiding and uplifting his community through performance and providing artistic mentoring opportunities. He has a talent for connecting with youth, and he yarns about the new recording studio he’s opening in his home town of Maroubra and how he hopes it will inspire future generations to connect with their culture and ancestors. 

They also explore Kobie's personal journey into fatherhood. Gain unique insights into Kobie Dee's tracks and songwriting process, particularly for his latest song "Statistic," guaranteed to find its way onto your playlist

To keep up to date with all the deadly work Kobie Dee is doing, make sure to follow him on social media @kobiedee47

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and don’t forget to follow the show! 

Follow Caroline on Instagram @blak_wattle_coaching and learn more about working with Caroline here! 

We would like to acknowledge Aboriginal people as Australia’s First Peoples’ who have never ceded their sovereignty. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri/Woiwurrung people of the Kulin Nation where the podcast was taped. We pay our deepest respects to Traditional Owners across Australia and Elders past, present and emerging.

This podcast was brought to you by On Track Studio.

www.ontrackstudio.com.au

@on.track.studio

For advertising opportunities please email hello@ontrackstudio.com.au

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

SPEAKER_08 0:00

This podcast is brought to you by On-Track Studio. Welcome to Yarning Up, the podcast that showcases First Nations stories and conversations to help us learn and unlearn Australia's history to work towards a better future. I'm your host, Proud Barbara Woman and founder of Black Model Coaching and Consulting, Caroline Cow. We acknowledge the Rurundari people and elders where this podcast is taped, but we also acknowledge the land that you are listening in from today. It always was and always will be unceded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land. Well, I'm really looking forward to today's conversation. I'm in the presence of Gomorroy greatness. I'm really looking forward to connecting with this singer, songwriter, rapper, someone who is truth telling, storytelling, and connecting with a lot of our young ones and Australia more broadly. Yeah, today I'm sitting down with Kobe Duncan, or as we know him as Kobe D. Welcome to the show, my bro.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Thank you, sis. I'm glad to be here and thanks for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_08 1:26

I was super fangirly because I got an opportunity to see you perform in the flesh this week at the fellowship program. Yeah, it was such a beautiful space that was created. And it was just so nice to sort of hear you perform and the work that you're doing to support young ones along the way.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

Yeah, it was mad down there just to see everything that they've been doing over the past 12 months. I think they said they've been doing the workshop stuff for. And then I did that uh men's workshop earlier on in that day. And I could just feel the connection between the men there, the young men there. And yeah, it was just a powerful day. And then just to yeah, be there to celebrate them finishing up was mad.

SPEAKER_08 2:06

Well, as we do on this show, we always like to start by getting to know you. So I wanted to start, bro, with yeah, just talking about who's your mob and maybe share a little bit about where you grew up.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Yeah, so I'm I'm a Gomorray Wadi Wadi man. Gomorroy from my father's side and Wadi Wadi from my mother's side. But I grew up here on Bijigo Country, born and raised here on Bijigal Country, and I'm still here today. You know, my my partner's uh uh uh a Bijagul woman, and you know, so my son is a Bijigal man, and like, you know, so it's like it feels good to be out here and and still living out here because uh I'm Wadi Wadi, so it's still part of the Daryl Nation. So same like nation up here as well. So in a sense, I'm still living on country as well. And so it feels good. Like I've always I've grown up here and have the privilege of learning um a lot of culture out here, you know, um through school and and and stuff like that, as as through preschool, uh learning language and stuff like that. And then in school, we had I was very fortunate enough to be able to do dancing and all that stuff. So that's why I love still living in this area, you know, and I love that I I can say that with my kids as well.

SPEAKER_08 3:11

How special to be able to kind of like anchor your roots in a place where your your land, your country, your people, and then be able to share that with the little Jarjans as well. I imagine that's yeah, really special to stay. You grew up in Marubra, is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like what a beachside town in like the eastern suburbs of Sydney or like Yeah, so it's like you know where La Peruz is?

SPEAKER_03 3:35

Yeah, yeah. So we're just like pretty much right next to La Peruz, you know. You got La Peruz, then you got Maruba, Malabar, Little Bay and La Peruz, Southeast Sydney, and yeah, we've got the beach like five minutes down the road. You know, it's a beautiful area. For me, it's like I think we took for granted living so close to the beach, especially when I started going back up to Maury and that, and there's no beaches out there. And I start like realizing like I should be going to the beach a lot more, you know. Yeah, this is this is where I feel feel most at home, you know. I've tried to live other places, moved back to Maury for a bit when I was younger in my younger days, and just trying to reconnect back with family and stuff like that, you know. And I've lived on the central coast for a little bit, but I've always found myself back here. I even lived in the city here in Sydney a little bit, which is only half an hour from here, and even that didn't feel the same, you know.

SPEAKER_08 4:25

And what was Maruba like growing up as a young fella, and what was it like for you?

SPEAKER_03 4:30

It had its um pros and cons, you know. I I think as as a lot of neighborhoods growing up, I was always, you know, we was always out to the street lights come on, you know, and like I loved loved that as a kid, and all my mates, they live so close. Yeah, we'd just be out all the time, you know. It was fun and I loved being out here, but then there was also, you know, we were exposed to a lot of different things. I mean, there's a lot of drugs and alcohol in Marubra, and you know, always fights and and stuff like that. So there was always that side of it too, but it was always exciting, I guess. There's always something exciting happening. As I got older, it quieted down a lot. But yeah, I've I've always just I've always loved growing up here. And like I said, I just can't get away. I want to do more here as well, you know. Like I'm I'm about to open a studio here in in Maruba, you know, and I want to continue to do that stuff. I feel like so many people are just like, I'm I'm working to get out of here, you know. And for me, it's like I'm working to stay here and and build here, you know, create like the things in here in this community that I want to see for our kids, you know, our next generation. And that's what keeps me here as well, is like I just feel like there's so much to do here in in my community and it definitely keeps me me still here.

SPEAKER_08 5:42

Yeah, a lot of us who yeah want to move out, like you say, as fast as we can, but you know, tending to our roots, coming back to where we've grown up and helping to build and shape the community where you're from is yeah, pretty special. Look, bro, you have been described as a powerful and master storyteller. Triple J have also called you one of the most exciting new voices in Australian hip hop. I mean, you have been making music on a like public stage for the last seven years when you released your first song Right Now.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Right now, right now, right now, right now, right now. I'm gonna get on my right now.

SPEAKER_08 6:19

What inspired you to start getting into music?

SPEAKER_03 6:22

I've always been involved with music, I've always loved music. I also come from a family that loved music as well. My mom was always someone that she needed, she always had music on when she was cleaning, or she always had music on when she was doing something, you know. So I think I picked it up at a young age, listened to like Usher and um Erica Badu and all those kind of artists. So I always grew up with music. And my uncles were really good guitar players that were living in a casino on Bunjalung Country. Go up there and we'd see them. They were just some of the best guitar players, like even to this day. Like I still feel like they're the best guitar players ever, you know, and they just could play any song and they taught themselves. Found a bit of a passion for for guitar when I was younger because of my uncles. And and I think just growing up, I started dancing a lot more too, like traditional dancing, but also like hip-hop dancing. And um, I just found like a love and a passion for it. It was around like 10 years old when I first wrote my first rap. And that was coming from the experience of listening to my mom listen to Easy E. And there was just something about Easy Does It, the song was, and it was something about it, I don't know what it was, but it was like something in me was like, I want to do this, or something in me that said I can do this. And so I wrote my first rap, and I was just pulling together just different things that I've heard in different raps, and you know, then coming up with my own rhymes and speaking about stuff that a 10-year-old shouldn't have been speaking about, but it was like it was my first experience of like creating something like that, you know, or telling a story like that. And then I showed my mum, and my mum was like, my mum was a bit surprised that I could even rhyme, that I could even like at such a young age, you know. And but she was like, you can't be talking about that stuff, like because I was just copying Easy E, you know, speaking about stuff I didn't even know anything about, you know, but that's what I heard, and like it's the same with today, you know, like I speak about things that I see, I speak about things that I hear, I speak about things that happened in my life, you know. And so it turned into speaking about what I heard from other artists, like Easy E. And then it turned into speaking about what I see in my community, and it turned into speaking about what I feel and all these different things, and I just I kind of let myself become the vessel for for storytelling of the things that I experienced, things that I see. And over the years, like I've I've learned to understand it more as a young fan, like I'm just a rapper, you know. I just I'm just good at it. But for now, like I I think it's it's a much deeper thing, you know. Our people are storytellers, and our people were the first, original storytellers, you know. Everything that we learned was passed down through song, dance, art, and it was all stories. We didn't have anything written down. Like we have thousands and thousands of years of knowledge from just words of mouth. Things that happened like 50,000 years, 60,000 years, you know, um, that have just been passed down through stories. So for me, I feel like it's there's something in there that from our ancestors that like you know, in our genes that we're we're made for storytelling, even like sitting here and like when you've made like this podcast, you know, it's a space to sit here and tell our stories, and it's I feel like it's just in our genes. So for me, I just feel like I'm just carrying on that tradition of storytelling, but telling the stories of today. And these are the songs that are gonna be heard for generations to come, you know. So that's the way I see it now, and and that's that's definitely why I will never change that about my my art is I'm always gonna tell stories and I'm always going to speak about stuff that means stuff to me and what I um want to bring awareness to as well, because it's a form of education as well, to educate people.

SPEAKER_08 10:03

Yeah, you're right, bro. Like black fellas, it it inspires me and blows my mind in so many ways. Like we all have this innate desire to share black stories, to to be in the business of truth telling, of black joy. Just to see how mob are continuing these like ancient traditions, but in like this more contemporary way, and the storytelling process is still ongoing and evolving like us. The thing I really admire about your music is that you don't shy away from telling some of the hard yarns too, and some of these experiences, like being a young black man growing up in so-called Australia, the realities of our lives and how tricky they can be. You know, some of the stories that you share in your yarns are so powerful, but they're also difficult at times to listen to, you know, they're your lived experiences. One of my favorite songs of yours is Jodi.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

And they used to play and pretend.

SPEAKER_08 11:12

I love that song. And I want to just sort of speak a little bit around like your kind of creative writing process and writing from your lived experience. Songs like Jody and About a Girl and role models. Like, how do you sit back and kind of make sense of these feelings and experiences and then convert them into art?

SPEAKER_03 11:32

Well, it's most of those songs, they come from pure emotion.

SPEAKER_08 11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

You know, and it was from a spark of inspiration, of feeling moved by maybe a story that I've heard from something that I had experienced that day. Something in me just says, You need to write about that. I need to create a story to explain what I'm feeling. And that's where a lot of that comes from. Like Jody, I wrote Jody when I was like 18, even about a girl. Like I wrote about a girl not long after.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

She was 17, going out and smoking weedy with the dope things in a face to just follow all her friends things.

SPEAKER_03 12:11

And this life, I wrote this life, like around the same time.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

It's last day, post-to-praystone, break, it's lasting, post-pop post-op, it's life, my break, my brain, it's life, my take my soul.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

Around that time when I had so much going on in my life, I was feeling all these different emotions, and I just had a lot of different experiences that I just had something in me that just said, you need to write, you need to write, you need to write about this. And I still get that today. And like that's what makes it hard with being in the industry now because it's like for me, I used to just write whenever I've got that feeling, you know, and I'd never force myself to write. So now where I'm in the industry and there's deadlines and there's expectations and there's all this, and it's like it's very different now to where I'm like, all right, this is I need to be here on this set day, and I I need to write, but I still get those like statistics.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

But am I being realistic for trying to get these messages to the ones that might have missed it? We only get one life, so why risk it? Man, fuck being a statistic. It's not a good idea.

SPEAKER_03 13:16

An example of I had that feeling and I got that feeling, you know, and that was just I just so happened to already be in the studio working on a different song that day, you know. That feeling just comes and goes sometimes. And that that feeling from for statistics comes from a conversation with my producer who is non-Indigenous, you know, and just all it started was was just speaking about that feeling of being as young as 10 and feeling like I'm gonna go to jail at some point in my life. Just speaking about that, and then I got that feeling of because he said it to me, he goes, We should put that down. And I just I had that feeling of yeah, like I it is like it's an important story to tell. And I didn't know which direction that song was gonna go, you know. I just started off speaking just about that, and then it turned into what it did. And it was one of those songs like Jody, Songs Like About a Girl, and Statistic, like those three, I had kind of the same process. Like when I was 18, I used to just be able to write whenever I wanted, you know. Now I've got like three kids and you know, like life and like yeah, I can't just sit there and just write, you know. But with statistic, like we've sorry, going back to Jody, that song, like I started writing because something had happened. I don't know if I seen something on the news or I seen it was something to do with someone had gone to jail and people were just like putting them down. Say something, and I I wanted to speak about a story where it shows the background of why they ended up in jail. At the end, you hear like Ben and Cody, they leave with the money and like all this stuff, and Jody ends up dying, and you know, but I wanted to tell their backstories of how they ended up in that position because once that happens, the news reports Jody died robbing a bank. Yeah, Cody and Ben, two fugitives on the run, you know? And people are just like, Oh my god, like boom. But then when you hear that whole story, feel for them. For me, that comes from I remember sitting at, I was at my mates, he was telling me about his uncles. They come in and he's like, Oh, they don't know robbing a bank, like this, this, and that. And like, I remember just being young and thinking, like, what they robbed a bank, and like now that stuck with me, and then hearing about like, because like back in the day it was obviously a lot more common than what it is today. But that story like stuck with me, and then looking at his uncle, I grew up with his uncle, you know. I grew up like and could never see him for that. That was kind of an inspiration for that as well. But yeah, going back to it, it was just like I wanted to speak about what people don't see. So I sat up all night until like three in the morning, three, four in the morning until I finished that song. And that was just sitting in my bed. I had headphones on, finished that. And then about a girl, I wrote that not so long after. And that was an experience of one of the girls in my neighborhood. I remember seeing her and and remembering her, you know, she had been on drugs and stuff, and I just remember seeing her and kind of remembering before she went down that path. And the story wasn't a hundred percent about her, like it was obviously added different things with different stories that I heard, but it was inspired just by that. And I thought, like, I want to, I want to tell that story. And I wrote that until the sun came up, you know. Like I just I sat there all night because I couldn't stop writing, and then statistic was the same. I started in the studio and I wrote a few bars, and then I went home and it was like I try to go to sleep and I'd just like I'd be up and I'd just be writing again. And uh those type of moments are special. So, like, yeah, my my writing process is very different a lot of the time. Sometimes it's like it's I'm going in there and I'm just like, I'm just gonna write what I can today, and sometimes it might, I might get that feeling in the middle of writing. Sometimes I have a warm-up write and I'll like write to a beat off YouTube just for uh to get me warmed up, and then I'll start working on the beat that I want to work on, you know. Yeah, it's different. Like that's what being creative is, you just let it flow and you you do whatever feels right.

SPEAKER_08 17:13

It sort of circles back to that point you were saying earlier about, you know, mobbing some of the older storytellers. I imagine when you're in that flow and you're in that state, it's just the ancestors like pouring through you whatever needs to come out. And I think this is the thing that you do so well, bro. I mean, there's many things. I know that you're doing so much stuff outside of just music, but sharing these yarns for young fellas. But you know, I think sometimes it is very easy to think of in a story like the good, the bad, or the victor, the villain, you know, even with black fellas that were either, you know, good or bad, or, you know, just real binary sort of projections of who we are that really don't see all the complexities of why people who are experiencing pain might make decisions that aren't the best for them as a way to sort of survive and cope. And I think this is the thing that you do so beautifully is you portray the depth of a story, and we get to see so much of this character. But I imagine, you know, when you're trying to keep everyone happy now that you're with an industry, finding time to honor the story, honor your own lived experience, make sense of some of these things in your life would be would be tricky, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:32

Yeah, definitely. Because it's like I always want to stay true to myself as well, you know. And yeah, I definitely want to experiment and try new things with music, but I don't want to ever be in a position of like I'm just doing this to see if people like it. It's always coming from a place now of like making music that I want to make, and I'm making music that feels right to me. It's it's always just staying true to myself, and that that's what I keep telling myself, you know, is like, is this me? Someone said it to me before they said, like, because I made a song and then they're like, Do you like it? And I'm like, Yeah, I guess. I said, like, people might like it, and they're like, but is this something that you would listen to? And I was like, no, it's actually not. Like, and that was a moment for me of like, I shouldn't be making anything that I wouldn't listen to, just thinking like, oh, maybe someone else will listen to this, you know. So yeah, I try to try to stick with that now and opening this studio in my neighborhood, like as well. It's like there's gonna for me creatively, it'll be massive. One, having my own space to to go and be creative, and you know, like because having kids at the moment, where do you find the time? Yeah, yeah, and it's like everything's very scheduled, you know. Creatively, it's gonna be massive, but also I think working with young people for me is something the more workshops and stuff that I've done with young people, because that's what this studio is about. It's about getting young people in and teaching them how to make music and stuff. That's the whole aim for this studio. The more workshop stuff that I have done in the past, the more like it inspires me because I'm watching these young people learn to make music for the first time, and it takes me back to when I was first learning to write and learning flows and learning how to put certain words together and melodies and like all these things. Teaching young people reminds me of how I started. It's so inspiring. So I'm just I'm super excited to have a space like that here because we don't have anything like that, you know. Our people are so creative. I feel like it's good that we have so much sports, like we have so much things, we have so many gyms here, we have so much to do with sports and and physical activity, and and that's great. Like we need physical activity, but our people also need a creative outlet, and we need these spaces where we can express ourselves through art and stuff like that. You know, when I was in uh down in Nam, uh where we did the young men's uh workshop in the morning before the graduation for the fellowship, and we was talking about like so much of our bubble boys that go to jail and they paint and they just paint heaps in there and they're the most beautiful paintings ever. And then they come out and they they stop painting and you you don't see them paint at all. And it's like, imagine if they had a space where they could go and they they could um, you know, they had the resources to go and paint freely and and because it's like it can't just be a place that they they just do it when they're in jail, because then it's like they feel like they can only express themselves in those certain places, you know? Creating that space for for people to feel comfortable to come in and to create because that's what that's what we're about. We're so we're such creative people. So just I'm super excited to to create that space for for so many young people around you.

SPEAKER_08 21:48

So deadly. And this is the beautiful thing about like blackfellas in arts, you know, not only are you making music so that us, other blackfellas in the colony, can you know make sense. Of ourselves, make sense of each other, but then also thinking about how we create these legacies and foundations for the next gen. I mean, that sounds amazing. So you'll be starting up a studio where young fellas can come down and yeah, like learn how to do some freestyle and learn how to like put down some tracks and kind of just make sense of their lives. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:21

Well, all of it really, like beats, they'll be able to learn to make beats. I got a podcast room in there, like amazing people. If they want to start their own podcast, you know, we're gonna have like a room there for that. Pretty much anything to do with music, we're gonna we're gonna be teaching in there, you know. Kids can learn and make their own beats for their friends that rap. Yeah, you know, singing, like all of that. Like we're we're gonna have it all, you know. It's it's uh super exciting. And then yeah, the podcast room is like just another element of storytelling, like and creativeness. That there's so many good yarns that are gonna come out of that, and just another platform for young people to make for themselves.

SPEAKER_08 22:57

It's like real mind-blowing when you think about it. And even you said it before about like you're sharing stories and we're doing podcasts and thinking about young fellas like creating these like time capsules or archiving some of these stories like for the public, but for themselves, and to just have them permanently there. Yeah, that's that's amazing to hear that you're creating a studio, a place for you to go write and to to share with the mob there. I want to I want to kind of flip back to what you were saying before a little bit about your new song, Statistic. And, you know, the song starts with, you know, picture yourself being 10 years old and having vision stuck in a prison caused by the stories that we're told. I mean, the beat is incredible, but the lyrics are so powerful, talking about, you know, as black fellas, we, you know, we we believe what we what we hear and what we see about us and that we are these statistics. And this is why having places like the studios and other places where mob can connect, like the programme we were yarning about before, is just so important to have places for young people to come together. But I want to just ask you about this latest single and and maybe if you could just share like what does the song mean for you and what do you hope that you know people who interact with it can feel and experience?

SPEAKER_03 24:15

I think for me is a lot of it was speaking about being a young fellow and feeling like I was gonna go to jail or still feeling like I'm gonna go to jail at some point in my life. Speaking about that, I felt like like I know there's more followers out there that relate to that. There was something in there that I like I wanted people that have gone through that or still feel like that to relate to that and know that there's more of us that feel like that. Even speaking with, you know, my producer, even he was kind of like, What? That was a moment of like, all right, I know there's people that don't get that. There's a lot of people that were just normal kids and never thought about jail. For me, it was like hear about it so much, and even just the stereotypes of black people go to jail. You know, it's a massive thing. And speaking about fathers as well, like as another stereotype of black we're not good fathers and we we don't have fathers in the house. And these are things that as a kid, you hear these things so much that you just believe them. And I just thought we just don't have dads. I just thought it's because we're black, you know, like we don't have dads. I thought that, you know, my older cousins or older boys in the neighborhood were going to jail because they're black. It's stuff that we're told as kids, you know, those stereotypes. And and in this song, I wanted to speak about also of like where that comes from. And I I say in one of the lines, Took our fathers, never knew it, they'd be seen again, and wonder why this dead beat dads, our generation's pain. And I speak about that because like you think of how many fathers that they took out of households and locked them up for nothing. And don't think that that's gonna have a f an effect on the children and the way that the children's parent, or you know, the intergenerational trauma and that butterfly effect of taking our fathers out of the house. That was a big tactic for for colonizers, you know, to take the fathers out of the house. And you see it in so many places of of people of colour, like they take the fathers out of the house, and it's like it's part of the plan, you know. And I wanted to speak about that, and I wanted to speak about yeah, where all that comes from because we didn't have no prisons before colonization, you know, like how can we be the most incarcerated people in the world and it be our fault when we didn't even have prisons before white people came? Like it just doesn't make sense. So I wanted to speak about that stuff, and then I wanted to speak about so many of our mob dying at young ages, you know, and and speaking about not seeing our elders make it past 80 or not seeing a lot of our elders make it into the older ages because of the substances and and the the foods and like all these things that were introduced to us that have just ruined our bodies, and a big reason why we're so high in um heart attacks and diabetes and all these different things because of colonization, you know, and like for me it was like I wanted to just remind people like this is why. You know, people people love to, you know, like white people love to say, Oh, um, if we never came, you should still be walking around naked, and um we've like, or they'll say, like, give us our technology back if you don't like the white man and like we made your lives better. And it's like, how? We're we're the highest incarcerated, we're the highest rates of of suicide, we're the highest rates of in the in the healthcare system things, it's like, how can you say our lives are better now? And it's hard to put that in such a short song, too. Yeah, yeah, you know, and I think for me it's like it starts a conversation at least. And you know, I coped a lot of racist comments on it as well, like because you look up the life expectancy before colonization and there's like one thing about it, and someone's like, Oh, you just lived to 40. I do not believe that for a second. Like, how can we have had no diseases, no sicknesses, no nothing, no sugar, like no other the bad sugars, and lived on such a healthy diet, and you're telling me we only lived to 40?

SPEAKER_08 28:03

You don't have to look too far to have a look at the the IATS map where you can see like thousands of different language groups, nations, families, clans, like working together with this like complex system of working with each other, working with land, working with water to know that we weren't like thriving in abundance. I mean, we wouldn't have been able to have that many mobs and groups if not. I mean, the fact that we're able to maintain our own ways and customs and knowledges is pretty telling. And I think this is the thing that is just so, so special about your music is that, yeah, you do talk about this like black male experience. Migalus have this view that, you know, we're unwell or unhealthy because we're all criminals and we're all, you know, not eating vegetables and going to the doctors and all of that. But there are like this real pervasive systemic racism. The impacts of colonization is so entrenched into our families, transgenerational, intergenerational trauma. And I think the way that, yeah, it is a it's a huge topic. The beautiful thing is that your work is more than just music that mob can feel, but it's like advocating for change and like this like kind of like reclamation of our stories through acknowledging the colonial experience and racism and why people might fall through the cracks and and might make some decisions, but also like helping to sort of put this in people's face and being like, hey, this is the message. It's not just a music that you're making for yourself or for your career, unlike maybe other Migaloo writers, but this is about creating change. We'll be back, you mob, right after this short break. I want to ask you a little bit about, you know, you mentioned before, got three little ones, and you wrote a beautiful song with Stan Walker called Father's Eyes. Um, you know, kind of building on this notion of, you know, the black male experience, being a black father. And you're right, it was a tactic to break up our families in that way. And so, yeah, it's a beautiful song, bro. I I I love it so much. How has becoming a dad kind of influenced your perspective on yes, some of your new music?

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Just in life in general, everything and like that includes my music. Being a father has changed everything for me. First became a father five years ago now. Back in 2019, my daughter was born. And you know, before that, I was very lost. I was heavy in addiction. I hated myself, had no like self-love, I had no self-confidence. I think when you listen to a lot of my music back then as well, like you can hear it. I was just like still trying to figure out who I am as a person. And around the time that she was born, being an addiction and all that stuff, you know, I thought that when she was born, I was gonna just change. I thought when she's born, I'm gonna stop doing drugs and I'm gonna stop drinking and all this, and it just didn't happen like that. She was born and I was there when she was born. Like me and her mother weren't together at the time, you know. So it was like I I was there when she was born, but then I was gone the next day. I was still seeing her, like she would come to my mom's, like just still a newborn. And when she was at my mom's, I'd stay at my mom's. And it wasn't until about three months in, when she was three months old, that I was like, I'm not being the father that I know I want to be. I started thinking about my own father, and you know, my father left when I was about six years old. He had his own addictions, he had his own traumas, he had his own stuff. Stuff I never thought about until having a kid myself. I always said I never wanted to be like my father, you know. I didn't meet my dad again until I was about 14. I knew the impact that it had on me, and I just knew I never ever wanted to do that to my kids. So when I started seeing myself become my father, it was like a moment for me of like something needs to change. And it took for me, all it really took was for me to tell people this is how I'm feeling, and I have a problem. Still to this day, I'm very fortunate enough to have the best support around me. I reached out to some people that I'm not very close with, and they just didn't stop trying to get me into a detox and get me into rehab. I said I was ready and I wanted to do it, but it took a few times for them to drive me to the door of detox, and I was like, I'm not going. But they didn't stop every day. Um, they'd call and they'd call just to make sure I was alive. That's such a dark point in my life, and I ended up going to detox and I was in detox for about two weeks, and then I was in rehab for about four months. And those four months in rehab were like the longest I've ever been away from drugs and alcohol since I was like 14. 14 when I first started taking like drugs, it was almost instantly like at 14, I was doing them every weekend. As soon as I got that taste for it, it was like it was I was smoking yandy every day, and I was popping ecstasy pills on the weekends, you know. And it was just an every weekend thing. And I never ever questioned it, you know, because everyone was doing it. So if it took me to be in rehab and and take that time away, and I was seeing my daughter every weekend, every weekend leave that I had. And the more I detoxed from those drugs and the more time I spent with my daughter, it allowed that love to come through. And I just got this overwhelming feeling of love and connection. And it came with a lot of guilt as well. Even though she was only three months old, I I just started feeling this like massive amount of guilt. I could have carried this on and she would have felt like me as a kid. So there was all that guilt, and then about with that guilt came that self-reflection, and I had so much time to self-reflect on like I'm I don't want to be that person, you know. And when I come out of rehab, I started connecting back to culture a lot more as well. And connecting back to culture was a massive thing for me. That was the turning point for me. And when my daughter was about 18 months old, I ended up getting custody of my daughter, and my daughters, I've had custody of her since then. She was gonna be five in April now. So being a full-time father, also balancing this stuff, it had to change me, you know. There's so much things I had to change about myself, especially being a father to a daughter. Being a young father, I was like players all the time, and like uh I had like, you know, I was in different relationships and all this, and it's like, but having a daughter made me sit back and think, I don't want my daughter to see me just with different women all the time. I don't want my daughter to think that that's normal. I want my daughter to see me, and and I want to lead by example of the standard of what men she she should have in her life. And I still live by that today. Trying to be a good man in front of my kids because I want my kids to see that. I want my kids to see with my partner like the love I have for her and stuff like that, is especially having a son now as well. Again, leading by example, but also me wanting to there's so many things that I want to teach him as a man that I didn't get taught by my father. There's so much that's changed, and and the way it like appears in my music is I think just the growth. I'm speaking about a lot of different stuff now, and I'm coming from a place of experience. Where before it was like I'm I'm coming from a place of I'm not sure about my addictions, I'm not sure about myself, I'm not sure about, you know, like those kind of things. So when now I'm like I'm speaking from experience that this is what I've been through. This is my story. And if that can help other people, especially young people that are going down that same path, then that's what I'm writing for, you know.

SPEAKER_08 35:42

So I just want to say, yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think sometimes like we think about addiction being something so far away from us, or it's like someone who's doing it so tough, and you have to like hit rock bottom, I guess. But there are a lot of people that probably listening who's you know battling cycles of addiction or has had it touch all of us in some way. And it's so beautiful to hear these stories to normalize these yarns. You know, in thinking about this conversation, thinking about, you know, where where you've been, where you're going with the studio, bringing young mob along the journey, helping to lay these foundations. You know, any advice for any of our young mob right now who are listening who might be wanting to get into hip hop or music generally, or just feeling their feels as a young person trying to navigate right now.

SPEAKER_03 36:33

I always say, like whenever someone asks me advice for the youth, I always say, be yourself, be a hundred percent yourself. You know, never be afraid to be who you are. And as far as like hip hop and and stuff like that, I'd say like tell your story. One, a story is so unique, but there's also a lot of people that might be going through something similar, but your story is your story, and your story needs to be heard. So, yeah, I just say be true to yourself and and tell your story.

SPEAKER_08 37:04

So simple, but so so power, such a courageous act. Just to be yourself, never forget who you come from, never forget where you're going, and yeah, to tell your story. You know, it's it's funny in my line of work is a coach and is holding space for doing group work in community, you know. There's nothing more powerful and like special and sacred than having a space, like you say, where mob can make sense of their lives and their experiences and share their yarns and share their stories. Where can we catch you? Have we got any gigs or any shows? Where can people come and see some of your magic this year?

SPEAKER_03 37:43

I've got my block party on the 23rd of April. So that happens here in Marubra. Free event for everyone. It's like free food. Yeah, it's like everything's free.

SPEAKER_08 37:53

Wow, what a telly way to give back and sort of come back and do all these things for your local community there. I love that.

SPEAKER_03 38:00

This is the fourth one this year.

SPEAKER_08 38:02

I love it. Well, we'll pop these in our show notes so people can come along. Also pop Kobe's D's, all of his socials and handles so you can yeah, follow along. Because I just can't wait to see, yeah, where you continue and evolve as a man, as a warrior, and then as a musician. So thank you so much for being on the show today and and sharing these beautiful yarns. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening, you mob. If you are vibing this season of yarning up, then please head over to Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast from to show us some love, rate, and review. Alternatively, you can get in contact and give us some feedback by visiting www.carolinecow.com.au