Like father, like son. Pressure, one-third of Australia's leading hip-hop outfit, Hilltop Hoods, lives in the hinterlands above Adelaide where he grew up. He now has a five-year-old son who will grow up in the same suburbs and experience many of the same things his father raps about.
"He's going to grow up a Hills lad," sighs Pressure, whose driver's licence identifies him as Daniel Smith. "For me that meant a whole lot of running amok as a teenager, so hopefully he'll learn from that."
Smith is setting a better paternal example these days. Alongside his fellow MC Suffa (Matt Lambert) and the group's DJ, Debris (Barry Francis), he's made Hilltop Hoods one of Australia's leading acts in any genre. What began as a bedroom recording project 15 years ago is now a festival headliner.
Hilltop Hoods' fifth studio album, State Of The Art, debuted atop the ARIA album chart last month, selling more than 27,000 copies in its first week. It's their second No.1, following 2006's The Hard Road, and confirms their extensive audience. Even commercial radio, which is usually intransigent to change, has added recent single Chase That Feeling to their playlists.
"When it comes to judging the album, from our perspective, it's more important what people are saying on networking sites and forums, as well as media reviews," Smith says. "It'll be interesting to see how the album is perceived."
State Of The Art has a grittier studio palette than The Hard Road. The contemplative beats and pleasing choruses are now augmented by melancholic refrains and arrangements that take in expansive, atmospheric samples and snatches of guitar. Back-to-back tunes have an obvious contrast: the neo-psychedelic The Light You Burned leads straight into the nightmarish Parade Of The Dead. "We wanted to push the sound a bit," Smith says. "It's a darker album and that was important because we didn't want to go the opposite direction and do something happy la la. We definitely wanted to avoid a cheesy pop sound. We wanted the beats to be tougher, a little more in your face."
Despite this, it's clearly a signature work. As with their previous albums, State Of The Art is at pains to distinguish self-belief from self-importance; the merits of hard work are extolled repeatedly but conspicuous consumption doesn't get a look in.
"I would hate to think people see us as arrogant," Smith says. "That's how we are as people and it's reflected in the music. We're confident and outgoing people but I listen to some rappers and think, 'That's so arrogant, just pull your head in, mate."'
-Craig Mathieson