Mathas
Airing Out
Know One Knows
Living legend of WA hip hop Mathas has lain dormant since 2016’s Bravo Troll, taking a breather from recording but likely watching the scene on which he was such a foundation grow by leaps and bounds. Single Airing Out shows us that the old master hasn’t lost his step.
Mathas opens with the line “My style is so damn convoluted”, and then proceeds to deliver a mile-a-minute display that suggests he may be a bit hard on himself. The beat is a phased and watery-sounding riff that steadily builds amidst swelling synth washes as Mathas’ words machine-gun on top. Lyrically Mathas has described this track as self-criticism that’s turned industry-wide: “What started as a comedic and autobiographical song about frustrations with my own artistic process ended up as a rant of sorts about how tiresome a lot of the language and humour in rap music has become.” The sentiment is echoed in his razor-sharp delivery and matter-of-fact, almost exasperated tone.
“How do cats write a throwaway and still beat chests?/ How’s them half-wit punchlines go primetime while the rafts hit shorelines?/ Old heads all dulling, dumbing down dead trying to claw time”. Lines like this are brilliant on their own, but Mathas has more in his crosshairs. He comes back constantly to a chorus of “edit edit edit edit”, a sentiment reserved not just for his old lyrics or the braggadocio of contemporaries, but for irrelevant attitudes too. “The shock jock era now done dead, dull as a white wall painted that colour again/ But a soundboard of out of date petulant men still wanna poly round the precipice letting ’em swing.”
This is a triumphant return and a breath of fresh air. The biggest song in hip hop right now is the dire Drake single Toosie Slide, its music video an excuse for Drake to show off his mansion in quarantine. Thank God for Mathas, who delivers the palate cleanser we all needed.
MATIJA ZIVKOVIC
