Urth wind and fire
After a breakthrough year in 2007, Sydney rapper extrordinaire Urthboy is hitting the stage one last time before taking a well-deserved break.
By Dan Stapleton
It's been a slow but steady rise for Sydney boy Tim Levinson, aka Urthboy. In the last ten years he has established a record label, Elefant Trax; played a pivotal role in the music of funk/hip hop ten-piece The Herd; and built a solo career from the ground up. In 2007 his profile reached new heights with the release of the second Urthboy LP, The Signal - the most critically acclaimed Australian hip hop release of the year. Its lead single, ‘We Get Around', took Levinson's sound to a new legion of punter thanks to extremely heavy rotation on Triple J. In fact, the song was such a regular fixture that it scored a Top 20 spot on the station's 2007 Hottest 100.
"Triple J is the most important station outside of community radio for Australian music, and that's beyond debate," Levinson enthuses. "Their playlist is often the acts that fill up music festivals; they keep country kids up to date with their city cousins through their car stereos; they get thanked by all sorts of artists at award ceremonies for helping their careers. Triple J have a huge cultural role in Australian society, youth or otherwise. I just wish they'd stop playing so much crap sometimes!"
That may be one reason Levinson has found so many new fans in the last twelve months, but he was on his way to mainstream success before the release of The Signal. A shrewd businessman as well as a talented musician, he has played an important role in the burgeoning Aussie hip hop scene, and is highly regarded by peers and punters alike.
Levinson says that, now the initial novelty factor of Australians producing hip hop has subsided, local MCs and producers are working harder to get noticed and gain respect. "The true talent is generally shining through more consistently ‘cause people don't have as much time for the rubbish - which helps us a lot because we don't get tarred with the same brush as often as we used to. Some of the songwriters in hip hop are writing much more challenging and edgy lyrics than our poor pop/rock cousins. I'm genuinely stoked about some of the brilliant potential that particular young artists have: it's actually very cool."
Before taking some time out to focus on the Elefant Trax label and his work with The Herd, Levinson has one more Urthboy show to perform. Don't expect a simple rehash of his solo albums, though. "The beauty of this show is the simplicity," he says, "but we've got visuals now and Jane Tyrrell is performing with me, so I hope to get as much mileage out of her ample vocal talents as possible, before delivering a devastating rendition of some of my lesser known works."
Urthboy tears up the Oxford Arts Factory on Thu 15 May