Earning his stripes in the UK’s underground live circuit, Fraksha has proven himself to be one of the UK’s finest MC’s. Founding member of UK hip-hop collective, Nine High and part of Australia’s first grime crew, Smash Brothers, Fraksha has honed his craft and sold out two mixtapes – a testament to his tenure in the UK scene. Being a personal fan for sometime and having also played alongside Fraksha (since moving out to Australia from good old brum town), I felt my first feature here on Bass Ache wouldn’t be right without an insight into the talent this man has to offer.

Since moving over to Australia in 2006, Fraksha was invited to join Aria Award winning, Bliss N Eso, on their sold out tour, ‘Get Loose’ – certifying his entry into the Aussie Hip-Hop scene. A regular performer at many of Australia’s cross-genre events (Void in Sydney, Rukus in Brisbane, Too Much and Heavy Innit!! in Melbourne), spitting unique flows over dnb, grime, dancehall, dubstep and anything in between. Being such an in-demand host for events throughout the country, Fraksha is considered one of the top grime/dubstep emcees in Australia.

With a critically acclaimed self titled debut album with Nine High (released July 2009) under his belt, collaborations with many of Australia’s notable artists, as well as contributing one of the highlight tracks to M-Phazes Aria winning ‘Good Gracious’ album AND performing on the subsequent national tour, it’s fair to say Fraksha is a widely respected artist in the Australian music scene.

The success of his first solo mixtape, ‘It’s Just Bars’, (the first official grime release to come out of Australia), received rave reviews through the country, winning mixtape of the year in the 2010 annual ozhiphop.com awards. Following the mixtape’s success came, ‘The Sunday Roast’, a radio show broadcasted on Kiss FM in Melbourne – Australia’s purely grime show!

2010 also saw the formulation of Australia’s first grime crew, Smashbrothers, consisting of Fraksha, Mc Diem, Scotty Hinds and Murky Depths. Since dropping the first in a series of global grime mixes presented by grimeforum, Smashbrothers were personally asked to record an official Australian vocal of grime anthem, ‘Pull Up Dat 2011′, by legendary grime producer Dexplicit. Hold tight for a feature on these boys soon.

With such success and plenty more to come, including a tour of New Zealand with hip-hop legends Dizzee and Dead Prez, it seemed fitting to get in touch with the man himself and find out a litte bit more about him.

Tell us a little about yourself, your location, daily whereabouts…

Easy there, I’m Fraksha, living North of the river, Melbourne City, but originally from England. Came over here originally as a backpacker in 2002 and then came back in mid-2006 and decided to stick around. It’s my home now!

So, hip-hop has clearly played a major important part in your life. How long were you involved in the hip-hop scenes back in the UK?

I first discovered the homegrown scene in the late 90’s, probably around 1997 or so through Disorda’s ‘UK Husterlz’ mixtape series as well as DJ MK’s prolific mixtape releases. These were both cassette releases which shows you how long ago it was now! I tried my hand at DJ’ing first, which didn’t turn out well, then graff which I didn’t have the patience for. I loved going out vandalising stuff and bombed the hell out of the place I was living at the time, but just didn’t have the motivation to stick with it and go further than just your simple chrome dubs really, so I gave emceeing a go. It seems weird to now imagine a time when I didn’t rap, but as soon as I got hard into it about 1999 that was my main focus until I left the country in ’06.

“I’ll never limit myself to just a ‘hip hop mc’ or just a ‘grime mc’ etc etc, I’m an MC, I don’t discriminate on beat”

Did the origins of jungle/dnb play any influence to your involvement with hip-hop? (relating to the significance of emcee culture, style, etc..)

Well anyone my age and growing up near London couldn’t fail to be exposed in a huge way to jungle/dnb. I was at the perfect age when it was coming through really. I was too young to get into clubs but that didn’t matter because people were throwing jungle parties everywhere, youth clubs, football clubs, house parties, town halls etc etc. It was huge in the early to mid 90’s and much the same way as it is in London right now with everyone wanting to be an MC, back then everyone had their own jungle bars which they’d usually bitten off whatever tape-pack was doing the rounds at the time. To be honest tho other than messing around I didn’t really get too involved in the emceeing side of things. I was also into a lot of hardcore at the time and I played guitar a little bit here and there.

Still I think its impossible to separate the whole jungle influence from UK emceeing and even if it didn’t influence me directly, its influenced people I’ve been influenced by and without it the sound of the UK would be completely different to how it is now. UK emceeing and UK music in general owes a huge debt to the West Indian influence that has constantly been there and has steered our sound in a particular way since as long as I can remember.

You balance hip-hop, grime and dubstep pretty damn well, when did these crossovers come into play with one another?

Along with the other guys I roll with we’ve always from day one said that we don’t limit ourselves. I’ve said it a million times that if you call yourself an MC then you should be able to spit on any type of beat, any tempo and still kill it. I just don’t understand people who just wanna stick with the same dry old sound they’re always running with, where’s the fun in that!

I’ll never limit myself to just a ‘hip hop mc’ or just a ‘grime mc’ etc etc, I’m an MC, I don’t discriminate on beat. Just this past year I’ve recorded hip hop tracks, grime tracks, dubstep tracks, UK funky tracks, Bashment tracks, drumstep tracks and god knows what else, but I don’t see them for individual genre, I just see them as big beats I wanna spit over. We’ve always done it that way, if people go back to our very first Nine High mixtape you’ll hear us spitting over a Destiny’s Child beat and going hard on it. This was at a time when the ‘local’ scene was very ‘underground’ and ‘dark’ or whatever so for us to do that a lot of people were like ‘what the fuck are you doing’, but at the end of the day it was a big beat and we murked it. Don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone.

Also, again relating back to the previous question and my answer I think that in England particularly that West Indian influence has meant that double time flowing is pretty natural for us. A lot of hip hop artists struggle with it or they’ll have their one ‘token double-time’ track on their album, but for us it’s no different to spitting on a standard 90BPM beat you know so its only natural for the UK to spawn genres such as grime and dubstep.

When you first discovered grime, what drew you in?

First time I heard grime was sometime in 2002 and I didn’t really like it because to be honest I didn’t get it. This was at a time when lyrics were really important to me and I felt it was a bit too simple really. I think the first guy I heard was Dogzilla on pirate radio while driving thru London somewhere and I was like what the fuck is this. It sounded like Del Boys nephew from borstal just shouting and swearing and now Dogzilla is one of my favourite emcee’s! I think it was Kano that first made me realise this was something different and exciting, hearing ‘Boys luv girls’ and his dub on ‘Ice Rink’ I think it was. I was like fuck this dude can spit hard! From then on it was all grime grime grime for me!

UK hip hop had gotten pretty stale for me at that time, everyone was trying to be Taskforce or do funny raps and I just wasn’t into it. It didn’t feel exciting like grime did, there was no energy, the scene was dying and shows were empty and most shows were pretty boring to be honest, it just felt all a bit tame and safe whereas grime was raw, in your face and made me wanna go nuts! The beats as well were just so different, all dark and weird and would make you lose your shit! Before then I was quite staunchly UK hip hop really and I remember Fallacy released his ‘Blackmarket Boy’ album which to me is one of the best album releases out of the UK but it got met with such derision by the tradionalists and I was like do I really wanna be part of this scene that cant appreciate something as good as this. Fallacy was before his time in my opinion and head and shoulders above most guys yet that album just did not get the love it deserved!

Upon moving to Australia, you quickly joined Aria Award winners, Bliss N Eso, on the 2006 ‘Get Loose Tour’. How did that come about?

Well like I said earlier I had been backpacking in 2002 in Australia and to be honest didn’t do hardly any backpacking. It just wasn’t for me living in hostels and dealing with that whole student, hippy, fraternity mentaly so once I was in Melbourne I just got myself a flat with a mate and spent all my free time going to clubs, open mic nights etc etc and it was through all this that I met DJ Flagrant who has since become one of my best friends. We stayed in touch while I was back in England and when he knew I’d be coming back with the rest of the boys he arranged for us to jump on that tour literally a few days after everyone had arrived in the country. So it was a bit crazy going from where we’d been to jumping straight into these big shows with packed crowds in another country, but we definitely learnt a lot from it. I suppose we were pretty lucky as well in that through certain friends I had we were able to get those sort of opportunities at the time which were invaluable to us making any sort of impact over here.

After settling in Oz, how did you find adjusting with other Australian emcees in hip-hop?

I first heard them in 2002 and to be honest I was a bit like what the fuck!? It seemed so strange to me at the time. In England we’re not really exposed too hard to Australian culture outside of Neighbours and Home and Away as bad as that sounds, so I had a bit of a blinkered view of what to expect. The accent obviously was the first thing that struck me and I was a bit like ‘nah I’m not feeling this’, then I realised this is exactly what Americans might think the first time they hear UK emcee’s and I tried to open my ears a bit more. As I lived here longer and got used to the accent in general day to day business it become a non-event for me. I hardly hear it now to be honest and actually like the more ‘Ozzie’ accents that a lot of Ozzie’s themselves don’t like. I find a lot of people back home have the same trouble I initially had with the accent because they’re not exposed to it on the daily which is a shame, but I can understand it.

“I’d say my favourite MC’s and biggest influence would be Skinnyman and Durrty Goodz”

You’re the founding member of UK outfit, Nine High and also part of Australia’s first grime crew, Smash Brothers. In between this, you also run Australia’s grime only radio show on Kiss FM in Melbourne, as well as performing frequently at various events. Clearly you work hard! Is it difficult balancing your solo work as an emcee, amongst all these other projects?

Extremely difficult! It was only last year I released my first solo offering because finding the time to concentrate on myself is a nightmare. The actual recording process is nothing, I’m quick in the booth and once I’m in there in takes no time, but its getting to that stage! I really want to focus this year on some solo stuff and have lots in mind so we’ll see what happens!

You’ve shared the stage with some huge names including; Snoop, Ice Cube, The Game, Ghostface Killah, Skepta, Skinnyman, K-lashkenoff, Jehst, Plastician, Foreign Beggars and endless more! How does it feel performing alongside such influential names?

At first it was pretty mad when you’re on the same bill as someone you respect and listen to, but it soon becomes no big deal especially if you meet them and realise they’re a dickhead. I’ve met quite a few of those thru the years, but also met some wicked people who have showed nothing but love, someone like Skinnyman comes to mind straight away.

It’s always weirder playing with some of the big American name’s, people like Snoop and The Game are almost like movie stars to us peasants so meeting them in the flesh is a bit of a trip. To be honest those shows are usually pretty weak ‘cos they’re in huge venues with no feeling, full of people who just want the main act on straight away and you’re usually on at some ridiculous hour ‘cos those shows finish so early. You get good catering though!

Where/whom are you getting your inspiration from these days?

Grime mainly to be honest, it really energises me and it’s such a vibrant scene with so many good spitters it can’t help but to influence me. There’s always newcomers coming through with something good to offer and it’s constantly moving. I’d say my favourite MC’s and biggest influence would be Skinnyman and Durrty Goodz. Obviously Skinny aint done anything in quite a while now, but the stuff he has done is pure classic and is something that I can always go back and listen to. Goodz I find operates on a similar level to Skinnyman and brings emotion to tracks that really hits hard in ways others can’t.

I also get influenced by a few emcee’s from over here maybe not in style necessarily, but I listen to their stuff and they push me in certain ways to step up the levels.

Congratulations on winning the mixtape of the year for ‘It’s Just Bars’, in the 2010 annual ozhiphop.com awards. Did the success of the mixtape help widen your status with both dubstep and grime audiences?

Nah not really I don’t think. There is no grime circle in Australia anyway. There’s definitely fans but there’s no scene really, but its getting more widely appreciated I think, I’m just not sure if it’s the dubstep crowd or the hip hop crowd that’s gonna take to it more, but from when I came in 2006 where there was only Kamo in Melbourne dropping grime and everyone would brush me off when I tried to get it moving, nowadays a lot of people are jumping on it and it features quite heavily in a lot of DJ’s sets.

With regards to the dubstep scene I’m pretty much the only MC doing it that I’m aware of over here (apart from my immediate crew) getting regular bookings etc and when I say ‘doing it’ I mean actually spraying bars and coming from a grime influence. There’s a few DNB MC’s trying their hand at it, but It’s very far apart from what I / we do really. So if anything, winning that award helped more within the hip hop scene because it showed what I can do on a solo level first and foremost outside of Nine High. It was also very important I think that a mixtape that was 99% grime and dubstep won a ‘hip hop award’. There’s a lot of stigma within the hip hop scene with a lot of misguided individuals brushing it off as ‘dance’ music or some bullshit. Of course that’s a huge part of the music, but are you telling me hip hop was never party music! Grime may have come from garage but in 2011 it has just as much of a hip hop influence and to me is now just another branch of it. It has its complete own sound but to not see the similarities between hip hop and grime would be pretty foolish! The genre’s are only going to become more intertwined as well.

At the end of the day I can spit on whatever I want and will do, I’ve payed my dues, been there and done that so no one can say shit to me about ‘keeping it real’ or nothing. I respect people doing what they’re doing and if spitting on traditional boom-bap beats is their thing then good luck to them, It’s just not what I want to restrict myself to and I firmly believe we will see more people jumping on grime in this country. Things change, things progress, why be a luddite? It’s that what you wanna do then fine, but don’t get emotional because you don’t get what I’m doing.

How do you feel about the current merge between dubstep & grime emcees?

I love the fact that grime emcee’s are jumping on dubstep tracks a fair bit now, it’s only natural really. I’m not a huge fan of dubstep emcee’s, toasters or whatever. I understand what they’re there for and completely get that some people are into them and at some gigs I do play that role myself, but for me I wanna hear bars and the DJ and MC working together, the MC catching drops and all that so for me it’s perfect. I get sooooo bored at dubstep gigs with no emcee, I just can’t take it.

Obviously some guys work better than others and I think that the yard flow works particularly well so guys like Riko I think are perfect for dubstep. P Money too has a flow that works very well on it too which has shown with the releases he’s had out this year. The two genres are so closely related really, however I hope that they don’t merge into one and that grime keeps its own identity. I prefer spitting over grime due to the rapidness of the drums and it does something to me that dubstep doesn’t. Grime is also a lot less busier than dubstep which lends itself to an MC more and gives you space to spit which is something I find you don’t get with a lot of dubstep.

What emcee’s are you feeling right now?

Back in England as far as guys who are active at the moment its gotta be people like Durrty Goodz, Ghetts, D Double E, Lil Nasty, OG’z, Wiley, Marga, Prez T, Trim, a whole load of others as well, but those ones came to me now at least. I’m also feeling a few of the straight rap guys, Don Strapzy is someone I been bumping recently. Also, big shout to my fellow Nine High soldier Byron. I may be a little biased but I firmly believe he is head and shoulders lyrically above the majority of the UK scene and if there’s any justice in this world he will be huge. Unfortunately NO-ONE has blown up in the UK without compromising in some way and I just don’t think that’s something that Byron will be prepared to do and for that I’m glad! But hopefully someone will see his talent for the potential it has and sign him up.

From Australia it’s mostly the people that I call friends that I’m feeling which is lucky. Outside of my own crew obviously where I think Diem is hands down the best MC in the country, It’s the Broken Tooth camp that is my preferred stuff, particularly Tornts and Gargoyle. I’m feeling some Sydney stuff recently too, That’s Them who are the first Sydney crew to release a grime record having been dropping some good shit this year, I’m feeling Skeamo and Sky High a lot, there’s a realness about them that you don’t get with a lot of these bland rappers out who think that all it takes to be able to be an MC is a good grasp of the English language. Guys may have all the technical prowess in the world, but if it doesn’t hit me and make me really feel what you’re saying is true then you may as well take up acting. Always liked what Pegz does as well and big up to the Crate Cartel boys for doing shit proper!

Any forthcoming material/collaborations on the horizon?

Yeah we’ve pretty much finished recording for the Smash Brothers release. We’ve got about 7 tracks now, but we may do another few and put it out as an album. We’ve got a label to put that out which we’ll talk about more nearer the time. We’ve also shot a couple of videos already, one for a massive tune we done with Kurk Kokane on the beat and the other produced by Loco which again is pretty massive!

I’ve got plans for a solo album, its just getting the time to lock it down. I have about 20 beats from various producers and a lot of it written so I would like to say it will come out this year, we’ll see how we go.

I’ve got a few features planned or already recorded so hopefully you’ll see a few of those this year. I’m about to shoot a video for a track I done with a production duo from Canberra who are called Karton. It’s going to be the first single of their forthcoming album and is sounding pretty big. Got some stuff coming with Filth Collins and Kurk Kokane also as well as something in the works with Kiwi guys Bulletproof and Optimus Gryme which I’m looking forward to so yeah, looking pretty busy right now!

Right, that’s it. Big up for getting involved and taking time to answer everything! Any shouts?

Yeah shouts to my Nine High / Smash Brothers fam, Scotty Hinds, Byron, Diem, Murky Depths, Loco, shouts to all the Broken Tooth crew, all the DJ’s who support me and play my stuff, out to the Heavy Innit boys, everyone at Wobble and everyone that listens and supports my music, it really is appreciated. If you come up to me at a dance and give me props then thank you, it means a lot!

And thanks to you mate for hitting me up for this!

If everyone could head on over to facebook.com/fraksha and say hi that would be wicked. BLUKU!

Don’t forget you can cop the ‘It’s Just Bars’ mixtape, (mixed by DJ Affiks) for free here or over at his soundcloud.

Make sure you become a fan of Fraksha on Facebook and be sure to follow him on Twitter @ twitter.com/fraksha for information on upcoming events and general chit chat!

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