WHEN filmmaker Antony Attridge began interviewing artists for his documentary about the history of Australian hip-hop, one story kept being repeated.
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Each artist, whether popular or not, had to strive against mainstream bias.
"Hip-hop has always had to fight for its place in Australian music," Attridge says.
"If you were to say you're a singer-songwriter, people would go, 'Where are you playing next, tell me more about your song'?
"Whereas if you say you're a rapper, you just get scoffed at and laughed at. Why is that, when hip-hop is arguably the biggest genre in the world?
"Why is it that we're still laughed at and people feel ashamed, for want of a better word, to say confidently that they're a rapper?"
Attridge, who is also a manager and artist - performing under the name Sensible Antixx - spent six years making the documentary Burn Gently.
Initially the project was focused on the story of 1200 Techniques vocalist N'fa Jones, but Attridge soon realised the story was far greater than one artist.
"He's been around for 20 years in the Australian music industry and he's had weird and wonderful experiences with all kinds of celebrities," he says.
"Every time I'd call up I'd be like, 'Man these stories are crazy, we should turn them into a movie'."
A large chunk of the six years spent making Burn Gently was dedicated to editing during Melbourne lockdown, before going through the exhaustive year-long process of clearing the licensing for the more 70 tracks used.
Burn Gently features 36 of the country's biggest names in hip-hop, including Suffa of The Hilltop Hoods, Sampa the Great, Bliss n Eso, Thundamentals, Baker Boy, Urthboy, Genesis Owusu, 360 and L-Fresh The Lion and explores the beginning of Australian hip-hop in the rock-dominated '80s to its growth 35 years later as one of music's most popular genres.
Throughout the '80s and '90s Australian hip-hop acts made minimal impact on the local scene, despite American rap music exploding in popularity.
However negative connotations, perpetuated by American gangsta rap, meant the genre faced an uphill battle.
"When I was younger it was almost an act of defiance or rebellious to listen to hip-hop music, because it was often used an a scapegoat," Attridge says.
"It was seen as violent, misogynistic, a music that was commonly associated with negative stigmas."
When I was younger it was almost an act of defiance or rebellious to listen to hip-hop music, because it was often used an a scapegoat.
- Antony Attridge
For Attridge, the first of two pivotal moments in Aussie hip-hop's mainstream acceptance were 1200 Techniques' 2002 single Karma, which won Best Independent Release at the ARIA Awards.
A year later The Hilltop Hoods crashed alternative rock and electronic music's dominance on Triple J when The Nosebleed Section polled No.9 in the Hottest 100.
Today the Australian hip-hop scene is not only respected, but commercially successful, and arguably more dominant than rock.
Zambian-Australian rapper Sampa The Great is the only artist to win the Australian Music Prize twice and has a high-profile fan in Barack Obama, Indigenous star Baker Boy was the Young Australian of the Year in 2019 and is a five-time ARIA Award-winner and Ghanaian-Australian Genesis Owusu has won four ARIAs, including best album for Smiling With No Teeth.
The album also claimed the Australian Music Prize.
Others like Indigenous hip-hop duo A.B Original have been a force for political change.
They're credited with playing a major role in Triple J's decision to shift the Hottest 100 date away from Australia Day.
"These people are the threads and tapestry that has created the change, and not just acceptance, but the celebration of Australian hip-hop music," Attridge says.
But Attridge also doesn't shy away from the negative issues raised by hip-hop artists in his film.
Sexism, drug abuse, violence, mental health and racism are all explored in the second half of Burn Gently.
"There were lots of these things that exist, and to a degree, they're inherently part of the industry and stuff everyone has put up with," he says.
"It was interesting to hear from different artists and their experiences and how they tried to overcome it or change it, or perhaps how it hasn't changed at all.
"We wanted to start some conversations to have a more inclusive and positive space."
Attridge says modern Aussie hip-hop has embraced "vulnerability" and has shifted away from the toxic masculinity inherent in the genre's formative days.
However, he says greater representation of female or non-binary artists is needed.
"If you compare how many male rappers there are to female rappers, it is still not even close," he says.
"The scales are so grossly 95 to 5 per cent [male to] female. If you include the LGBTI+ community, it's less than 1 per cent. It that representative of Australia? I don't believe it is."