Thursday
19Nov2009
Wasup wit Noo Zeeln rap?
Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 3:28PM Here is NZ rapper Tommy Ill's new single - it's called 'Come Home Mr Ill' and it's pretty good. Give it a watch if you haven't seen it yet...
I really like the mixture of old and new technology, the hand-made/home-made look and the sampled & recycled materials - audio and visual. It is, in many ways, very original and very Kiwi. There's one thing though that spoils it for me, and it seems to be common to most (if not all) NZ rap and hip-hop:
"Th' lyric is reel clevah and the images are pretty, but
why he gotta taawk like he come from noo york city?"
tagged NZ music, Tommy Ill, accent, music video, rap in creativity, music
NZ music, Tommy Ill, accent, music video, rap in creativity, music 
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Reader Comments (4)
I know what you mean about using an American (or other) accent, but honestly, have you heard Kiwi accent rapping? It sounds like shit. Universal truth - The Kiwi Accent doesn't pronounce consonants clearly, which is why every other country thinks we mumble. oh yeah, this holds true for most Kiwi singers too ( not just rappers)
I have several Kiwi albums during which there are moments when I cringe at the horrendous accent we've inherited.
It just doesn't sound musical to me.
At all.
Sorry.
Most singers don't sing in their natural speaking voice anyway so in the same way, I'd say 'sing it how you need to sing it to make is sound good',....tone, phrasing, diction, energy, attitude, tuning, AND accent - i don't think they can be separated - they are all part of what makes up a good vocal performance.
anyway - my 2c :)
(although granted it does sound more natural/unnatural for some people's voices than others.....)
Hi Geoff. Thanks for commenting. I disagree with your suggestion that the Kiwi accent is horrendous and unmusical. I think that we have spent decades being conditioned to hear certain accents as 'normal' in the context of pop music, and anything that deviates from them is considered odd. Curiously, we have become particularly self-conscious about our own.
Our accent certainly has it's quirks, but that's the nature of any accent and it's what gives it character and makes it interesting. To say that one accent sounds 'good' and another sounds 'shit' is a completely subjective view, purely based on what you're used to hearing. There are all kinds of weird and wonderful accents in the world. What makes our one so taboo? I suspect it's mostly New Zealanders who think that the New Zealand accent sounds wrong.
Anyway, I like to hear people sing/rap in their natural accent because I think it's more honest and has artistic integrity. It's one of the things that endears me to Björk's music, for instance. Her Icelandic accent sounds odd to me, but that's what I like about it.
that's fair enough, but you'd have to agree the consonants are very clear in Icelandic. But yeah it's a totally subjective thing...
Yes that's true - they do roll their 'R's very hard and kind of spit out the rest. :-)
I can understand why people from other countries might find our accent hard to understand and therefore uncomfortable to listen to in a musical context, but that doesn't really explain why us Kiwis – who unconsciously use and hear the accent everyday – find it so uncomfortable. We should be used to it.
Also I would have thought it was the vowel sounds more than the consonants that makes us cringe and makes our accent distinct from an American one (noo yawk city). Come to think of it, the vowel sounds in Icelandic are just as distinctive as the consonants.
Hmmm... I suspect the intelligibility thing is not the heart of the matter...