Interview: Rei bringing you an all new podcast thanks to Play it Strange.

So, you’ve teamed up with Play It Strange for their new podcast, On The Record with Rei’. How did this partnership come to be.
I'm a Play it Strange alumnus. Back in 2011, in my last year of high school, one of my songs was selected to be a finalist in the Play it Strange albums, so I got some funding to be able to record that in a studio. It was my first time recording a song professionally in a studio, and I managed to record a couple of other songs in the studio at the same time. It was just a really cool experience, working with Play It Strange back then. Fourteen years later, I got the opportunity to work with Play It Strange on this podcast. It all started because Play It Strange gets asked a lot of questions from the artists as they come through the programme. Such as, how to crack it in the music industry and because it was a similar question every time, Play it Strange thought it would be good to create this resource that people can refer to, if they want to know more about the ins and outs of the music industry and just demystify a few things, make it a little bit less scary and more accessible.  We thought, what better way to do this than doing a podcast because everyone loves a good poddy. It’s going to be on Spotify, Rova, and it'll also be on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, wherever the people are at.

What is the purpose?
We’ve interviewed a range of people, from established musicians in the Aotearoa music industry, ones that have been doing it for a few years, and ones that know how the game goes. Not just musicians, we've also interviewed other people within the industry, we’ve interviewed people from APRA, NZ on Air, and radio. Talking about everything from how to keep up your social media with music and all the way to how to write an email to a radio playlist programmer. These are all things that I kind of take for granted after 15 years in the game, but when you're just starting out, you don't know how to do these things. You don't know how to write an email, you don't know the appropriate way to DM someone, and you don't know how to do your social media posts. And these are all things that you kind of worry about. You're stressed about when you're just starting out. So, people can listen to this podcast, chuck it on when you're driving, or chuck it on with your parents. If you've got a mumager type who's helping you out and you can just, yeah, figure out this music industry thing, one step at a time, one podcast at a time.

What are you hoping to achieve with this?
Helping young artists and looking after the next generation is becoming more and more important as I've come to that Uncle status. I’ve got my eye out for people that I want to start mentoring and stuff like that, and just figuring out ways for me to start giving back.

We also had to get to know Rei a little better....

How did this all start, did you grow up loving music, singing. Was this always a dream for you?
I've been writing music since I was like 13. I just picked up my dad's guitar and started writing music. My mum and dad were both musical, and they were always encouraging; I had drum lessons when I was a kid, and mum always sang quite a lot, playing the piano and singing with the guitar. So, it was always just something I was around. I had a rap group when I was 14 with some friends at school, and we started making beats on the computer. And then, yeah, my friends got interested in other things, and my interest stayed. Throughout high school and university, my passions were always Māori and music. Over my music career, I found a way to merge them all together and just make my passions my work.  I remember putting up my first ever EP release show when I was 18, it was my first proper release and getting on stage at that party that I organised at this youth centre and just having this moment, like, “oh shit, this is what I'm doing for the rest of my life." Cool. This is fun.

Who are your music inspirations/ do you look up to?
I was inspired by a lot of Aotearoa artists when I was growing up. Artists, like Scribe, were quite formative for me when I was a young teen, listening to that album on my Discman on the train, that was a bit of a Yureka moment of realising you can be from Aotearoa, and you can make music however you want. Other albums like David Dallas' Rose Tint were formative for me and Homebrew's first album as well. These were all kind of figures and people that I looked up to that were doing cool as music, that were doing it authentically, sounding like themselves in their music, rapping like themselves talking about things that were real to them, and they were also real to me as a person in their late teens growing up in Aotearoa. I started incorporating Māori into my music when I was 19, just a little bit here and there, and I always got really good feedback from people whenever I did that, there was always that elements of shock factor’ cause people didn't expect me to start singing in Te Reo and then people would just hype me up about it and I always got a good reaction or 99% of the time. That’s made me confident to keep doing it more and more. I'm still doing it now and still figuring out how to develop my sound.

What keeps you motivated?
There are a lot of ups and downs in the music industry being a creative professional. There are a lot of times when you feel like you don't know what you're doing. I guess it’s just like I don't know what else I'd do with my life if it wasn't music, so I've just kept doing it. I do it 'cause I love it, I do it because I love representing. I love uplifting Māori. I love uplifting other Kiwis. I feel like Aotearoa musicians are like the glue that keeps this country together. We bring everyone together. We make the anthems that are specific to Aotearoa.  

You’re also mid tour, tell us about this, how did it come to be in Canada, how do you find the crowds are, what are the differences.
For the last few years, I’ve been going to the International Indigenous Music Summit in Toronto. We have kind of been exploring how we can fit into the World music scene. Which is for music that’s non-English, music that represents indigenous cultures around the world, and we’re just being trying to figure out how our music would fit into that scene, we just really get along well with the Native music community over there. They are really interested in Māori music. They love kiwis, they love Māori culture, and they hear your Māori, or they hear you’re from New Zealand, and they just want to hang and they want to talk to you. And that's just cool. It’s easy for us to go over and make friends with people and then make music with them. There's something culturally in Canada that means that people are friendly and open to work quite a lot together and collaborate, where I think in Aotearoa, sometimes we can be a bit siloed and a little bit scared to break out, which can be frustrating for someone like myself who loves to crew hop and collaborate with people across different genres.

I think going into this world of music, a lot of Native communities do look up to Māori and what we're doing with our music. We’re a few steps ahead of many communities with our language reclamation efforts and more. So, they see us doing full songs and multi languages, and they're like, "Wow, that’s cool” and then they're doing sessions with me and they're like, “Oh, I don't usually sing in my language, but I see how much you do it, so I'm gonna try”. And they’ve got their dictionary for their languages up on their computers and just looking up stuff as they go and that's awesome. If I can do that and help uplift other Indigenous artists around the world and encourage them to sing their languages and their cultures, it will definitely make me feel good at the end of the day.

What do you have coming up that you can share with us?
I've always got a bunch of things going on. I’ve got a new album coming out in a couple of months called Moisturise and Decolonise, which yeah, will be out in October, and I've just been dropping singles from that for the last couple of years, so actually having it as a full body of work and being able to celebrate that, I'm looking forward to that.

What burger do you think your new album would be if it were on the BF menu, and why?
The Combustion Tofu, because it’s not there, and I want it back, because that burger was yum! I’d choose this because my album is healthy, good for the soul, but it's also got a bit of hominess to it.

What would your ideal BF burger contain?
Well, I'd bring back one of your impossible patties, Motobites, a slice of cheese, kewpie mayo, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and then Guacamole to finish.

Go to BurgerFuel Order:
V-Twin with the Kūmara fries... has to be the Kūmara fries and the glass bottle of Coke, because Coke always tastes better in a glass bottle.