Interview: Swizl Jager

Take us back - how did Swizl Jager actually become a thing?
‍Bro, Swizl Jager wasn't actually a thing until BurgerFuel. There was no Swizl. I'd been doing music since I was a kid - metal, hardcore, a bit of nu-metal. But then I stopped for about four or five years, until a Burger Fuel competition came along, and I decided I'd write a rap for it, and I was like, man, I don't have a name. So I just went with a silly name. Next minute, I win, and you guys called me and were like, are you a professional rapper? I was like, nah, And they went, oh, you should be. And I was like, who reckons? And everyone was like, yeah bro, why don't you do some rap? And I was like, okay.

But music was always somewhere in the background before that?
‍I dreamt about it, I wanted to - but I was a shy kid growing up, never really put myself out there until I was maybe 16. Someone heard me singing in the locker rooms and asked me to join the school band. I was still shy, but I gave it a go. And bro, I keep finding old school books that I've drawn in - pictures of me in the future, on stage. It's pretty wild to me that I'm out here actually doing what I wanted to do.

Do you think if that hadn't happened, it might have just stayed a bedroom thing?
‍Possibly, or it would have just taken a little bit longer. I feel like I was supposed to do something like this. I don't know which avenue it would have been - I could have been a country singer, a soul singer, singing in the school choir or something. But if it hadn't happened then, I reckon it was meant to happen anyway.

You're clearly more comfortable on stage now. But has that shy kid gone away completely?
‍I’ve got way more confidence, obviously - the proof is in the pudding! But there's still lots of self-doubt, bro. It's hard to shake that. I think it comes from the whole kiwis-need-to-be-humble thing. I can get on any stage, big or small, that doesn't worry me at all. But the self-doubt is still there.

Your music has always had te reo Māori at the centre of it. Has that always felt natural or was it something that developed over time?
‍I don't think the music changed - I think the world's just catching up. My Reo has always been in my music. My Māoritanga is at the forefront of pretty much everything I do because that's who I am. When I started doing reo raps, bro, there was hardly anyone doing it - you could count them on one hand. Now I look around and there's so many people out there killing it. Really, really good quality stuff.

And there's a whole underground scene most people wouldn't even know about?
‍So much, bro. So much undiscovered talent. In all genres, everything. The underground scene is always where it's at. As much as you see out there, there's another ten times more underground.

So tell us about Uncles - how did that come together?
‍We'd all collabed together and separately on different things, played each other's shows. Plastic Pounamu would DJ for me at a bunch of gigs, then Rei would jump up, so it'd be the three of us. Then one night I was opening for (Irish rap trio) Kneecap in Auckland, and Plastic was DJing for me. I rang Rei and was like, hey bro, are you free to play on Thursday? And he was like, yeah, who’s the band? I said Kneecap, and he went, What? Like - bro, that's major.

So we played a few songs and after that we were just like, man, we need to actually put our heads together. Plastic had a residency on Geroge FM doing his electronic stuff, and we jumped on doing some freestyles, some reo raps, had a little cypher going. We were like, we need to make this a proper thing and actually sit down and write some songs.

And live, that seems to come pretty naturally for you three?
‍The live thing is the easiest part, bro. The movement is called hiko - Māori electronic music - and the reception we get when we play it to crowds is mind-blowing. They're just like, we're dancing, we're raving, but we're hearing te reo. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

And you’ve got an Uncles show for Matariki soon?
‍Yeah, the Matariki Mashup is happening at Mothership in Auckland, this Friday (3 July). Uncles is there, along with a whole lot of sick artists like PakōPakō, Hohua and J2 (Just2Māori). It’s gonna be a huge night.

So good to have things like this around Matariki. What do you normally do to mark it?
‍I use it as a restart. It's winter, it's almost like hibernation - what went right this year, what went wrong, what am I doing to make it better for me and the people around me. So yeah, just a reset.

Last one - your nephew Hawaiki is in Baddies, the new TVNZ+ show. Tell us about that.
‍Bro, it's a cool new series, about 30% in te reo Māori. It's made for kids but touches on adult subjects. My nephew got one of the main roles - it was his first ever acting job, all the way from Te Puke. He came and lived with me in Auckland for a month and we worked together on set, because I'm a boom operator by trade. And he killed it.

Ever since he was little, he could stand in front of us and recite whole movies from memory. We were always like, man, there's something there. His character's called Tank. The cast is some pretty A-list NZ actors, so yeah - it should be a good watch.

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Uncles' single TUKUA is out now on Spotify. Swizl Jager and the crew are playing this Friday 3rd July at Mothership in Auckland as part of a Matariki celebration with a stacked lineup of Hiko artists, and then again on the 10th at Ding Dong Lounge. Find Nikora on Instagram

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