From busting rhymes at the local high school bus stop, to riding Australia’s hip hop revolution, the Bliss N Eso boys have had “one hell of a ride so far!”
“It started out you know…just having fun with it, and it just kind of developed into something much more serious,” MC Bliss explains in his faint American accent.
The trio – comprising of American born MC Bliss, Australian born MC Eso and DJ Izm of Moroccan heritage – first met at their Sydney high school where their unwavering appreciation for staunch hip hop inevitably drew them together. Unlike today, Aussie hip hop was massively underdeveloped in the 90s, and so when the boys began, Bliss explains “there was no-one to show us the ropes.
“We were all out there on our own, and the scene was so tiny at that stage that Eso and I thought we were the only people in the whole country doin’ it.” Without a helping hand to say, “hey this is how you record a track, this is how you make a beat, this is how you make a rhyme.” Bliss says the trio’s journey has been a massive learning curve.
Aussie hip hop these days is a far cry from the underground and underdeveloped hip hop scene of a decade or so ago. With the Hilltop Hoods debuting at number one on the Aria charts, the Australian Recording Industry Association now acknowledging hip hop in its annual awards and bands such as the Hoods, the Herd, Bliss N Eso and TZU being household names, it’s easy to see just how far hip hop has come in Australia. Yet Bliss explains, “[while] there’s been a massive growth and evolution in Aussie hip hop, it’s still the underdog of the industry, it’s still finding its feet and is still coming out of the underground.”
This my friend, is the very argument Bliss N Eso allude to with their second album title Day of the Dog: “It’s like every dog has its day and it’s about that revolution, that up-movement of the [hip hop] culture basically coming through”, Bliss explains.
Day of the Dog was released in February early this year and since then the Bliss N Eso boys have been touring the country profusely from Wagga Wagga to Burnie, Bundaberg to Dunsborough. In fact when I caught up with Bliss, he’d previously just done a show at Mt Hotham. Now, you may think Hotham is an unlikely place to play a show but according to Bliss, “the snow is where it’s at”. He explains, “There’s a whole bunch of young people up there trapped on a mountain with nothing to do except this show so everyone comes out and it’s great.”
The Sydney lads have been playing a mix of old and new stuff on their recent tour and according to Bliss the audience response to their new work has been fantastic. Bliss N Eso’s most recent tracks are a lot more up beat than their previous recordings and the lyrics, Bliss adds, are also much easier to catch in a live setting.
Bliss N Eso’s national tour begins September 1 and you can expect an energetic, mischievous and envelop-pushing live show. “Our last show at the Prince of Wales was just bananas. Melbourne crowds definitely know how to get down and we’ve probably got our strongest fan base in Melbourne.”
Bliss adds, “We’ve got a whole new show lined up and we’re incorporating visuals into it so everything will be synced up with projectors which is cool. No-one has really ever done this before [in the hip-hop scene] and well, we’re always about making sure people have a good time and [we’re about to] bring something a little bit different to the show.”
Speaking of being different, Bliss lets slip some of the shenanigans the band get up to onstage including Bliss N Eso ‘official’ beer drinking contests. “There was this one time in Adelaide”, Bliss mischievously muses, “when the lads forgot to put the beer on ice and this, mixed with the stinking hot venue temperature, meant that these beers were filthily hot. In true spirit, one guy and one girl were on-stage chugging down these boiling Bliss N Eso beers like there was no tomorrow”. Bliss reminisces with a laugh, “I just turned around and looked at the girl and she was so green and then boom! She chucked all over the stage and it was disgusting. But then the guy was just staring at the spew and boom! He spews all over the stage too. It was just so disgusting!”
To coincide with Bliss N Eso’s national tour a limited edition, double disc LP will be released on September 9. Disc one features the original Day of the Dog 16 tracks, plus two bonus tracks, film clips and some extra special features. Disc two, titled Day of the Dog Phazed Out, features the entire 16 album tracks remixed by M-Phazes. “It’s just dope”, Bliss says, “because it gives the album a completely fresh vibe. I think a lot of people are going to dig it and the other thing is that it’s like really limited edition; we’re only doing a limited pressing so the ones that go out are gonna be collectors”.