Dan Rankin (aka Trials)

Is that what it was?

It was career-ending objectives.

We were trying to leave it all on the table because the things that we talked about then and even now are not –

incredibly palatable to a lot of areas so we thought well let's just burn it all down on the way out and we found ourselves in sydney together one weekend we booked a studio and we wrote five of the songs that ended up on the 10 track album that weekend and we treated it like we had the mixtape energy which was capturing the energy in the room at that time and that was paramount to us you know like we have to make this sound like the room right now and give

Our Nieces and Nephews, the record that we grew up on, without the New York attitude to it.

So the sounds of the West Coast hip-hop stuff and the sounds of the East Coast conscious rap stuff, we took that and tried to make our version of that album so that our nieces and nephews could play that instead of the things that we played going on.

So you made an album.

It's very powerful.

It's musically wonderful.

And you're saying all these things that you think are unsayable about Australia Day, about racism, about violence, domestic violence, all these other things, these things that you really care about and you wanted to get down on the record.

You felt it was unsayable.

And then when you released it, everyone went, thank God someone's saying this, right?

Yeah.

As soon as we won some Arias, we said, well, you made a mistake now, guys.

You're giving us the credibility to stand next to you guys?

Wow.

Okay.

So I kind of feel, and I don't know how you feel about making this kind of a pronouncement, but there's a kind of a lesson for any creative artist in this.

The attitude you went into when you made that, the idea that you were going to set fire to the house and see what happened,

And then you sell a ton of records.