Gary McPhee aka Mr. Grevis is a pretty smart guy.

Patriotic without being racist, profound without sounding pretentious, he's a part of the new wave of Aussie hip hop where being good isn't so bad.

“I touch on some former negative aspects of my life, and I think people like to hear the story of someone doing good that previously didn't do good. It's everything in my life, you know? Most of my music is life related stuff,” Mr. Grevis says.

His debut album, 'Sampler', was recently released via Obese. It’s a broad collection of party songs — including 'Still High' (the sequel to 'So High') — and contemplative tracks, most notably 'The Youth', written in response to a group of teens' lack of respect towards the Remembrance Day minute of silence.

“They were like ‘ah fuck it, we'll just chill up here, I don't fucking know anyone that died in the war’ and I was really, really pissed off about it. I'm pretty patriotic without being racist about it. That's where that track stemmed from, I was up there and I was sort of pissed off at them and just started writing.”

Whether he means to or not, Mr. Grevis’ music appeals to a certain audience.

“My housemate was like ‘you write your music real smart and appeal to a certain crowd’ and I don't intentionally do it, I just hear a beat and I'm like ‘oh this has got to be a weed song’. Like that ‘So High’ beat, I had to write a weed track to that.”

Expressing his desire to teach the younger generation that music is a creative outlet, not a destructive force, Mr Grevis doesn’t mind wearing his geekiness on his sleeve.

“I think it's great what [Seth Sentry’s] music is doing, like he's making it cool to be a geek, he's just being himself, it's not putting on a front for the sake of fitting into things. You should always be yourself no matter what. Just as long as everyone starts slowly taking on these [responsibilities] and then passing it down to their kids, the world would slowly evolve into a better place.”

Mr. Grevis’ album, ‘My Escape’, is out now.