Boomtown Representing
If you were to scroll through Brisbane’s hip hop honour roll, you’d find more than a couple of references to The Optimen. The Boomtown lads have been shaping the beats and spits coming out of the River City for more than a decade now.
This week sees the commercial release of their second LP, ‘The Out Of Money Experience’; quite the achievement when you consider the album was ready and awaiting shipment to record stores this time last year, until their distributor felt the full force of the GFC.
“As some may be aware, our old distributor, Shogun obviously went under unfortunately midway through last year,†laments producer/ emcee DATS. “We basically had a version done about halfway through last year and because of the business side of things, it’s taken until now for (the album) to come out. But we’ve added a couple of extra tracks, a few beats were swapped around. We didn’t rest on our laurels.
“(But) it was disappointing, particularly because Shogun had been with us since the start and had had our back. And I know for a fact that Adam, who was running Shogun, probably never made a cent off of any of our releases. There were no hard feelings at the end of the day, it was pretty much down to the fact people aren’t buying CDs anymore, hence ‘The Out Of Money Experience’.â€
Clocking in at 18 tracks, if you include a couple of remixes as well as an interlude or two, ‘The Out Of Money Experience’ is choc full of fat productions, soulful beats, smouldering rhymes and an overall vibe that simply oozes top-shelf class.
“We had a couple of tracks re-mastered that we weren’t happy with, added a new track; ‘30 Rock’ which wasn’t on the original album. We also added a couple of remixes, so (the album) is a little bloated, but I guess that’s what you get when you’ve been sitting on something for a year ... for us we create beats, we mix the beats, the only thing we don’t do is master them. I guess to our ears (the album) wasn’t so fresh, so we had to do something to keep ourselves occupied.â€
Along with fellow producer/ emcee Sammsonite, MC Kristof The Russian, DJ Damage and Peter Beatie (MPC/ sampling lord), DATS and The Optimen are about to enter the most important phase (on the commercial side at least) of their career. If success attaches itself to ‘The Out Of Money Experience’, the Boomtown crew could face the sort of national exposure that could see them become a permanent fixture on the Australian scene.
“I feel like it’s all an upward trajectory and who knows what it is going to do in terms of making money. But whatever we do from here, whether we’re producing for other people or branching out and doing stuff with bands like Mr Laneous (And The Family Yah), we’re going to do our upmost to try and get it out there and hope people enjoy it.â€
Whilst the musical progression of The Optimen is plain for all to see, DATS doesn’t mind conceding the guys are most comfortable rapping about subject matter that plays a major role in their lives, even if that illicits labels such as ‘beer and bbqs hip hop’.
“We’re just doing the grown man version of that now. With the track ‘Something In The Air’, it’s about smoking weed. We also have a track about drinking beers. But we’re doing it with a twist. We just wanted to be a bit more subtle this time round, a bit more sophisticated I think.
“You have to rap about things that dominate your life, and if you look at the record, you have songs about death, we have the ‘Dust’ track where we’re talking about what does it all mean; you have the weed-smoking song, we have the beer drinking song, ‘On The Rocks’, and we also have songs about money as well. We’re covering all the major bases.â€
With the album in stores this Friday, now comes the promotional part of the record-making process as The Optimen hit the streets to spread the word to every man and his dog.
“We did consciously try and cut back the number of shows we were doing, particularly in Brisbane so the stuff would be a bit fresher to people’s ears. So the next four, five months we’ll pick-up the number of shows we’re playing and also change up the show from set to set so you won’t necessarily hear the same thing.â€
‘The Out Of Money Experience’ is available from April 9 through Red Tape Entertainment/ Inertia Distribution. Grab a slice of the new material when The Optimen headline the Decked Out TV show at The Jubilee Friday April 9.