Needing a retreat from the stress of the daily grind, Perth MC Drapht — aka Paul Reid — has turned his deft hand to grinding coffee beans at his new café to cope.

Fans don’t need to worry, though, as he’ll still be in Brisbane to destroy the stage at this year’s Sprung Festival with DJ Rob Shaker. 

“I am a hands on owner… The first couple of months in any business, you have to put your all into it. It’s all my inspiration, all my recipes and basically the way I’ve been living for the last ten years or so.”

A place to drench your arteries in burger fat it is not, Paul being a strict adherent to holistic health, a ramification of his battle with auto-immune and thyroid issues that make him wince at the sight of pasteurised dairy, table salt and processed sugar. We discuss the similarities between a track list and a menu.

“With the café, it’s the same sort of creative energy, but in a different avenue. It feels like I’m working with Trials, Suffa or Ta-Ku. That’s like me working with the chef, coming up with all these lists of ingredients seeing what works and doesn’t work. It gives me a bit of time to take away from the pressure of my music, but still have that creative outlook on something different.”

As a self-described perfectionist, and the ‘Life Of Riley’ album leading him to the brink of insanity, it’s easy to picture Drapht blowing blood vessels like Gordon Ramsay perusing a burnt tomato. However, Paul has learnt to keep this in check over the years.

“I’m trying my hardest not to [give in], I’ve grown up being very hard on myself with anything I’ve done creative wise. Perfectionism is not a nice thing, it’s not something to pride yourself on. I’ve learnt within the last five years I need to give myself a bit of a break and not go overboard.

“If it’s with my music, I can sit there with a song for weeks on end trying to get it perfect, but no one’s going to notice the difference. Those extra days you put into it, it’s not even worth it, no one appreciates that extra length you go to.

“You put yourself through the ringer to please everyone but yourself. Your health is unfortunately the catalyst of that, and you end up being the person most affected by it. By no means would I ever do that to myself again, there’d be no slaving for 18 hours a day on an album anymore. That’s why I want to work on music the way I used to work on music.”

We talk about how the process has changed over the years, from the angst driven young Perth rapper leaking out of ‘Pale Rider’, to the ARIA success of ‘Brothers Grimm’ and the trappings of fame.

“I started writing music when I was 17 and I spent every waking moment on it that I wasn’t working because I loved it. After the success of ‘Brothers Grimm’, I had to push myself to write the whole ‘Life Of Riley’ record. It turned into a job and I hated it, I hated that aspect of music and I hated what it became after it was successful… I wanted to strip everything back and really get the love back and use music as the venting process that it was.”

Paul cites the release of ‘Tasty’ with Ta-Ku as one of these opportunities. A surprise for many, the song’s trap style beat and hard hitting rhythm were a far cry from the sample driven ‘Life Of Riley’, but the track perfectly captures the notion of breathing new life back into the creative process.

Looking forward to Sprung, whose line-up reads like a who’s who of local hip hop, Drapht is happy to be back on stage surrounded by his peers.

“It’ll be like having Wu-Tang on stage with the amount of guests I’m going to have for Brisbane and Melbourne. I’ve been touring with a live band for the last six years. They are some of my closest friends, but this time they can’t come out. So I’m going to flip it up and take it back to where I started, have some MCs and a DJ, that’s the formula. It will be nice to get back to those roots.

“It’s throwing me out of my comfort zone a little bit, and I’m a little bit nervous not having the band behind me.”

With all eyes on Paul, I ask whether his perfectionist tendencies make it harder for him to perform solo.

“You’re not helping me whatsoever here,” he laughs. “You’re putting fear into my head, even more anxiousness.”

Drapht plays Sprung Festival at Victoria Park September 21.