On stage, Baker Boy is the kind of rapper who can get a crowd airborne within seconds. He’s all ego, gold chains and boundless energy, flitting between his native Yolngu Matha and English, imploring the audience to “step back, feel the power of my blackness”. He commands the mic and didgeridoo as if they’re extensions of his tall, agile frame, and inverts himself mid-flow with audacious breakdancing moves.
He is the first Indigenous artist to have mainstream success rapping in the Yolngu Matha language, his singles Cloud 9 and Marryuna receiving solid Triple J airplay. In the past few months he has swept the National Indigenous Music awards, inked a record deal with Select Music (home to the Preatures and Amy Shark), been rostered on the summer music festival circuit, was handpicked by Dizzee Rascal to be his Australian support act, and recorded a remix of Treaty with Yothu Yindi.
But today, as the artist – real name Danzal Baker – swaggers solo out of Melbourne’s Brunswick train station in a fluorescent rainbow hoodie and ripped jeans, introducing himself with a warm hug, he is channelling more of his totem animal, the olive python.
“The olive python is humble and it’s beautiful,” says Baker. “It’s not poisonous and it’s really long and huge. When you see the light shine on it you can see its rainbow reflection and it catches your eye.”
Baker, who grew up in the remote Indigenous communities of Milingimbi and Maningrida in north-east Arnhem Land, says he once had an olive python as a pet. “I let it go back to the bush to live in the environment. I have to show respect for my totem by giving it space, by making sure no one hurts it, by trying to guide it in a different direction so it doesn’t get hurt.”
He’s just 21, but the now Melbourne-based rapper has already devoted a solid chunk of his life to guiding others in the right direction. He uses his position as a mentor and teacher for the outreach group Indigenous Hip-Hop Projects to usher wayward youngsters in remote communities towards reconnecting with their culture using music, language and video.
Despite his home region giving Australia such music greats as Yothu Yindi, Saltwater Band, Gurrumul Yunupingu, Garruwa and Yirrmal (the latter two are Baker’s cousins), Baker says some young people are embarrassed by their roots and fearful of the wider world. “When I was a kid I saw a lot of my cousins, a lot of family members who had so much talent, but just got pulled away. And kind of being afraid to step into that [western] world or something.”
Baker – who is also a dancer, actor and graffiti artist – is unequivocal about his purpose on the planet: “Building the bridge for two worlds to come together.” Still, the level of success that has come along with that has taken him by surprise.
“Sometimes I think I’m just dreaming,” he says. “I’m living the dream. It’s like the best time of my life. It’s the best feeling that I’ve had. This is my first time experiencing something that’s way beyond from remote community and it’s pretty cool.”
It’s even more impressive considering Baker only began rapping a year ago. As an original member of the Yolngu dance troupe Djuki Mala (formerly known as the Chooky Dancers), Baker was no stranger to the stage, nor to creativity. “Yolngu people have been dancing and singing and playing instruments for centuries,” he says. “It’s in our blood and it keeps repeating in the next generation and next generation. We learn quick, too, from listening to elders, and when we watch music video clips, dancing films, we learn and we teach ourselves.”
Yet despite growing up listening to his father’s records of 2Pac, NWA, Grandmaster Flash, LL Cool J and Afrika Bambaataa, Baker clammed up when his beatboxing “brotherboys” first urged him to freestyle.
Then he heard the Puerto Rican reggaeton star Don Omar rap in Spanish. It dawned on trilingual Baker he could try freestyling in the language he hopes one day to become a professor in. The result was his first single, Cloud 9. Like reggaeton, Baker Boy’s brand of hip-hop is upbeat, fast-paced, danceable and melodious – but minus the smutty lyrics.
He’s not as fiercely political as his Indigenous hip-hop counterparts AB Original, but his songs carry social messages and touch on issues such as substance abuse in the Top End and racism. For Baker, fun is also at the forefront of everything he does. His latest single, Marryuna, featuring a cameo from Yirrmal, means to dance for the pure joy of it (as distinct from ceremonial dance) and Baker says the music video is shaping up to be a Gangnam Style-esque danceathon, complete with try-this-at-home hip-hop and Yolgnu moves.
Thematically, the song is Baker’s My Island Home moment, where he raps about living in Melbourne and catching the early morning train while imagining his parallel coastal life in Arnhem Land. “Back home at 6am I’m teaching my little brothers, going out fishing and spearing for crab and stingray and just going barefoot and having no noise,” he says before quoting a line from Marryuna: “City lights the sound too much for my mind / I need the quiet I need the nature sound.”
Fans can get a glimpse of Baker’s former life in Milingimbi in his video for Cloud 9, which is packed with his family members dancing their way around the coastal community.
Together with his Indigenous spirituality and Christian faith, Baker says his family keep him grounded.. “They pretty much just tease me,” he says, laughing, when asked how they’re reacting to his sudden popularity. “They say, ‘Hey, you’re famous now. Any money? Give me some money. Hey superstar, can I get a photo, an autograph?’ Just humbug, just teasing me. They’re really proud of me and they’re really happy I’m doing something really good for the community.
“All the kids just wanna be like me which is a good thing, because that’s pretty much what I was aiming at – inspiring young kids from remote communities to do something better.”
By flitting between English and Yolgnu Matha in his lyrics, he hopes “Balanda [white people] will be curious about it and then learn the language so they can understand what I’m saying. Then they’ll want to learn more language and try and connect to the community – it’s like my secret way of pulling everyone together, I guess.”
He isn’t surprised so much contemporary Indigenous music is lit by a social and political fuse. “I think we just want to be heard – we’ve got something to say.”
Baker says 26 January has always been a “weird and uncomfortable” day for him, one where he bunkers down at home and “feels the pain of people from this land”. In November, when Triple J announced it was changing the date of the annual Hottest 100 music countdown so that it no longer falls on Australia Day, Baker posted a sequence of victory symbols and heart emojis to his Facebook page.
“I was really happy because otherwise I wasn’t going to celebrate that day – I wasn’t going to listen to [the Hottest 100] until probably two days after to hear who won,” he says, despite both his singles being tipped for high spots in the radio station poll.
Like his smooth-moving totem, Baker doesn’t like to sit still for long: he’s now six tracks deep into his debut album, slated for midyear release. In March he’ll be playing Adelaide’s prestigious world music and dance festival Womadelaide. “I performed on the big stage [at Womadelaide] before, with Djuki Mala, but never as Baker Boy. I’m so pumped.”
And since seeing Drake perform (“It was magnificent – I just pictured myself one day doing something like that”) Baker is also angling for the North American touring circuit. Until then, he’s also content with chugging away at his day job: making a difference.
“I’ve already seen changes,” he says. “If I can change one person’s mind then that’s enough for me. And from there, it’ll just keep spreading and spreading.”
• Baker Boy performs at Woodford folk festival on 30 and 31 December; with Yothu Yindi at the Enmore theatre in Sydney on 12 January; at Laneway festival in Melbourne on 3 February; in support of Dizzee Rascal in Melbourne and Sydney on 20 and 21 February; and at Womadelaide on 9 and 10 March
