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Pegz.
 Australian hip hop is big business, and it's growing all the time - but it's not hard to remember an era when the scene was restricted to a few shows on community radio and a couple of small clubs. A lot of the credit for the burgeoning scene has to go to Obese, the label that's helped to put a lot of artists' records in stores and in radio playlists, and to the man behind that label: Pegz.
He's not just a label head, though: as an MC with over ten years of experience and a number of respected releases under his belt, though he admits it isn't always easy to juggle the two roles that he has to play. In a very tired Monday morning voice, he explains "it's kind of difficult at times, you know, but there's pros and cons. It can keep you constantly inspired or it can keep you constantly drained, so there's always spurts and ups and downs, but there's a lot of good things that definitely outweigh the negatives."
As an artist it's a definite advantage being able to listen to releases from some of the country's best artists months before they come out, but despite the incredible talent on the Obese roster, Pegz chose not to go down the well-travelled road of getting his stars to craft a classic album for him. "I wouldn't mind being P. Diddy!" he jokes, "but I feel like I've learnt a lot about making records, just seeing other people make them and having a fair bit of experience myself and I really feel like there needs to be some sort of consistency throughout the album to get your message across, so I didn't feel the need."
This consistency is helped by the fact that long-time collaborator Plutonic Lab produces the bulk of the album, with another old friend, Suffa (from Obese act The Hilltop Hoods) contributing the only two other tracks. It wasn't a hard decision to make for Pegz, whose "pretty much worked on every record with him over the last five years" - and hey, when you have a producer who can play drums, bass, guitar, keyboards and spin records as well as rap, why not use him? Pegz can't resist adding "I'll burn him on the mic and I've got better tags than him. But seriously, he's just a machine: he's so humble and dedicated and passionate about what he does" - all of which are adjectives that could be directed at Pegz himself.
Given the similarities between the two, it's fitting that they should be forming a group together, with another old school Melbourne head in Muphin. They've christened themselves the Milk Bar Stars. "People know milk bars as being Australian" Pegz explains, "so we just wanted to put a bit of a twist on that. It's kind of funny as well, a bit corny you know, a bit silly."
Though the name might be a joke, the group certainly isn't, and while it should be a fun project, they're working on an album now and a tour's being planned with it, but before that they'll be making their Adelaide debut at Pegz' album launch for "Axis", one of only two launches for the album. When I ask why he chose Adelaide, he goes back to that time when everyone in the scene was doing it tough- "I got a lot of love for Adelaide, and it's been like that for the last five years. Ever since that first compilation that came out, 'Culture Of Kings 1', and some guys in Adelaide and Obese came together to put that together, it was a real turning point for lots of artists out there right now."
He's hardly exaggerating the importance of that compilation when he suggests that "that's when the first tight networks really started the rise of Australian hip-hop... and that's when I really started to feel like part of a community."
Alexis Buxton-Collins
 | Pegz launches his album at Jive on Fri 4 Nov with Muphin, Plutonic, Funkoars, Evolve & Mids, Kirk 1 and Reflux. |
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