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4 Corners
 New Zealand's hip-hop phenomenon 4 Corners have finally secured themselves an Australian label, Grindin', for the release of their debut LP 'Foundations'.
Starting out back in 1998 and since going on to feature on P-Money's 'Big Things' and DJ Sir-Vere's 'Major Flavours 4' (which, as is happens, went triple platinum), the hip-hoppers went on to perform at major festivals like the Big Day Out and nationwide tours alongside Nesian Mystik and Misfits Of Science.
"Our album has been out since last July in New Zealand," says Koma, one of the MCs who works onstage next to fellow MC Hepaklypz and DJ Omega B. "It has been quite good in New Zealand for us. We've been getting a lot of good reviews and interviews in the press here and we're generally happy with that. ['Foundations'] has been getting a lot of airplay on the hip-hop stations. We've been having to push it a little bit harder for the commercial stations but that's a part of the job and we hooked up with Grindin' by sending over our DJ Omega B and our manager. [Grindin' label owner] Sam Dutch's name came up in a conversation with P-Money, he's one of P-Money's friends and we heard that Sam had a label and we wanted to know if he was interested in putting out the 'Foundations' album. From that point on he has been really good with letting us know what's going on. We signed a contract and we are really happy with the hook up.
MC Koma adds, "We've been wanting to make an album for eight years. You have to understand that when we first wanted to make an record, we were all amateur MCs not knowing nothing about the music industry. We just wanted to put down the rhymes and the lyrics. Through the last eight years we have gotten a tight grip on the music industry over here. We made connections and we had to figure out how to use the grant system for musicians and that is more or less filling out the right forms and saying the right thing in order to get funding for your album, video or single," he recalls. "We went through that as well as doing shows. A big part of it was learning to grow with the music. If we had dropped an album eight years ago, it wouldn't be what it is now. We would probably be cringing. It gave us a chance to grow in our music and learn how to think about what we really want to say."
MC Koma claims that when it came to recording the actual album, it took about six months all up, which also including mixing and mastering.
"Yeah, it took us about six months to actually drop all the tracks and mix and master the album so it was a full product. Before we started I think we had about 90 demos. We used about four of them for the album and for the rest we wrote new tracks.
"We did the album in York Street and K Town Studios," he explains, "we have a studio in Hamilton here, DJ Militia is one of our producers and he runs a studio down here for us. The majority of the material was recorded here and we took the whole album down to Auckland and mixed and mastered it at York Street."
Featuring the who's who of New Zealand hip-hop talent as guests, MC Koma says it all came down to growing up together and calling in a few friendly favours when 4 Corners needed to. "We have done stuff on P-Money's album 'Big Things'. That was a while ago - before P-Money was putting the producing aspect down for New Zealand we were all friends mucking around, doing our music things, opening shoes and rapping over 12"s. We were all friends for years before we got into the music industry. Once we got a chance to do the album we just reached back and asked our friends that we first hooked up with if they could help us out It's the first people you got to do stuff with, it's like, 'Let's do the album with those guys featuring on it'. Maybe the next album can have our other friends that we might meet later on in the game."
'Foundations' is out now through Central Station
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