One of Australia’s finest emcees, Illy, is back with his 4th studio album ‘Cinematic’ and hot damn! it’s one of the most polished local hip hop releases this country has ever seen/heard - definitely the kind of album you’d play someone from overseas if you were easing them into Oz rap stuff.
After listening to it in full it’s pretty obvious Illy has a knack for writing structured songs with thought out concepts as opposed to an album worth of hip hop songs about hip hop, a curse that often plagues the genre… OK so there is a couple of straight up hip hop bangers too - see the tracks with a couple of his idols, heavyweights Hilltop Hoods & Drapht for evidence of that.
This is an album that really deserves to cross over to a bigger audience due to the fact it’s loaded with hip pop jams, and not in a 'sellout’ kinda way - which is always a bit of a tightrope (pun intended) act when it comes to Australian hip hop.
We caught up with the man himself and asked him to deliver up a list of tunes that helped shape the Cinematic experience.
This list is fairly broad, but based pretty much in the genre of hip hop. I’ve only been listening to a few artists lately, when i start writing my own stuff intensely, I don’t have much scope to really take in a lot of new music. But these are tracks off some of my favourite albums of the last year or two, some in the last couple of months, and even a couple of classics that i still play regularly. I think on the whole its a pretty good indication of where I draw my influence from - lots of flows and melodies and big hooks in this list. It could always be longer but I wanted to keep it short and sweet. Hope you enjoy!
Illy’s brand new album 'Cinematic’ is out in all good record stores and digitally now! Also, be sure to check out his website which has a whole stack of cool content about the making of the album and the story behind all the collaborators involved.