When Daniel Smith started writing a song about his son’s battle with acute myeloid leukemia, he didn’t know how it was going to end.
In February 2013, the Australian hip hop star carried his critically ill eight-year-old boy into the hospital, and spent the next six months sleeping next to him in a hospital bed as he underwent chemotherapy.
With the support of his longtime band mates Matt Lambert (MC Suffa) and Barry Francis (DJ Debris), Smith (otherwise known as MC Pressure) cancelled the Hilltop Hoods’ North American tour, shelved plans to record their much-anticipated seventh studio album, and finally made time to be a dad.
“He had been in [the hospital] for about a week when I started writing the song,” says Smith. “They had a bed in the room that he was living in; I pretty much sat there every night once he fell asleep, on my laptop, in the dark, just writing this song. I couldn’t sleep. Pretty much my only release and way to deal with what was happening was to pour it into this song.”
He wrote and rewrote the lyrics almost 200 times as he waited anxiously for the outcome of his son’s treatment, until finally it got the ending he was hoping for: Liam went into remission, and has been healthy now for over a year.
Despite its ultimately uplifting message of perseverance and strength, however, make no mistake – “Through The Dark” is raw and real and infinitely more personal than most their previous work. And it will make you cry.
“Man, like, that song… it just punches you in your heart’s face,” says Lambert. “His son is my godson, so when he played that… It’s a full-on song. I was super proud of him, not just in the way he performed as a dad all throughout the experience, but the song is a beautiful piece of work as well. I think it’s the best thing he’s ever written and it’s because it’s the most sincere thing he’s ever written. It’s a very earnest song. Like, how the fuck are you not going to be earnest when you’re talking about your son’s sickness, you know what I mean?”
Still, the band had to talk Smith into singing the hook, rather than their usual practice of inviting in a guest vocalist, and then convince him to put it on their latest album, Walking Under Stars.
But the groundbreaking band, which has worn the crown as Australia’s premier hip hop act for close to 20 years, has always been at ease breaking down barriers and genre clichés. The subject matter sits naturally next to equally personal life lessons about money and happiness (“Pyramid Building”), pain (the haunting “Live And Let Go” featuring Brother Ali) and family (“Won’t Let You Down”).
“That’s some grown man shit to care about,” laughs Lambert. “But the older you get the more you realize that’s all the matters. Even music for me, for most people, is temporary. At least a career in music. So as you get older the things that are most important come into focus I guess.”
Smith says they’re currently working “Through The Dark” into their live set, and it will likely be ready by the time they get to Vancouver to play the Commodore on Sept. 12.
But are fans of the prolific Adelaide act, which has been rapping about loving their fans, loving their lives, and getting drunk and falling in the gutter since the mid-’90s, ready for real life? These same fans had been waiting more than a year past the expected drop date for the album – a continuation of 2012’s Drinking From The Sun.
The simple answer is it doesn’t matter; Walking Under Stars is one of the most exceptional, honest hip hop LPs of the year.
True to Hilltop’s double-platinum past, the album is a two-part deal. Alongside the more mature themes sits the ‘90s-inspired swagger of “Cosby Sweater”, a summer shout out to Biggie and Bill Cosby that rivals their breakout stadium anthem “Nosebleed Section”. As it gets blisteringly hot in their home country over the next few weeks, we Canadians will be curling up on our couches wearing nothing but Coogi sweaters and smiles.
Or practicing our 20-second handshakes, as eulogized in the impossible-to-ignore “The Art Of The Handshake” one track later.
“What happened to them?” says Lambert jokingly. “Me and Pressure have a bunch of handshakes. We’ve known each other since we were 12 years old, so we have a catalogue of handshakes. To do a song so earnest about something so stupid to me was a really funny idea.”
It’s all to be expected from a band that made a 65-minute zombie flick out of their 2009 album, State Of The Art.
“We’re ticking all these boxes of things that we want to do. We made an album with an orchestra. That was fun as shit. And when we went to make the DVD for the last album, we thought, ‘Why don’t we make a zombie film…?’ It was literally one of those things, I do it because I can,” Lambert says with a laugh. “I’m a huge George Romero fan and just a fan of zombie films in general.”
But just when you start thinking the fun-loving, staunchly independent band might never fully embrace their elder statesmen status, you’re reminded that the Hilltop Hoods offer creative mentorship, studio time, and financial support to emerging Australian hip hop artists through their HTH scholarship initiative.
Which sounds vaguely similar to someone the band is looking forward to hanging out with when they hit town.
“Our friend [Mark] Brand lives in Vancouver,” says Lambert. “He’s a restaurateur. We like to hit his spot, Save On Meats? We actually call Vancouver, ‘Brandcouver’.”
The Hilltop Hoods play the Commodore Ballroom Sept. 12. Tickets are $37.25 at Ticketmaster.ca.
