Indij Hip Hop Show

Founded in 2008 by the legendary Munkimuk, the Indij Hip Hop Show uncovers the new and established artists, tracks and scenes coming out of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander hip hop communities spread across the many nations now called Australia.

Having grown with the show, Frank and Renee are now the team behind the Koori Radio desk, scouring their social media networks weekly for new talent. As the hip hop community finds new online platforms that allow them to be prolific in their production/distribution, the Indij Hip Hop Show takes this output and mixes often disparate MCs and producers, giving credence to an idea that many individual voices often share an aim in hip hop. We caught up with the team about the history of the show and their start:

When did you first get involved with the program?

We started joining Munk (previous host/founder of the Indij Hip Hop Show) around August 2014. By the end of September 2014, we’d taken over hosting the show. For the last handover show with Munk, we flipped the script on him and put him under the spotlight and devoted a show to his extensive career and his time with the show.

Were you a fan of the show before you started presenting?

Yeah, we both listened to the show a fair bit over the years! We both love hip hop and have been involved in local scenes/the culture for over 20 years. And as Indigenous people ourselves we’re well aware of the talent, and the barriers, that face our Indigenous hip hop artists.

You broadcast out of Koori Radio in Sydney, there seems to be a lot of great hip hop coming out of Sydney at the moment, do you think it’s particularly strong at the moment or is it just receiving a bit more attention?

There’s a bit of both I think! The hip hop scene has obviously grown over the years. We’ve also reached a point where the younger artists coming through have grown up within an established scene. Rather than back in the days when people were really building one. We now have reached the point where we have a second generation of hip hop heads coming through! And that’s pretty amazing! Especially when people really doubted the staying power of hip hop.

You keep a very national focus for the program, how do you keep track of what’s going on in areas around Australia outside of Sydney?

A lotta time spent online basically! Many hours on Facebook and Soundcloud in particular. We were lucky enough to also have some pretty good networks and contacts coming into doing the show. So we just keep building and building on that! Keeping an eye out for artists we haven’t heard of. Sometimes people reach out to us because they’ve heard the show, or someone they know got played. But yeah, bless the internet! Because without it, presenting this show would be a whole lot harder!

Who are some artists at the moment you would recommend checking out?

Any artist we play on the show really! As well as some pretty dope, more established artists, there’s some pretty exciting new artists coming through that have a lot of potential. We just want to shine a light on some great talent out there who often get overlooked. 

How important is the social media interaction to the show? I notice you regularly post the playlists and other info on your Facebook page?

It’s really important! Besides Koori Radio, we go out on two national networks (the Community Radio Network and the National Indigenous Radio Service), and one international network. So we’re being broadcast at different times over different timezones! Social media is the best way for us to have direct contact with our listeners. It also allows us to share news items as they happen, and extra content that we might not be able to fit into our show. And it provides us with the means to link our listeners to the artists we play as well.

For CRN subscribers:

• Indij Hip Hop Show is broadcast/distributed by CRN Fridays from 23:00 to 00:00 EST/EDT, and is available for DDN capture.
• Show Page and Playlists
• Facebook and Twitter
• For more information contact CRN staff on 02 9310 2999 or email [email protected]

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