Barbone - The Bandit

He is an emcee practising at the craft of rap every day for over a decade now. In 2015, Melbourne City’s own Barbone is primed to promote the album he has been working on for the last seven years. The Bandit, released on Christmas eve, has made its mark on the local scene and finds Barbone verging on a promising career in the catalogue of Australian hip-hop.

At the age of eleven, Barbone was introduced to Cypress Hill’s 1993 LP Black Sunday, a cult-classic among West coast US rap fans, and a fevered an interest in rapping was developed. However, it wasn’t until a few years on where Barbone would further educate himself on the broader scope of hip-hop through the video game, Thrasher Skate & Destroy and by the age of fourteen had fully immersed himself into the elements of breakdancing, beatboxing, graffiti and freestyle-rapping. From here, Barbone had graduated his talents into writing wordplay into rhymes and into recordings. Three years on and Barbone had made serious headway into joining the industry, all the while constantly building on his skill set and refining his recordings to match the true love he has for this rap game.

Barbone opened his career in the 5-piece group Reverse Psychology, however, as Barbone puts it ‘they were from different planets when it came to hip-hop.’ With diverging interests, it tore the band apart and they each went their separate ways. Since 2006, Barbone has been hitting stages and sharing them with the likes of big name artists such as Maggot Mouf, RKS, Rawthentic, 3to2, 360, Illy as well with MCs from Crate Cartel, Pang Productions and more. In the studio, Barbone sought out collaborations with two established Australian MCs in Mantra and Flu on several released tracks. With friend Julio, Barbone was able to acquire a private recording studio where he can lay down this vocals without being charged for studio use by the hour. Here, the freshly packaged full-length studio album, The Bandit had been recorded.

Twas the night before Christmas when The Bandit dropped, December 24th, 2014, independently through Selective Hearing. The album features production from some of Australian hip-hop’s finest beatsmiths in Luger (AKA 5 Foot Nothing), WIK, Julio, Ciecmate, Scotty B The Digital Assassin, Phil Gektor (AKA Geko), J.Waters, Methodz [R.I.P], Ramzee and Mizari with mixing and mastering from Geko of Crate Cartel on most tracks.

Barbone has been writing raps for over ten years, since the age of fourteen and as of 2015, has finally perfected his craft. So, if solid Australian rap is what you’re after, then Burn City’s brightest, Azza Barbone is presenting a fine example of this through The Bandit LP and is someone set to make 2015 his bitch.