News
May 27, 2018
To bee or not to bee - that is the question.
After a year packed with misfortune, now it seemed that her life might be cut short by a tiny insect.
"I got stung out at Leigh on Waitangi Day," says Karoline Tamati, better known as Aotearoa's reigning hip hop soul queen, Ladi6.
"I'd never been allergic before, and I'd already been stung a couple of times earlier that same summer. But this time it was different."
Her hands swelled up. She broke out in hives. Her throat closed up. She couldn't breathe and started to pass out.
Tamati went into anaphylactic shock and had to get air-lifted to hospital.
"Thank God for the Westpac rescue helicopter, right? My body just started completely freaking out, and I nearly died. It seemed like the latest bad thing in a year where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong."
What things, exactly? We will get to that.
The most important thing is that Tamati survived it all and has come back stronger than ever.
This week she picked up three Pacific Music Awards - including best album. Now, She's about to head out on an extensive national tour, playing 13 gigs in the regions followed by four sheila-heavy showcases in the main centres.
The Outta Time tour is, she says, a celebration, a party, a joyful re-emergence after a pretty stink time.
"It's my way of getting out there in front of my people and showing that I'm finally all good again, you know?"
After a physically, emotionally and financially debilitating few years, Tamati certainly sounds like her old self again: loud, funny, loose as a goose.
It's a cold, overcast morning when I talk to her, but the singer's enthusiasm pours down the phone line and heats up my tiny office like sunshine.
"I feel blessed, I really do!" she says, talking a mile a minute in that husky voice of hers, her speech bristling with imagined exclamation marks.
"Is that a cliché? Perhaps it is, but that's how I feel. Blessed! For a while there it looked like life couldn't possibly get any worse, but then I came through! Against the odds, I made it, bro!"
Tamati has been through the fire, alright, but the way she tells it, she got tempered like steel rather than burned to a crisp.
The bad stuff began with that most mundane of bodily niggles - a sore throat.
She'd been "hitting things a bit hard" for a while, trying to distract herself from a persistent knot of grief after the unexpected death of her cousin, Lily, in June 2016, following a short illness.
Tamati thought she was just a bit run down - working too hard, drinking too much, maybe getting a cold.
But she could barely sing, and there was a big Australasian tour on the horizon.
She went to a throat specialist, who turned out to be a big Ladi6 fan and wouldn't let her pay for her appointment.
Long story short: Tamati needed two throat surgeries and months of recuperation.
Two tours got cancelled, costing her thousands of dollars in non-refundable flights and accommodation charges.
"Both my vocal cords and my bank balance were bleeding" she joked in a recent piece she wrote for The Spinoff website.
And somewhere along the way, her mum had a severe heart attack at Auckland Airport and ended up in hospital.
Between visits to the coronary ward, Tamati, her DJ/producer partner Parks and their 14 year old son Philli shifted into a bigger house so that her mum could move in for her long convalescence.
"It's hard to explain how grim it all was for a while there. I'd put out a new record (last year's Royal Blue 3000 EP) and couldn't tour to promote it. I'd lost thousands over the cancelled tour. My cousin had died and my mum was really sick. And I didn't know what was gonna happen with my voice."
She pauses, heaves a giant sigh.
"You know… my voice! Imagine how scary that was. My voice is everything. I don't have too many other skills, bro. My voice is my meal ticket."
It really is true. Besides singing and rapping, Tamaiti also makes part of her income as a voice-over artist. You would have heard her many times without realising it.
"Believe it or not, I am the brand voice of BNZ and Pizza Hut" she says, sounding a tad surprised by the fact herself.
"I have to go and voice some ads this afternoon, actually, and I'm gonna ride down to the studio on my new electric bike!"
The good news? Her voice is fine again. Possibly better than before, even.
"I just have to get used to what it can do now and harness that. There was a little hole that added a huskiness to my voice, and two small bumps in my voice-box that blocked it from closing properly. That's been fixed, which means my voice can go higher now. Getting used to it is weird, though. Every now and then my voice squeaks like an adolescent boy going through puberty."
And now that her instrument is working again, she's taking it back out on the road.
Napier. Blenheim. Westport. New Plymouth. Russell. Inver- freakin'- Cargill.
It's the sort of epic old-school regional tour most local stars stop doing once they're reached a certain level of fame.
Which, says Tamati, is precisely why she felt compelled to do it.
"I grew up in Christchurch, and we'd never get half the acts that went to Wellington or Auckland. We were always so appreciative when somebody made the effort to come our way, and the venue would pack out. Afterwards, the band would always be, like - Wow! You guys are the best crowd of the whole tour!"
When Tamati launched her own career, she put the miles in, slogging around the provinces many times.
"Back then, I'd always be playing little spots in Nelson or Gisborne, then I reached a stage where I made enough money through music royalties and voice-overs that I would only play bigger gigs or festivals. But recently, I realised that that's pretty s…ty, you know?"
She decided to do the decent thing. It was time to take her music to the people, wherever they might live.
"I want to get to those punters in Invercargill or Blenheim who're, like - 'Yeah! Respect! She actually got off her arse and f…ing came here!' And we'll all have a big party each night, because hip hop acts never usually go to these places. And better late than never, eh? I was gonna tour hard when my record came out last year but I couldn't, so I'm really amped to finally do it like this."
The tour is broken into two parts. The first sees a stripped-down surge through the provinces throughout June, with Tamati joined on-stage by husband/producer/keyboardist Parks and esteemed hip hop DJ, Dylan C.
And then, from mid-July, she's off again, touring the main centres with three kick-ass wahine at her side: Aotearoa roots and reggae queen SilvaMC, rapper JessB and rising R'n'B star Bailey Wiley.
The idea of a touring showcase of up-and-coming female artists came soon after Tamati's second surgery. To ease gently back into performing, she did two intimate Ladi6 shows in Auckland, with guest vocalists joining her, freestyling lyrics over sampled loops or a live band.
"I did it with these girls at my side for support, in case my new voice was s…! We all make music with big funky basslines, like hip hop and soul and dancehall reggae, and I knew these three phenomenal ladies would be my safety net and entertain everybody if my voice fell apart."
Those Alpha Sessions shows turned out to be a revelation.
"Just being with those wahine, I thought - 'Wow! This is the kind of f…ing raucous, bad-ass party we need more of in this country'. The crowd was about 70 per cent women, and it reminded me of my early days in (female hip hop crew) Sheelaroc in Christchurch, where there were heaps of women on stage and in the crowd and the energy was really high. The vibe is very different with that many women. There's no shuffling around cradling a pint. Everyone's up there dancing and letting go."
The joy in the room was contagious, and Tamati also loved the diversity within the audience.
"All three of the other performers had their own fans, so you had young ladies, hippie chicks, hip hop girls, non-conformist indie chicks who don't shave their pits, all sorts of loose wahine letting go together. We all felt really hyped by that experience, so I decided right then I had to take these ladies out on tour."
Such multi-artist tours can be complex to set up, and prohibitively expensive. But Tamati's higher profile meant she had the contacts and the resources to pull it off.
"It seemed important to our musical culture here in Aotearoa, you know? I wanted to awhi (support) these three great female performers and get them in front of big crowds in the main cities. I knew it would be inspiring to the women in the audience, and also to the other performers themselves. It shows these women- this is the next step for you. You're jumping on my tour this time, but down the track, you could be bringing other ladies along on your own tours and showing them how it's done."
It all feels a bit "full circle", she says. Tamati got a comparable nudge from higher-profile musicians when she was starting out.
"I had a similar sort of mentoring with Fat Freddy's Drop and Scribe. They both took me around the world very early on in my career and I was so appreciative to get that chance to watch them do their thing and share the tour bus and the stage. It gives you a big eye-opener about what's possible for you. You're there with these other musicians - people you usually hanging around with back in New Zealand, getting on the p… with - and here they are on a huge stage in Hamburg or Paris, absolutely killing it!"
The right encouragement at the right time can make all the difference to a musician's career, she says. That's certainly what happened with her.
Now 35, Tamati grew up in Christchurch, though her family moved to Africa for 18 months in her teens.
It was there that she first started to write songs, forming the female hip hop trio Sheelaroc after she returned to Christchurch in the late-90s.
On a good day, they were fierce. Poke around online and you can find a priceless early performance recorded live in the studios of Christchurch station, Cry TV, in 2000.
Over raw, bass-bumping tape loops, the three women tear it up, pioneering a tough, fast-flowing female hip hop MC style previously unknown in Aotearoa.
The daughter of two politically-aware social workers, Tamati comes from a large, close-knit and gifted Samoan family, and her first nudge towards the spotlight came from them.
Actor Oscar Kightly, rapper Scribe and soul singer Tyra Hammond - one of her Sheelaroc partners - are all her cousins.
"Yes, mate. Very creative family, eh? No money, but heaps of talent. Everyone can sing, dance, act. I'm not even one of the top three singers in that family, to be honest."
After Sheelaroc, Tamati collaborated with her partner Parks in the band Verse Two, then went solo as Ladi6.
Since then, there have been three solo albums and an EP, numerous singles and tours and awards, and a period spent living and working in Berlin.
She has contributed guest slots to other people's records; toured Brazil, Thailand, Europe and America; opened shows for international heavyweights The Roots, 50 Cent, Gil Scott-Heron and De La Soul, among others.
Oh, and been almost killed by a bee.
"Ha! Yes, but I'm still here, right? A whole lot of bad s… has happened, but it finally feels like I'm out the other side. Everyone has their own struggles, of course, and mine just seemed to pile up over the last year or so, but that's behind me now. It's time to do the mahi and take that last record to the people. After all, what could possibly go wrong that hasn't gone wrong already? Any anxiety I ever had about my music or touring or whatever- it's gone! I nearly died, so now, you know, I don't give a s…! Move aside and hand me that microphone!"
She laughs long and hard, and her joy is infectious. Karoline "Ladi6" Tamati really does sound like someone who has got her mojo back.
"Really, after those bad times, if feels like all this good stuff is suddenly right there on the horizon for me. This tour's just the start. I'm ready! You've only got one life, so do it, do it, do it!"
