Briggs

Briggs is 598 kilometres from his hometown of Shepparton - and he's missing his bed.

"When I'm at home I don't have people ringing me up telling me I've got to get out of the house," says the rapper, sitting on his hotel room's balcony in Sydney.

"In a hotel you've got to check out and lie and bullshit. They're ringing me up and getting all the lies they hear every morning, like, 'Yep, I'm just in the shower! I'm just in the shower at the moment! I'm just doing this! I'm just doing that! Yep, I'll be down in five!' We all know what's happening - I'm just laying there."

Briggs, the biggest name in Aboriginal rap, grins. The sun beats down on the balcony and bounces off his Ray-Bans. A large stogie smoulders between his fingers.

In fact, Briggs' house is now in Melbourne's northern suburbs, to where he recently relocated. But his home will always be the much-maligned rural Victorian town of Shepparton - famed, as one socio-economic report puts it, for its "bogans, rednecks and criminals".

Briggs takes Shepparton with him wherever he goes. He's now half way through a national tour promoting his latest album, Sheplife, a homage to his hometown that rolls like the grittiest film noir. On his hotel room's sofa, his lean, shaven-headed cousin, Brad - from back home - is relaxing.

"I don't like going places that I can't take my cousins," says Briggs. "Everywhere I go I try to take someone with me who's my family, otherwise I get bored. Because I don't drink and I don't do drugs, partying and stuff doesn't really appeal to me. You've got other people who are stars and I just don't care about all that stuff, to be honest. It's just not interesting to me. I'd much rather be having a laugh with my cousin."

Briggs owes a lot to his cousins. It is they who sharpened the young Adam Briggs' tongue. It is they who honed Briggs' storytelling abilities. It is they, the Yorta Yorta people, who cared for their land for thousands of years before a stranger named Sherbourne Sheppard came and stamped his name on it, almost wiping out those stories for good. Briggs has his skills because when everyone's got yarning in their blood and you're trying to get a word in edgeways, you've got to be fast and you've got be funny.

"I was the youngest, the chubbiest, the favourite," says Briggs. "My nan's favourite - so I used to get it, man, on a regular basis. You had to be quick, man. If you weren't quick, they'd just gang up on you and you'd be done. You'd have to be quick to come back and cut it. You had to stop that onslaught before it got too hectic."

His comebacks impressed his cousins, but not his teachers. They didn't care that he came from a long, unbroken line of storytellers. They didn't care that his mother was a midwife, that his father was a community leader who was mentored by none other than the first Aboriginal person to be knighted, Sir Doug Nicholls, the governor of South Australia a decade before Briggs was born.

"I got told I wouldn't amount to shit," says Briggs. "Dead set. In primary school, I got told I would amount to nothing."

When Malcolm Little was told by his teacher that he could never be the lawyer he wanted to be, it awoke in him a lifelong anger that transformed him into political colossus Malcolm X.

When Adam Briggs was told by his teacher that he wouldn't amount to anything, it ignited a burning rage that transformed him into super-heavyweight rapper Briggs. A decade later, that anger exploded on his debut EP, Homemade Bombs, as he spat venom at his tormentor: "Fucking grade six, fucking 12 years old, I was told I'd amount to nothing - man, FUCK THAT."

The EP's look-at-me-now title track, "Homemade Bombs", was hurled in a wide arc that took out all Briggs' doubters.

Apparently we're getting everything for free
Where's this line for handouts? Cos this is news to me
Does that line exist? No it doesn't
Like you, the only thing we get for free is nothing
Except the stigma of being one of us
Which is second to none, nothing before, nothing to come
Coon, Abo, boong, nigger - pretend you never say it
Pretend you didn't laugh then, pretend you're not racist
And if you think that's about you, fucking maybe it is
But don't get mad at me about it - take a good fucking look at yourself

The notion that Aboriginal people get all kinds of handouts is an all too common misconception.

"That's one of the main ones, is like how Aboriginal folk get all this free shit," says Briggs. "It's just untrue. That's just not how it works. I used to get into fights over that shit. My dad had a work car and people would be like, 'Where did your dad get his work car from?' I'd be like, 'I don't know, the same place your fucking dad gets his work car! From his fucking job, cocksucker!'"

Briggs knows his family were lucky to even have a status symbol like a car. Just a kilometre from where Briggs now sits, Sydney's Western train line takes its passengers on a journey through Australian inequality. In the north, it stops at former state premier Barry O'Farrell's electoral seat of Wahroonga, where the ultra-rich show off their wealth through their huge houses, kept sparkling by house-washing servants. Out west, it stops at Mount Druitt, where the not-so-rich show off their wealth through their cars, parked proudly on the lawn. Such parking is a worldwide phenomenon, no different in Shepparton, about which Briggs raps on "Sheplife":

20 feet hose minus 16 bongs means you can only water about half of ya lawn
But it doesn't matter, that's what the parking's for

"Some people are selling their cars, some people are parking their cars and some people are just leaving them there," he says. "They've got to fucking mow around them. You can see how long the car's been for sale for by how high the fucking grass is. 'Nah, it's up to the fender!'"

US social critic Vance Packard notes in his book The Status Seekers how the poor are more likely to park their cars outside the garage than those who can afford more expensive homes.

"That's a rich man's dream, showing off your car," counters Briggs, glancing at his feet. "More like showing off your Jordans, you know what I mean?"

On his feet are a pair of his beloved Nike Jordans. Around his neck dangles a silver pendant shaped like the head of journalist and broadcaster George Negus. The pendant is a joke, but the chain has a deadly serious link. On his new song "Victory", Briggs links it to the neck chains that were placed on Aboriginal people by the settlers:

They put the chains on our necks, and we here so what's next
I’m gettin' paid for shows and that payment shows in this chain around my neck

In what Briggs calls "a $300 practical joke", Negus was chosen for the pendant just because his name "rhymes with Jesus". His "Negus chain" is a piss-take of the gaudy "Jesus chains" worn by US rappers in their oxymoronic displays of wealth and Christianity.

But Briggs' barbs aren't aimed solely stateside. After one of Australian Hip-Hop's biggest stars, 360, caused controversy by charging fans $1000 for a selfie with him in VIP package deals, Briggs downstaged him with his own Sheplife VIP packages. He announced that people who bought a ticket to his show could come to the soundcheck and get a "10 million dollar selfie" - for free. Those who paid an extra $5 could ride with him in a taxi to the show: "I call a cab but you at least gotta throw in a $5er on the night too, don't be cheap."

It's not easy to get an interview with the rapper, as other interviewers have said. But anyone looking at his social media outlets can see it's easy to meet him as a fan. He has his priorities in order.

"Just in case things do blow up I want to know who my fans are," says Briggs. "Because I see people down the front row who know songs word-for-word and that's crazy to me. I want to remember these people.

"I say, 'If you want to meet me, that's cool, but it's probably going to be a disappointing experience.'"

He laughs.

"I wouldn't say I'm, like, a super-shy person. But I think I'm definitely a little bit different from what people would expect. If I don't know you or don't know who you are, I'm definitely way more reserved than I am with my family, who I'm comfortable with, you know what I mean?"

It's true that away from the camera and the microphone, Briggs almost seems like another person, another shape. Gone is the intimidating man-mountain with the effortless, electrifying wit that jabs and thrusts like a cattle prod. In his place is a tall, but hardly intimidating, man. One who ponders questions rather than flinging them back in the face of the interlocutor with lightning-fast humour. One who calls himself "an introvert with an extrovert's career".

Hardcore fans got to see that other side when they bought the "final boss level" VIP package - a 45-minute bus tour of Shepparton, which included Briggs showing fans around his parents' house.

Such a move may have surprised Australia's most successful rapper, the record-breaking Iggy Azalea. When asked on a US radio show about the issues facing Aboriginal people in her country, she replied: "The thing about Aboriginal people and why I think it's difficult for them is because they don’t believe you should live in an enclosed structure like a house, um, they sleep under the stars, it’s how they live."

In response, Briggs - whose public, razor sharp tongue cuts even his best friends down to size - tweeted at her: "Hey @IGGYAZALEA I live in a house, you fuckin idiot."

It's not a post-colonial practice. After the British declared Australia "Terra Nullius" - a land of no people - the settlers shot themselves in the foot by extensively documenting all the Aboriginal people's houses they came across as they explored the country.

But Azalea's ignorance is all the more shocking because she claims she is "part Aboriginal".

Reminded of that claim, Briggs laughs.

"What part? Not her brain! She's by no means any benchmark of intelligence and a spokesperson on the social climate and socio-economics out here."

The socio-economic statistics on Shepparton speak for themselves. In the previous year, a 75% spike in commercial burglaries and big increases in assaults and thefts from cars led to a 15% jump in Shepparton's overall crime rate, more than five times the statewide increase. Only 5.1% of people have a tertiary education, compared with 15.2% state-wide. It has twice the state average of teenage mothers.

Or, as Briggs puts it on "Sheplife":

In 2012, Shepparton was one of only five communities nationwide to be selected for the roll-out of welfare quarantining. The policy was first brought in under the Northern Territory Emergency Response, which was instigated by a fabricated ABC Lateline story and required suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The federal government's own research has shown welfare quarantining has failed. But in targeting Shepparton, then-Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin pointed to its unemployment rate of 8.3 per cent, compared with a national rate of 5.1 per cent. Sceptics might point to its Aboriginal population of 3.7 per cent, compared with 2.5 per cent nationally. They also might point to the fact that if you've done wrong to people, an easy way to deal with it is to separate them off from society, divorce them from their land, destroy their culture, banish them to the fringes, dehumanise them - and then blame them for it.

"'Bad Apples' was about that," says Briggs of one of the grittiest songs on Sheplife. "'Bad Apples' was about kids who get displaced and separated from society, because that's where it all starts. It starts with them saying, 'These kids. What's wrong with these kids?' Well, why don't you stop pointing your fucking finger and start putting in some work and trying to help? Try and address what the issue is, the fact that they are disillusioned and are disengaged. Not from just school and not just from community, but from society itself and disengaged from themselves and disengaged from their identity."

On "Bad Apples", Briggs raps over a dust-dry, detuned guitar lick and tolling bell:

He was frustrated that his fans didn't engage with its message.

"Some days, you catch me on a pretty mellow day, where I'm like, 'So be it, it's all right,'" he says. "And then other days, I'll be like, 'Fuck them!'"

Briggs' huge appeal comes not only from his rapping skills. It comes from his humour, his charisma and his music's irrepressible catchiness. For non-Aboriginal fans, it's far easier to engage with all those elements than to engage with his confronting political message. For non-Aboriginal Australians, to deal with the reality of Aboriginal Australia - from the brutal present all the way back to unceded land being seized under the legal fiction of "Terra Nullius" - is to question whether non-Aboriginal people belong in the country at all.

"When you have to address Aboriginal issues, you're addressing the displacement of land," says Briggs. "And when you're addressing the displacement of land, people get very fucking uptight, because they think that you're trying to take their house away from them. That's what the problem is. That's why it's unspoken. Because people don't want to deal with that reality, because displacement of land means money."

Whenever humans anywhere in the world are given cognitive choices, they will automatically choose the path of least cognitive resistance. Briggs knows that. But when he saw that disengagement being eclipsed by racism, it almost ended his music career, if not his life.

"It was the casual racism of, 'Oh Briggs is dope, Aussie rap is the best, not like this nigger shit.' That was the shit that was infuriating. It was like, 'I'd punch you in your face if you ever said that to me!' And I'm like, 'Who the fuck am I making music for?'"

On Sheplife's opening track, "Let It Be Known", he admits such comments had made him give up making music. It didn't help that he'd stopped drinking - after one friend died from it and another became seriously ill - and he no longer had that convenient emotional off-switch to fall back on.

"I think after I quit booze it kind of snapped me into being very susceptible to anxiety and it pushed me into a very deep depression," says Briggs.

People with far more privilege behind them and far fewer demons to face would have ended up in rehab.

"There was no fancy rehab for me," says the rapper. "It was something that I wanted to do by myself. I had no intentions of putting anyone else through my stuff. It took a while. There was a couch and a whole lot of Simpsons."

On his left forearm is a tattoo of Krusty The Clown from TV series The Simpsons. It's one of many tatts that stretch right across his skin, not that he's particularly fond of them.

"I wish I didn't have any, to be honest," he says. "If I could get rid of them all easily, I would. Too much work and life's too short to be sitting around getting lasered."

One of Sheplife's darkest tracks, "Purgatory", references the tattoos on the back of his hands, the popular land rights protest chant: "Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land."

Always was, always will be
If I gotta stay here, you might as well kill me

"I was just looking at my hands when I was writing it, really," he says. "And I was just talking about where I was as a person at that point in time. I wasn't happy where I was and it was like, if I didn't change what I was doing and where I was and how I was feeling, I might as well be dead. It was like all my frustrations coming to a head."

It's often said that Aboriginal people have to work 10 times harder than others to get ahead in life. For Aboriginal musicians, it also seems like there are 10 times the issues to deal with once they get ahead.

"When you're successful as an Aboriginal person, you're automatically expected to adhere to a certain standard of role model, of leadership - be it if you're a sports star, a musician, an artist or whatever," says Briggs.

"There's a whole other level of responsibility that can be thrown upon you. And that's just another facet of being an Indigenous person of notoriety. There's also the ideas that you have to be able to juggle, being an artist and being an Indigenous artist.

"When I set out, I didn't want to be the best Aboriginal rapper. Nah, I wanted to be the best rapper, full stop. I don't wanna disrespect rap, I don't wanna disrespect my culture. I represent both in everything I do - hip-hop and my heritage and my family.

"Then, on top of that, people don't understand that for anything, being black, you have to overcome a struggle every day - in the sense of the everyday stuff of your health, of your mental health - that is disregarded."

That ability to survive against all the odds is addressed in "The Hunt", Briggs' collaboration with world-famous Yolngu musician Gurrumul. Briggs takes the superstar singer's totem, the crocodile, and crunches it down into its most primal elements.

"The death roll is the crocodile move," says Briggs. "That's his killing move. In those two bars, what I'm actually saying is colonialism and genocide nearly wiped us all out, but we survived. Because the death toll was ridiculous. Not that people want to talk about it."

It might be said that Briggs and Gurrumul share similar ground in that they bridge the gap between the black and white worlds through their collaborations and their odds-beating popularity with mainstream audiences.

"We also bridge the gap between the north and south, ourselves," says Briggs. "You know, in the perspectives people hold of what a 'real Aboriginal' is, you know what I mean?"

Historian and activist Gary Foley notes how non-Aboriginal activists often travel to the north of Australia to work with "real" Aboriginal people, despite the fact most Aboriginal people live in cities.

"Yeah," says Briggs. "To get the 'real Aboriginal experience', you know what I mean? I work with just whoever I've got a relationship with. Gurrumul, me and him got along because we just both laughed at the same shit."

On their collaboration "The Hunt", Briggs also raps about a system totally at odds with the values of most First Nations people, "the system ain't broken, it's the way that it works".

"It's what I've always said," he explains. "The school system doesn't work for us, the jobs system doesn't work for us, the music system doesn't work for us, no system works for us - because that's the way that it works. People say the system's broken - nah, that's how it WORKS. It's not broken - it's fucking working perfectly, because we're getting fucked."

The death roll rolls on. On "Late Night Calls", Briggs addresses those phone calls that Aboriginal people, far more often than others, have to take.

Ain't funny how ya lookin' in ya phone
At the names and the numbers of the brothers that are gone
Press that button and you get the same tone
You can dial that number but ain't nobody home
It's those late night calls that change everything
You don’t wanna answer, you just let it ring
Ain't no good news comin' from these phone calls
Ripped from ya sleep, and now ya can’t doze off
Feelin' like you miss a piece of your self
Thinkin' if they only knew how we all felt
It’s that feelin' you get, you’re missin a part of you
You lookin' at their face starin' back from an article

"'Late Night Calls' was about a cousin who got killed in a fight," says Briggs. "He got stabbed and I knew I was going to write about it, but I wasn't sure how I was going to deliver it. And then it was like it was meant to happen, because I got sent the beat from James from Sietta and then I was at the corner store and I'd seen this picture on the front of the newspaper and I went, 'Fuck.' That's when I got that line, looking at that face staring back from an article. That's when it clicked.

"You know, any given year, you'll go to, almost a funeral a month. It's no joke. And that's to do with a health situation, both mental and physical, and the kind of connection that you have with the community. It's not just immediate family that you have love and respect for. When I'm representing my people, it's not just my immediate blood. I represent a whole faction of people who are distant relatives, not even blood relatives, but they're still my family."

But in the sleeve notes to the Sheplife CD, Briggs emphasises that he doesn't "pretend to represent all the indigenous people across the land".

"That's just a disclaimer," he laughs. "Because that's dangerous territory. Because people forget that before settlement, we were hundreds and thousands of nations. I don't like to pretend. If I represent for you, cool. I'll take that on board and I'm with that. But if I don't, I never, ever said I did."

Briggs also contends that a CD is not a full representation of himself.

"If anyone wants to know what I'm about, they've got to come to a show," he says. "They're not going to get the full idea just from listening to my records. If they come to my show they see the full spectrum of what makes up my character that is Briggs, because Briggs is really Adam amplified to 1000."

That night, when Briggs steps onto the stage, the man-mountain is back, amped up to the max and making the audience eat hungrily out of his hand. It's a stand-up comedy routine and banging hip-hop show rolled effortlessly into one. When he raises an eyebrow, the crowd collapse laughing. When the beat kicks in, he blows the roof off. Briggs' house may be in Melbourne and his homeland may be Shepparton. But there, up on stage, is his true home.