Huskii is finally making the music he’s always wanted to make.
Between Ruin My Life, Heroin Rap of course his new album Antihero, Huskii has unveiled a new, deeper level of artistry and musicianship.
To call Huskii’s performance on Antihero authentic feels like an understatement. His lyrical content is unreal and with every painstakingly honest word you can hear his completely raw emotion.
HAPPY: Alright, let’s chat about some of your new music coming out. I guess jump straight in. I want to talk about your new single, Ruin My Life. You said, in regards to this single, that it was the first time that you felt like you could be the most honest that you have been with your music. Was there any reason that you feel like you can be more honest now than ever?
HUSKII: I feel like just not being able to live how I wanted to live before, I was just really just expressing my life and the way I was living, I wasn’t happy with what I was doing. The way that I was releasing the music, I wasn’t happy with what I was saying in the songs. Like, it makes sense now. I was always wondering what was wrong, but I just wasn’t comfortable in life. Now I’ve had… I’m sitting in a house and I don’t have to stress about shit. I’m not going to jail. I’ve had time to get back and make the music I wanted to make this whole time. It’s good.
HAPPY: I imagine not going to jail is definitely going to take a bit of the pressure off.
HUSKII: Definitely.
HAPPY: That makes sense. I guess, was there any part of it when you were starting out, did you feel like you had to write to sound a certain way so that people would start listening?
HUSKII: Yeah, definitely. Everyone says they don’t. They’re lying. It’s fucked up. I wish I didn’t because it’s not the right way to be, but it’s definitely a little bit of influence, you can hear it. I would never have rapped on a drill beat if people didn’t want to hear it. It was just the thing. I did it twice and it was fucking… You know what I mean? Doesn’t make sense. But when I started rapping, I used to think I had to rap fast and do all this technical shit. Until I started to realise that that’s not what people liked about my music, they liked the story I was telling. They kind of like the advice I’m giving because my whole life, this… this has come… the music comes after, you know what I mean? My whole life, I’ve been the one to give people advice, and I’ve always been able to tell people… I’m speaking from experience most of the time. I’m never too good to tell people that I fucked up, and when I give advice, I like to somehow relate to myself rather than tell people that they need to change their shit and ‘you need to change that.’ I normally say, ‘Look, this is what happened to me and I could see you doing the same thing.’ And that’s the kind of approach I’ve had with my music.
HAPPY: That’s great, of course. People… I’ve heard someone recently saying that they wanted to, go out of their way to do something so that they could write about it. It seems like they’re…
HUSKII: I’ve heard about it. I’ve seen people like… that Ruin My Life track, that’s like just touching on trends of me self-sabotaging my life. And now it seems to me that making music is the self-sabotage. You know what I mean? I’ve been suffering for this art for so long that I literally am uncomfortable with my life right now. I mean, if I just walked away, I’d probably be happier. That’s the thing.
HAPPY: That’s huge.
HUSKII: THAT ruined my life. I wake up every day thinking about how to make this rap career better and try to make money. But really, I’m just thinking of ways to ruin my fucking life more.
HAPPY: I think it is an interesting thing when you’re constantly using art to express yourself. Do you ever feel like the more you grow and you actually move on from stuff, you’re like, ‘I don’t want to keep talking about it?’
HUSKII: Yeah, every time. Once I’ve touched on it and I’ve expressed it in the way I wanted to, I hate going back on that. And I hate listening to that. Like, for example, that Ashes to Ashes song, I would never listen to that song. Like, I’ve never, ever once played that from start to finish. I never will. And I don’t listen to any of my songs. Until these new ones came out, I kind of listened to these and I’m like, ‘That’s a bit of a banger.’ It’s not so much about stories about my life. It touches on it and it hints towards. But you kind of need to know the story before you get the bar or you get the message like…
HAPPY: Of course. It’s interesting. It makes what you’re doing selfless because people still want to hear it, that’s for sure. I think people, you know, like to relate to music. So good on you for continuing to share your stories. So I guess I want to ask about your writing style as well because a lot of rappers tend to freestyle and this kind of unedited stream of consciousness will come out. Do you write in the studio or do you put pen to paper?
HUSKII: No, I’m like… I rarely write. Like, since the last… since 2020 or 2019, I’ve been going in and out of jail. I haven’t had anything to talk about. I’ve had no inspiration. And like a lot of people, when they talk about getting writer’s block or whatever that is, they talk about like, you’ve got to live life. Stop forcing it and just go live life and come back to it and you’ll be able to… I didn’t have a choice to do that. I had no life to live. And it was… and it made me think, what’s wrong with me? Can I ever do this again? And I was struggling for two years to write good music. And then that Recalled album? I don’t know… I wrote that… It’s all unfinished shit that I didn’t want to release. I just released it because I was in jail. I wanted to start again. I couldn’t get out and finish off the tracks that I made a year ago.
HAPPY: Far out.
HUSKII: I just released it. And I wasn’t happy at all with that. I hated it. Some of the shit I regret saying, it’s too personal, and if I was going to record it and have studio sessions, I would have fixed it. But I didn’t. But this time I’ve fucking had a chance to do everything. I touched everything on this album.
HAPPY: That’s cool. You already spoke about not wanting to rap over drill beats. You feel like that’s kind of you’re able to rap on production that you’re happy with now as well because the production is unreal for this album.
HUSKII: Because it’s a production. Like, we make that after. Some of the songs, I’ll record to like… I wrote some of them songs to beats I found on YouTube. And then we just fix them. I think two of the songs were just like YouTube beats, and then we just went in there and made three, four until we got right. Yeah, and Task (Caleb Tasker) is crazy like that. He doesn’t care. He was ready to make another four.
HAPPY: That’s great. Let’s talk about Heroin Rap. Very cool. Very cool track. I felt like it was… It was too short almost because I just wanted a lot more of it. It was really good. You know, it’s funny because you say it like you’re getting to this point where you’re just putting out what you want to put out. But it’s definitely appealing. Overall, it’s really cool. I wanted to ask about the music video because it’s obviously pretty sombre. The lyrical content is very hectic. And the video, it portrays that perfectly, but also it looks like you’re in the coolest house. Was it fun?
HUSKII: Yeah, the house is crazy. I think guy who owns that house is like some crazy billionaire. I don’t know. You know, some company we all know about, but I shouldn’t say it. I never met the guy. But it was a crazy house. It was just dark. That song in that house, it didn’t feel like successful, you know what I mean? That’s the goal. That was the whole goal behind the cold concrete and stuff like that and being on the water. And it was fucking real windy and the whole Heroin Rap thing like I wanted to… when I made this album, I wanted to call the whole album Heroin. I wanted to turn people off it or off looking at it. I wanted people flicking through CDs to look at it and go ‘What the fuck? No way.’ And if they said, ‘Whoa, Heroin Rap, I want to listen to that shit. That’s cool.’ That’s what I wanted. But if people thought, ‘Oh, fuck heroin, I don’t fucking… he’s on heroin? Fuck that’ or something like that, that’s cool with me too. I don’t care if that’s what they think. That’s OK. If you just… like it’s music, you’re meant to listen with your ears. I don’t fucking know why these motherfuckers are judging people. It’s like someone said before, it’s like people who read the headline of an article, and then that’s the story that they tell people. It’s like, you have to actually look into things and people… that’s what the news articles at the end are about. It’s like, you can’t judge me for this shit. It’s not about that. I didn’t make this shit up. I talk about what I have had to be, live and what I’ve been put through. I didn’t just make it up and then start living it. Like that’s not how it happened. I didn’t make it up to inspire other people to start doing this shit. And I don’t think anyone who listens to my music thinks that. And if they do, they’re probably fucking dumb. They’re probably going to fuck up anyway. Not my fault.
HAPPY: Like I said earlier, people, I think, appreciate feeling seen or heard in other people’s music. It definitely doesn’t come across like you telling people what to do. It just… it just is a really interesting and unique perspective. So the album itself, you’ve got a lot of people featuring on it, which is really cool, including Shadow, who you’ve collaborated with before. Are a lot of these rappers your mates? Are you kind of coming from the same place?
HUSKII: Yeah. A lot of people… like, I can’t really work with people that I don’t know. In the past, I’ve made that mistake. I’ve always wanted to be the person… like I said, it’s music. Listen with your ears. You can’t really judge a person of their life. But that said, that’s not how it works. You know what I mean? If I take a photo with someone now, they’re technically my best friend and I’m co-signing them and now people listen to them because of me. And then they could do anything, and that reflects on me. Like Huskii’s hanging out with dickheads and doing this. And this guy did a bag snatch on an old lady. Whatever. I don’t want that to happen, you know what I mean? I’m like, ‘What is happening in the world? That’s not my fault. I didn’t know this guy. I didn’t put him in a fucking intense interview and make him go through a police check. I just liked his music, and I thought you would like his music.’ I mean, that’s how I’ve been. Now, it has to be one of the boys. I have to know you for a while before I’m doing anything. Even like Babyface Mal, now I’ve fucked with him hard, I’ve fucked with him hard, and I want to do a track with him badly. But we had to go to the studio together to do that track, and I’m happy that his people are the same. His people… I don’t think I wanted to work with me until they met me in Sydney, which is cool. The boys from 66 Records, which is mad, so like it was no hard feelings with me being like, ‘Look, we got to meet.’ I didn’t have to say that. It just happened to be like, ‘We’re both on the same page. I’ll see you in Sydney. We’ll get in the studio. We’ll make a track. We’ll make a banger. See what happens.’
HAPPY: That’s sick. And understandable. I mean, it’s a bummer because you think that it would be pretty obvious that you can’t control people just because you’re mates or work together.
HUSKII: It’s weird.
HAPPY: Yeah, it is. It is really weird.
HUSKII: Like if you do a song with someone, you’re like their best friend know. Fucking weird.
HAPPY: Haha yes, it’s pretty dumb. At least, you know, if there’s any silver lining out of it, you get to collaborate with your mates. That’s cool.
HUSKII: Yeah, I met a lot of people over the last couple of years through music. And some of the main people in my life at the moment are people I’ve met in the last couple of years. Especially like I met Mic Pompeii, I love his music, crazy good. I hope you listen to him. Like, he’s really good and he’s got an album coming out. I think he’s got 20 songs on the album, it’s fucking really, really good.
HAPPY: Wow, that’s a lot.
HUSKII: I met him and he’s one of my best mates now. It’s crazy. Just through this music shit.
HAPPY: That’s so good. I love that. I’m guessing then you’re probably pretty excited for your tour that starts in what, like a few days?
HUSKII: Yeah. I’m pretty nervous. I hate that shit.
HAPPY: Oh no. Well, it was fascinating just now because you said that you don’t want to even listen to some of these songs. You’re going to have to sing them. You have to rap sorry, like over and over again. How are you feeling about it?
HUSKII: That’s scary. I’m scared. I’m always scared of getting in front of people, even walking in a room with a couple of people, it’s scary.
HAPPY: I get it.
HUSKII: I’m always like… every time I’ve done live performances in the past, I’ve been on drugs, but this is like a full new experience for me.
HAPPY: Yeah, OK, that’ll be very different.
HUSKII: Actually scared.
HAPPY: Do you have a big group that you’re going to be touring with? Do you have a lot of people around you?
HUSKII: Yeah, I’ve got a small group of solid people. I’ve got homies, like Mic Pompeii is coming everywhere with me. Isaac Puerile, he’s coming everywhere with me and Kote$. I don’t know if people know him, Kote$-y. He’s from the Gold Coast and he’s dope as well, man, and all these people look and identify as… they’re all anti-heroes as well. It seems to me that they have the same approach as me in this music shit.
HAPPY: Cool. That’s exciting.
HUSKII: And we’re all like, really different. Proper different. Really different. I don’t think any of us sound the same. Kote$-y, he sounds like he’s from the Gold Coast. You can hear palm trees in his music. You know what I mean? Isaac, I don’t know what he does, but somehow he just has like 90 per cent girl fans. But my girlfriend, I don’t let her listen to him. And Mic Pompeii, he’s telling stories from Sydney that like, no one knows about, proper street shit from Sydney that you really wouldn’t understand unless you were from Sydney. And I feel like that’s probably why he hasn’t made it as far as he should’ve. It’s too… it’s a small niche, like Sydney street lingo that not many people get.
HAPPY: Wow, far out. That’ll be cool though, it’ll be a great show. That’s for sure.
HUSKII: That’s the plan. That’s all I care about. I just want to do a proper show. I don’t want to fucking really have the spotlight on me or anything. I just want to have a proper show so people can leave happy. I fucked around for so long, I was meant to do shows and tours and I’ve just been in jail. I missed out on so much and never mind all the money I’ve missed out on. And then COVID. And it’s just fuck me.
HAPPY: How are you doing overall? Are you feeling good? Better?
HUSKII: Yeah, I’m nervous, but I’m happy I’m about to… there’ll be a weight off my shoulders in four days. And it’s back on to the next, I suppose.
HAPPY: Good. Sweet. Amazing. I guess one last question. I think you said that this this album feels like Antihero, feels like it’s kind of a last piece of a puzzle. Do you start a new puzzle from here?
HUSKII: It could be the first piece of the puzzle. You know what I mean? I could have just found the right puzzle to start with, you know what I mean? And then that’s the first piece I put down. Maybe before I was starting and finishing in different puzzles every time. So now I’m ready to start the bigger picture.
HAPPY: It’s exciting. It’s really exciting.
HUSKII: That was a fucking great answer.
HAPPY: It was. You nailed it. Well, it’s really, really great music, so I hope you’re proud. That’s really all from me. So I’ll wrap up. Thank you so much for speaking with me.
HUSKII: Thank you.
Antihero is available on all streaming services now.
Interviewed by Chloe Maddren.
Photos supplied.
