Allday: Australia’s cult-rap leader – Part Two
Photography Credit: Ken Leanfore
Foreseeably, it was the lobbied-after tour with Groovin’ The Moo in April and May last year that marked the beginning of Gaynor breaking nationally. His single Right Now had been out for just two weeks and his December 2013-released track Claude Monet had triple j backing, so when Gaynor sat down with the team at OneTwo to discuss his debut album campaign, he naturally had more than two cents to offer.
“He’s very involved on all levels,” says McKinnon. “We all sat around in the boardroom at OneTwo and came up with ideas of what would be a cool way of how to market the record and also what would be the pre-order budget, the packages and the way we wanted to roll it out.”
The campaign included a party bus, where 40 competition winners rode around Sydney and Melbourne with Gaynor, stopping at Lord of the Fries for free vegan burgers, and a deluxe package offer among the pre-orders where buyers received a lock of Gaynor’s hair and a ten-minute ‘counseling session’ phone call – all his idea.
The album, aptly titled Startup Cult and explained by Gaynor as “the beginning of a new era in Australian Rap music,” suggested mainstream appeal from the onset. With syllable-crammed lyrics, a weightless synth backdrop and enough cocksure lip-biting to trim the vision that’s ticking away just below the surface – it’s hip hop with a knowing lean toward indie-pop.
The LP was released via OneTwo in Australia and New Zealand last July and via teamtrick in the rest of the world. It debuted at #3 on the ARIA Chart, sandwiched between global pop artists Sia and Ed Sheeran and charted in the Top 20 CMJ Hip Hop chart in the US.
Following a serious step forward as support for Lily Allen’s Splendour In The Grass sideshows, the album tour through October was announced 10 days after the LP release. The stratagem, according to New World Artist’s Edwin Tehrani, was laid out to milk the fanbase’s money: album first, then show tickets, then merchandise. Most shows sold out within the first 48 hours.
“We ignored the demand everywhere,” says Tehrani. “Every venue wanted to go to double shows, triple shows, go to the larger venue in the same complex, and we kept saying no, just because we wanted to keep it as that but Canberra was really strong. We upgraded from a 450 capacity room to a 1000 capacity room and it basically sold out as well.”
Tehrani says he has Allday’s rise in the live sector mapped out. His next tour will take in bigger venues, but not too much bigger, and he’ll assess social media and sales analytics to dictate where he’ll tour in regional cities. “You don’t want to go up [in venue size] too fast because you only want to go bigger and bigger, and if you can’t it looks like you’re going backwards.
“Our conventional touring model is different to most others. We do cover a lot of ground and it’s not just capital cities and your Wollongongs and Newcastles, and Bathursts and Ballarats. We kind of look at everywhere,” Tehrani continues. “Recently we took on Illy and in the past two years took him from, I guess doing a ‘Zoo level’ tour of 600-700 and moved him to the Enmore kind of Tivoli level.
“There’s all these pockets where kids never get shows and for every two or three shows that we’re confident about we might take a risk on two others and just see how they go because potentially that could be a future fanbase in that area.”
While McKinnon hasn’t honed his focus on an international album campaign just yet, he is currently in talks with international labels and publishers, details of which he’s currently tight-lipped on.
Gaynor’s arrangement with teamtrick allows him to release Startup Cult on a territory-by-territory basis, and in the lead-up to Gaynor’s US visit for a series of obligatory industry showcases last year, he said he sees Allday resonating globally more so than in Australia.
“I’ve always thought that Allday sounded a little bit more continental than Australian, almost a little bit English,” says McKinnon. “So I was hoping that would be what an American listener would hear rather than dismiss him as an Australian artist.”
Last month, in what only adds to the appeal of Startup Cult, two of its cuts placed in the world’s largest music poll, the 2014 triple j Hottest 100. Right Now and Always Know The DJ landed at #65 and #35 respectively. And next month he’ll headline two events for Melbourne’s monthly Urban Spreadlive music program.
Unsurprisingly, while he’s both a product of capitalist culture and the voice of the underclass, Gaynor still views Allday as a fledgling startup. That may be true now, but it seems he’ll always see it that way; back in 2011 McKinnon relayed his international vision for Allday, “He totally disagreed with me,” he remembers. “I think he thought I was an idiot for even mentioning it.”