Q ’n’ A: Bliss N Eso

Last week we caught up with Jonathan Notley (aka Bliss), who was celebrating Bliss N Eso’s second consecutive ARIA number one album, and chatted about where it all began for the group.

Congratulations on the #1 record. Where were you guys when you found out?
We were actually at the Sydney show, at the Enmore Theatre, we knew it was Friday when we would find out chart positions, and when our manager said ‘Hey boys, come upstairs’, I was like ‘Holy shit’. It was one of these things we really weren’t expecting it, cos we were up against such big artists, especially with The Voice, and so many major label releasing big things. It was a David and Goliath thing, and we were just very flattered.

And it’s the second in a row. Was it any different?

Probably more exciting, if anything. Purely because it depends who you are up against. We had a lot of massive competition the week we landed, and it was pretty crazy.

What age did you move to Australia, and how hard was it to find like-minded musical friends?

It was very, very difficult. I was in my teens when I came over, and I went back-and-forth [between Australia and America] during high school for a while, then we totally relocated to Australia. But it was a day-and-age where hip hop in Australia was rare, especially in terms of walking into a CD shop, you’d be lucky to find Public Enemy or Ice Cube – that’s it, in an entire store, compared to, now, an entire urban section or hip hop section. So, when I went to high school, there was literally no-one at the school who knew what hip hop was, let alone liked it, except this one dude named Max [MacKinnon, Eso], who I just became friends with because he liked hip hop – so there was just an automatic friendship thing. “Oh, you like that kind of music? Sweet, we’re friends.”

What about when you started performing together? Was there even an Australian hip hop scene you knew of, or did you have to search for places to play?

There was a period where me and Max thought we were the only rappers in Australia, so totally. It wasn’t until we saw a documentary, Basic Equipment, in the late ‘90s, that we realised there was a little scene out there and there were a handful of artists doing their thing. For some time it was such a minuscule scene, and it was really hard to connect with people who knew what was going on there.

Like anything I guess, we grinded away slowly and got gigs, and met people in the scene. It was very slow at the beginning: our first show was January 2000, we’ve been playing live now for 13 years.

The changes you must have seen in that time must have been monumental, in terms of radio support, interest, the amount of acts.

Absolutely. I think the growth has been exponential. In the last four years, it’s been really starting to grow, in terms of popularity and how big it has gotten. It’s pretty much a slow build, especially in the early days. It’s really massive now, and one of the biggest genres in the country, and certainly accepted in an industry sense. It’s in a whole different ballpark.