Posse Pulses From Hip Hop To Haka

October 19-20, 2002 by GRAHAM REID

UPPER HUTT POSSE *****

Te Reo Maori Remixes (Kia Kaha/Jayrem)

Dean Hapeta mainman in the Upper Hutt Posse (which also included Emma Paki), recorded the first local rap single E Tu almost 15 years ago. Hapeta-as Te Kupu/The Word-has since carved a distinctive path: he's done spoken-word performances, made films, and his solo album of two years ago, Ko Te Matakahi Kupu/The Word Which Penetrates, came in English and Maori versions. On this attention-grabbing album he has revisited 10 Posse tracks, and remixed and reconstructed them with Maori language vocals. So here Stormy Weather, which features vocals by Paki, is Te Rangi Paroro and Against the Flow is Atete Te Rere. From the opener, Te Hono Whakakoro (Movement in Demand of '95, with samples from the protests at Waitangi in February this year) this bristles with anger and sometimes punishing beats where hip-hop is welded to haka. But it also has tracks of great beauty, notably Ka Huri Matapo/As the Blind See wIth Paki, which works over an airy dub track. E Tu, reworked by DLT and Nick Roughan, is a deeper and darker vision than the wire-thin, now adolescent-sounding, original. Ragga Girl (Kotiro Maori E) is similarly readdressed over deep beats, and there is additional scratching on other tracks, massive bass, and guitar and brutal stylus work from Rhys B underpinning Tangata Whenua. These are sometimes radical revisions of their source material-much more than simply adding a te reo vocal over the original tracks-and are powerful, muscular statements of Maoritanga you would ignore at your peril. It's a measure of how far Hapeta has travelled, but how consistent his vision has been, that here he sounds more profound, but the "stand proud" sentiment he articulated all those years is still the same. An essential and, I would venture, an important album.