SEAN RAY aka MC SNOB SCRILLA tells JODY MACGREGOR that their live shows are apparently a pretty good time.

You may be familiar with Snob Scrilla from hearing There You Go Again on your radios and YouTubes. It’s possibly the catchiest list of complaints about an ex-girlfriend ever created and proof that rap and stomping indie rock are indeed two great flavours that taste great together. An EP release called The Day Before is just out, though it’s been in the pipeline for a while now.

 “It’s been almost, wow, a year coming together, all of these tracks from the time we first started conceptualising the idea of doing this project to releasing stuff,” says Ray. “It’s pretty exciting. Mostly it’s exciting because I don’t know where it could go. It could be that side project that gets lost in the dustpile bin in JB Hi-Fi or it could be something everybody picks up and says, ‘Wow, this is different!’”

Ray and his music have come a long way from his days of being a teenage rap fan into the gangstas, boom-bap and all things hardcore. “I would have to hide a lot of CDs from my dad ’cause it was a strict Nicaraguan household and it was like ‘No gangsta rap allowed.’ He wasn’t really seeing eye to eye with Ice Cube at the time. Where everybody else was hiding Playboy and Penthouse magazines I was hiding Master P and Ice Cube and N.W.A. under my mattress.”

His first gig in Australia after moving here from his previous home in California was beatboxing and opening for a rock band in a battle of the bands competition. “I opened with a beatbox and they allowed me to kick one 32-bar verse and one hook, but it was like they didn’t want me to do too much ’cause I was gonna steal the shine,” he laughs.

The results were more auspicious than you might expect – the band went on to the next round and the competition’s judges included some A&R scouts who were impressed enough to give him his first listening sessions. And that’s not all. “I won fans and I won a girlfriend of five-and-a-half years off of that gig so it was a pretty good gig to do.” Though the A&R types liked what they heard of him, Ray decided not to sign a contract at the time, preferring to spend a few years working on his producing and his songwriting. “That was really important because the content I was delivering four years ago was very assembly line and trendy and it didn’t have any real substance to it,” he admits.

What he’s delivering now is music he’s a lot more proud of, and we’ll get to hear it for ourselves when Snob Scrilla and band play the Parklife festival later this year.  “Live we take it a little bit more rock than we have on the album,” he says. “People will be surprised because we go through a whole span of music from electronica to rock on stage and it all goes nuts. We call it Super-Rad-Fun-Punch-Kool-Aid-Time.”

SNOB SCRILLA will be playing Parklife at the Botanic Gardens on Saturday, October 4, alongside Goldfrapp, Blackalicious, Peaches, Dizzee Rascal and many more. Tickets on sale now. THE DAY BEFORE EP is available through Ivy League.

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