Tuka has shared the background to his incredible triple j Like A Version cover of Angus & Julia Stone’s ‘Big Jet Plane’ during a post on social media in which the Australian emcee reflects on the impact life’s hurdles have had on his creative output.
After revealing that he’s been busy working on new material with Thundamentals, the Blue Mountains rapper explains that his strongest creative output has always coincided with the toughest times in his personal life, as they have recently.
“The funny thing is, tbh I’ve had one of the roughest years of my life on a personal level… This year I’ve had some major life changes go down, which really shook me to my core but at the same time I’ve had the opportunity to vent it all through this new album,” he writes.
“All the bulls**t that went down really sucked but it was great for my song writing haha! It reminds me of when I was writing Feedback Loop, at the time I was going through a similar situation. Writing all the songs at the same time as dealing with heavy life s**t.”
“It wasn’t till after I released Feedback Loop that my career in music really started and people wanted to support me. Before then I was really struggling to get myself out there. Most of my songs just weren’t really connecting with you.”
According to Tuka, it was when he decided to give himself more freedom in his songwriting and address real personal issues in his life, such as in his acclaimed Like A Version cover, that people began to take more notice of his music.
“All the songs that you guys seem to resonate with are songs about real people, situations and experiences that I’ve gone through. The tracks that seem to stick around are the ones I wrote while I was going through life’s crap,” he adds.
“When I think about it both of my like a versions ‘I’m into you’ and ‘Big Jet Plane’ where [sic] written and performed in realtime in that as soon as I’d finished writing them they were performed straight away and they were both about real events that had only just happen.”
According to the rapper, the new Thundamentals material is “coming from a similar head space”. You can read Tuka’s entire missive — and we highly recommend you do — via his official Facebook page right here.
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