Sydney’s premium rap collective ONEFOUR discuss their upbringing, troubles with the law, and excellent new debut album, Look At Me Now. 

Some readers may remember ONEFOUR from the rousing and revealing Noisey documentary about Australia’s rap scene as part of their Gangsta Rap International video series. It depicted a group of young men from Mount Druitt in Western Sydney, a suburb often considered to be one of the city’s most dangerous, aspiring to put Aussie drill on the global map, following in the footsteps of Chicago and London’s thriving scenes. Problems with the police and other gangs were frequent, and music becoming a full-time and prosperous endeavour felt like a dream rather than a reality. 

But a lot has changed in the years since. The group, despite being plagued with difficulties with the law, member changes, and navigating the mercurial industry status quo, have stormed into wider rap consensus. They’ve had hugely streaming singles, have benefitted from TikTok’s rise, and launched their own eponymous label.

This summer, Australia’s most exciting collective make a highly-anticipated, long-awaited definitive statement of intent. Their debut album, Look At Me Now, could easily nestle in the upper echelons of the UK rap scene, with a eye-catching feature list that sprawls from drill generals K-Trap and Headie One to road rap frontrunner Potter Payper, new school favourite Nemzzz and R&B mainstay Mabel. 

Across the near 50 minute long time, the four core ONEFOUR members — J Emz, Spenny, Lekks and Celly — sound wise, brash, and ravishingly hungry. Drill’s classic characteristics often sit at the album’s sonic core, but there’s also plenty of style-bending, helped by the variety of the supporting cast and the group’s exploration with singing and vocal production. The apex message of the record endears throughout: ‘See where we’ve come from, see where we are, and see where we are going.’ 

The body of work’s authenticity is rich and undeniable. And while this is the crowning moment of their ever-building musical tenure, it’s certainly not the summit. Taking a side bar to catch up with Wonderland, the collective talk Mount Druitt origins, overcoming adversity, and the significance of Look At Me Now. 

Listen to Look At Me Now…

Read the exclusive interview…

How did ONEFOUR first begin? 

J Emz: We grew up together, we all come from different parts of Mount Druitt in Western Sydney. We were running amuck as youngsters doing all the usual stuff, we loved rap so would end up freestyling at drink-ups. Eventually we started to take music a bit more seriously, getting into the studio and recording songs. Then we started uploading them to YouTube and the rest is history. 

Talk us through your hometown? What’s it like? What is the culture? 

Spenny: Our families are originally from the Islands, but Mount Druitt is where we’ve always called home here in Sydney. Mounty has a reputation as one of Sydney’s more violent areas, but it’s also a multicultural community of working-class people. It has heart and soul in a way that some of the other flashier parts of Sydney don’t. To us, it will always be home. 

How does your heritage impact you in both your musical career and your personal choices / outlook? 

Celly: It’s hard to say, it’s not really something we consciously think about when we’re making music or planning our next moves. But of course, the way we were raised has influenced us; in Islander households, church is important, music is always present, respect is a big theme too. 

How did you first discover drill? Was it a genre that immediately resonated with you? 

Celly: When we were in our early teenage years, we started listening to UK drill, acts like Harlem Spartans, Loski, 67. We loved it straight away. We felt like it spoke to us and what our lives were like at the time. It was real and authentic in a way that other types of rap music were not. 

What were the early reactions to your music? Did it take a while to be taken seriously? 

J Emz: After we had recorded our first couple tracks, and shot music videos for them, we started to upload them to YouTube and then streaming platforms, and it took off straight away. People were tapping in from all over the world, including some of the big UK rappers that we had always looked up to. People seemed to gravitate towards it because it was unlike anything they’d heard before. 

Your struggles with the law are well documented — has that aspect of your musical career gotten easier as you’ve grown into global artists? 

J Emz: Yes and no. A few years ago, the local police here in our state of New South Wales were determined that we’d never be able to perform live, especially in Sydney. Since then, we’ve managed to get a few big Sydney performances in, including some big festivals and supporting our brother The Kid Laroi at a huge stadium show in Western Sydney. The cops weren’t happy about that but we got it done. We’ve also now performed headline shows in all major cities across Australia, outside of Sydney. But they still like to make our lives hard, they often pull up at our photo shoots and video shoots, everybody gets searched, stuff like that. 

When did you first have a big breakthrough do you feel? What was the moment that it felt serious for you to be artists for a living? 

Spenny: Our early songs like ‘What You Know’ and ‘Shanks and Shivs’ started our buzz for sure, but it was the release of ‘The Message’ and then ‘Spot The Difference’ that really put us on the map. That’s when it felt like we needed to take music seriously as a career.

Congratulations on the debut album, Look At Me Now, it’s an impressive body of work. How are you feeling about it, now it’s out in the world? 

J Emz: Appreciate that. It feels great to have it out there; we put a lot of work into it over the past few years to get it out there. We were able to lock in some heavy hitter features for our debut album, including some of our favourite artists coming up. It’s great to see how people are reacting to it. 

Reflect to us on the journey of creating the project? What was the process? What proved to be the main challenges? 

Spenny: One of the big challenges was various members of our group going in and out of jail during the creation of the album. One of our members Lekks got deported to New Zealand but that didn’t slow us up too much, through the wonders of technology we were able to collaborate closely regardless. We worked closely with two young producers in Sydney, 99hurts and Chandler Jewels, we recorded most of the album at various studios in Western Sydney, but we also took a couple writing trips to Bali which was a crazy experience too. 

The album sees you expand your sound into rap sub-sounds. Who and what proved the central inspirations for the project? 

Celly: I guess because we helped pave the way for the drill sound in Australia, people always expected us to make only drill music. But there’s many other flavours we wanted to bring with this album, which reflects the music we enjoy to listen to. Drill will always be a part of who ONEFOUR is but there’s more to it than that ya know?

Thematically, what do you tackle? What, at the core, is the album about? 

J Emz: We prefer to let the music do the talking. But it’s essentially about our lives, the trials and tribulations we’ve had to face along the journey. It’s about aspiring to something bigger than what society expects of you. It’s for the ones who were destined to fail. 

What do you hope Look At Me Now achieves? What does it mean to you? 

Spenny: Hopefully it inspires some of the youngins about what is possible to achieve when you set yourself a goal, put together a plan, lock in and execute. It’s bigger than music really. 

What’s next for ONEFOUR?

J Emz: We’re about to kick off our biggest headline tour of our careers in support of the new album; we’re performing all across Australia. We’re hoping to get back to UK and Europe for our rescheduled tour dates before the end of the year too.

Words – Ben Tibbits