Martyn Pepperell Interview (Aotearoa Hip-Hop: The Music, The People, The History)
Martyn Pepperell is a freelance journalist, copywriter, broadcaster, and DJ from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (the Māori name for Wellington, New Zealand). He has bylines in places like Wax Poetics, Mixmag, and Dazed, but this interview focuses around a big new project: Aotearoa Hip-Hop: The Music, The People, The History. It’s a documentary-style exploration of the history of New Zealand’s local hip-hop scene. (For more, check out Martyn's profile of DJ Tee Pee here.)
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I grew up in Wellington, New Zealand, which might as well be the very ends of the Earth. When I finished high school at the end of 2001, I tumbled into the adult world with a desperate desire to be involved in music in as many ways as possible. I’d spent my teenage years skateboarding, hanging out in record stores, playing around on drum machines, and going out to concerts and dance parties on the weekends. Reggae and dub records from Third World and LKJ blew my mind, as did jungle/drum and bass compilations like Platinum Breakz and Logical Progression. I was also floored by the more psychedelic end of hip-hop and trip-hop, Cypress Hill, Tricky etc., and loved the sampledelic albums labels like Mo Wax were releasing. At the same time, though, my father used to play Bob Dylan, Carole King, Leonard Cohen, Marvin Gaye, Talking Heads, The Neville Brothers and Penguin Cafe Orchestra around the house, so I was somewhat open-minded musically.
I got part-time or casual jobs in call centres and cafes, went flatting, and threw myself at anything music related I could find a way into. I started DJing in bars around town, talked my way into the host rotation on the local student radio station, Radio Active 88.6 FM, and organised some small dance parties and concerts. Generally, the music scenes I was in at that time sat within a hip-hop, RnB, reggae/dub, jungle/drum & bass and grime constellation. That said, the local techno and house parties were fun as well. I also convinced people running a few local gig guides and street press publications to let me write about local music for them. My thinking was, if you want in, you should give it all a go.