INF From SWIDT Found an Upside to Getting Grounded As a Teenager

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INF From SWIDT Found an Upside to Getting Grounded As a Teenager

We spoke to the local hip-hop hero about life's key turning points.

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It was the best grounding ever. “I was young and it was late,” recalls INF. “I was past my curfew and my dad was not happy about it.” Not being allowed out of the house isn’t usually something to get excited about when you’re a teenager, but INF took it as a sign. “I was like, you know what, fuck it.” He went to his room, downloaded Fruity Loops and got straight into teaching himself the ins and outs of music production. “I wasn't into chasing girls. I always just wanted to make music,” he laughs. “Music was the girl for me.”

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These days, INF is better known as one of the key voices behind SWIDT, the Onehunga hip-hop heroes who have spent much of the last two years raising hell on a tired local music industry that’s often known to marginalise rap music. STONEYHUNGA, their audacious debut album, went top five in New Zealand and scored them Tuis for Best Group and Best Hip-Hop Album at last year’s NZ Music Awards. Last month, the group dropped a surprise follow-up called The Bootleg EP and they’ve already promised that their sophomore record will be out by the middle of the year.

“They're my family,” INF says of SWIDT. “We get to create, we get to laugh, have fun, talk shit and roast each other. It's the best.”

As a kid, INF says he grew up surrounded by music. “I was real curious as a child. I would always put my hand on the speaker and feel the vibrations and just wonder, how was this made? Where does this noise come from?” His older brother J-One was part of the renowned underground rap crew Red Eye Society. INF didn’t know how popular they were at the time, but he’d always see them in the upstairs bedroom writing and practising for shows. “It taught me that's probably what it's going to be like for me when I grow up.”

But there was a time, he says, when he didn’t know who he was or even what he wanted to be. He would talk himself down when people would congratulate him on his work and eventually that played on his confidence. He says that one of the most significant turning points in his life was understanding the importance of his self-worth. “If you know yourself, you're already two steps ahead of the game,” he says.

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“You can't do all this creative work and when people compliment you or big you up and it's the truth, you can't just be like ‘oh yeah it's alright, I'm not that bad’. Just say thank you. You don't have to say any more than that. But realise, I did do all this work. I put 100 percent into this art and into my craft. It's okay to be appreciated and to know that you are worth somebody else's appreciation.”

At the NZ Music Awards in 2016, when Aaradhna gave her award away to SWIDT and spoke out against feeling like she had been “placed in the category of brown people”, INF kept that same mindset. In her speech, Aaradhna had called SWIDT “the future of hip hop”, but the group had people questioning whether they really deserved it. Who are these dudes? Why give it to them? These guys are losers. They’re just some rappers from the hood.

“But we came back and put out a solid album and we won two Tuis, so it made it concrete. We're not just from the hood, we're not just some wack rappers or some boys who are really loud. We're actually some really talented young dudes who know what we're doing and have something to contribute to the scene.”

Still, says INF, this is only the beginning. There’s a long way to go yet. “Personally, I still feel like I have a lot of skills to unlock and skills to gain. Things that I haven't discovered about myself yet as an artist creatively.” There’s wisdom in just about every quote he gives: “Never focus on your losses. Always focus on your strengths,” he says. “Keep going.”

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He also talks about “the bigger picture”: accomplishing goals, putting out more music and being an inspiration to other local up and comers. The goal for SWIDT is to always do better than what they did before, says INF. And, of course, win more Tuis.

“We just want to make sure that the boundaries are always broken. Rules, stereotypes and barriers: those are the things we like to break.”

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