Gutta Boys are a fresh new crew out of West Coffs whose debut record is entitled Keep It Gutta. West Coffs producer Young T began making beats for the project in 2011, before linking up with Blacktown-based Dinka MC, Young Low, in late 2012, and Coffs Coast rapper, S-Big, in early 2013.

South Sudanese MC Low, a former affiliate of Y-Unit out of Park Beach and now a member of Blacktown crew RGB, laid down a series of freestyles as well as the pre-written ‘Lost Ones’ shortly before the release of his own solo record, Ross Never Give Up. Low’s lyrics evoke, in equal parts, the struggles he faced during his upbringing in Kakuma, and individualism and the pursuit of romance in the hood in the present day. His tales are straight to the point but nonetheless evocative, with his relaxed delivery often hinting at an ominous element simmering beneath the surface.

Young T started out making Aphex Twin-inspired IDM on programmable keyboards in his school music class in around 2006, progressing to esoteric gangsta rap mixtapes featuring rapid freestyles made on the sly in tech school classes inspired by the seedier nocturnal side of town. In around 2008 he linked up with a crew of Park Beach MCs in the Y-Unit crew and began making darker rap instrumentals, before later immersing himself further in the Coffs hip-hop scene from which RGB and Mulah Fam among others were formed.

Togolese rapper S-Big and Young T first linked up in a high school music course in around 2008, while Big was working as a dancer at a local establishment. Big is now a bouncer at one of the prominent hotels in the city and when not spitting rare verses on Gutta Boys tracks, produces house tracks as DJ Diamond Dogg and DJ Wiik3d Wiizard with the MNC crew and De Terminators with DJ Mutiny, playing sets in carparks and other urban locales. He is looking to break the mould of conventional house music by including live instrumentation on his future tracks.

While Low is more at home on dancehall and conventional hip-hop beats, and Big regularly operates within the realm of upbeat house, the dark, slow beats of Young T invoke a nocturnal combination of UK bass and 90s southern gangsta rap, with a foreboding undercurrent of deep bass present throughout. The combination of talents that the three bring to Gutta Boys is at once disarming and compelling, and the group stand out as forward thinkers in the often-conservative landscape of Australian hip-hop.