Featured Base DJ – King Kapisi
Written by Admin on November 13, 2012
This week’s Featured Base DJs is the one and only King Kapisi aka King Kaps, aka Bill Urale. He’s one of the newest DJs on the roster here but he’s by no means new to the Base fam.
If you haven’t checked out the Fugg You Show yet, make sure you tune in this Tuesday from 4 – 6pm here on Base FM.
Kapisi spent much of the 90s DJing and MCing and different clubs and battles before unleashing his brand of hiphop on the world with the release of Sub-Cranium in 1998. The video was directed by his sister, Sima Urale and the song went straight to number 8 on the charts. In 1999 Kapisi released Reverse Resistance, which not only won the APRA Silver Scroll Award for Songwriting but also made the MC the first Polynesian Hiphop artist to ever win the award.
Since then Kapisi has gone on to work with Afrika Bambaata, KRS-One, Rakaa Iriscience, Janet Jackson, Beastie Boys, Michael Franti and Spearhead as well as an envious list of all the key players in Aotearoa hip hop. He’s also represented New Zealand hiphop and Samoan culture all over the world, playing at festivals all over Europe, old school hiphop reunions in The Bronx and German music conferences.
Today, King Kapisi is still making music and MCing at everything from high profile international gigs to B-Boy battles in Otara. More recently, Kapisi has been blowing minds with Hedlok – a hiphop super group made up of Kapisi, Che-Fu and at some gigs, if the crowd is lucky enough, DLT, Manuel Bundy, Slave and Teremoana Rapley.
Overstayer, the streetwear label Kapisi started in 2002 is still going strong and you can cop some dope threads for yourself over at The Plantation Store. He’s also released a magazine called Overdue through the Overstayer label. If you didn’t score one of the hard copies you can still have a look at it over here.
He also reps hard on Twitter and Facebook with constant updates, gig listings, videos and photos. Be warned though, his recent tweets about Box-Fit classes will make you feel bad about heading back to the couch with another beer. He’ll also make you jealous with pictures of him just casually posing with legends like Ernest Ranglin. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
This coming weekend make sure you catch King Kapisi LIVE at Base FM Radiowaves for our Old School vs New School special. Kapisi will be going up against Piata from the SuperVillians RMC representing the New School. Check out the rest of the truly killer line up right here. Rakinos, Saturday 24th November. Don’t miss it!
