3% On NIMAs & Their Debut LP: 'We Made The Album That Needed To Be Made At This Moment In Time'

The First Nations hip-hop supergroup 3% – formed by rappers Corey "Nooky" Webster and Dallas Woods plus vocalist Angus Field – are not afraid of competition. In fact, they'd welcome an explosion of talent. "Hopefully we see another supergroup in about 10 years that absolutely put us in the back pocket!," Dallas declares, the proud Noongar man heralding what his Yuin bandmate Nooky calls a "Blak Era". Their intention is to elevate.

Dallas and Nooky are Zooming to discuss 3%'s debut album, KILL THE DEAD – a blistering statement of Blak survival and excellence arriving the day prior to the 20th anniversary of the National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMAs) in Larrakia/Darwin. 3% have been nominated for two awards, including 'Artist Of The Year'.

The final third of 3% is busy elsewhere. The proud Gumbaynggirr man Angus, apparently nicknamed 'Gussy', and who lives in Coffs Harbour, has a day job. "We're like Wu-Tang [Clan], so not all the members rock up every time, you know what I mean?," Nooky jokes.

Dallas, based in regional Castlemaine on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, apologises for switching off the camera. "The beard's looking very wintry," he says in his characteristic gruff tone. The pair are playful. At one stage "Nooks" valiantly suppresses a seasonal cough, Dallas quipping, "I thought he was just getting really choked up.”

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples represent 3% of the Australian population – and Nooky proposed that be the supergroup's name. Indeed, the Blak collective was borne of a shared purpose and their commitment to mentorship as much as friendship and creative bonds.

But fulfilling KILL THE DEAD has also been restorative – especially after the devastating failure of last October's Australian Indigenous Voice referendum stalled reconciliation. "We made the album that needed to be made at this moment in time," Nooky states. KILL THE DEAD peaks with the anthemic Blak Australia Policy, 3% joined by Darwin/Larrakia footballer-turned-musician Marlon Motlop.

The three have distinct profiles – and personalities. A self-proclaimed warrior from Nowra on the South Coast of New South Wales, Nooky is a dancer, MC, producer and activist. As a teen in the 2010s he collaborated with the Black Eyed Peas' Taboo in Los Angeles, later signing to Briggs' Bad Apples Music and releasing projects such as 2019's Junction Court – his lyrics offering social critique as well as promoting self-actualisation for Indigenous youth through storytelling.

Though born in Boorloo/Perth, Dallas grew up in the remote township of Wyndham, WA. Here, the dynamo was talent-spotted as a dancer for the outreach program Indigenous Hip Hop Projects. An aspiring MC, Dallas partnered with fellow b-boy Baker Boy, eventually contributing to Gela – an ARIA 'Album Of The Year'. He subsequently advanced his solo career, presenting the mini-album Julie's Boy in early 2022.

Lastly, Angus, a soulful singer/songwriter, was previously in the EDM outfit AYA J. He came to Nooky's attention as a participant in the First Nations Pathways program.

Nooky and Dallas conceived 3% in 2022 when both were disillusioned with music at a precarious period for the industry. Nooky, a young dad, had decided to focus on broadcasting – he hosts Blak Out on triple j – and launched his Indigenous social enterprise, We Are Warriors, to facilitate Blak networking. "I got to a point where I'm only gonna do music if I feel like it."

Dallas could relate. "I sort of felt like I was being kicked around by the music industry. Writing a song felt like a job again. And it was just never what I planned it to be – music was always my escape; always a place for me to express myself."

Despite non-Indigenous Australians' pledges to mitigate inequality as the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum in 2020, the scene hasn't delivered, Nooky rues. "If I'm being completely honest with ya, shit's even fucking harder now. Since October 14, it's gone backwards – like I see festivals, and there's minimal Blak artists."

Specifically, 3% developed out of a collab between Nooky and Dallas – the former recalling "a certain energy in the room." Nooky then travelled to Castlemaine, where they wrote more music – "one song turned into four songs." The duo realised that they potentially had a project. Dallas reconnected with Nooky in Eora/Sydney to finish it. At the same time, Nooky was working with Angus on the epic Coming Home – which symbolically interpolates Jimmy Little's nostalgic '60s hit Royal Telephone. Inevitably, 3% coalesced as a trio, four songs becoming 14.

Nooky found it rejuvenating. "For me, personally, it [brought] back the love and the fun that I had when I first got into rapping – and that had been gone for a long time. I feel like the music we were making just made sense. It was reflective of us and our personal struggles and our personal wins, and reflective of what was happening to our people at that moment in time. It felt like the right thing to do."

Dallas enjoyed the camaraderie. "That's why I really wanted to push ahead with it – because, when you know someone's got no bullshit, there's some legit brothers in there, then you know what you see is what you get, you know you're walking alongside people you can count on."

Ultimately, 3% afforded the "brother boys" solidarity – and a platform, says Nooky. "I'll tell you right now: I've got the energy, and I've got the fire to fight back. Shit's harder right now, but I've got the energy here. 3% ain't going nowhere. We're here, and we're fighting back against all the bullshit. Just let it be known that we see it."

3% introduced themselves post-referendum with OUR PEOPLE, ingeniously flipping The Presets' 2007 electro-pop hit My People. The Presets frontman Julian Hamilton penned My People to protest the detention of asylum seekers – and it resounded with Nooky in his teens. "When I heard that 'Locked up with my people,' it made me think of my cousins or my uncles and all of that," he recollects. "I'm like, 'One day, I'm gonna touch this song, and I'm gonna rework it for the mob.'"

Nooky revisited that idea on a trying day. Conducting workshops at a juvenile justice centre, he recognised a kid from outside. "He was super young," the MC winces. "You felt heavy. I just had this kind of whirlwind of emotions. It was a kid in a facility like this – it's not good."

Driving home, Nooky then tuned into the radio only to hear racial moral panic about a youth crime wave in Mparntwe/Alice Springs. He resolved to address the links between systemic racism, Indigenous incarceration and custodial deaths in a song, gathering his bandmates in the studio with producer Caleb Tasker. "I said, 'Bro, I need you to load up Presets – we're gonna sample that.'"

Nooky is "grateful" that The Presets cleared the sample – a first. "They really understood what we were doing, and they were gracious enough to allow us to use parts of their song to convey that message." It was obvious that OUR PEOPLE should be 3%'s inaugural single. "We just walked out of the room, and I said to the boys, 'I think this is it.' Everyone felt the same."

3% premiered live at the inaugural SXSW Sydney, Chance The Rapper popping by. But rather than embark on a conventional tour, the group toured Victorian prisons under the Treaty Day In banner. OUR PEOPLE is now up for the NIMAs' Song Of The Year.

The title KILL THE DEAD is very punk-rock. "I think that's my biggest flex on this album – I got to name it," Dallas laughs. 3% express a sardonic – and defiant – humour. Daniel Boyd's LP artwork is an iconic image of AFL legend Nicky Winmar responding to racial abuse on the field by proudly showing his abdomen. However, the title's meaning is empowering, and spiritual – 3% acknowledging their ancestors.

"I've always been told by my mum that I never walk alone – my uncles walk with me; my old people, my grandparents, they walk with me in the spirit world, in the Dreamtime," Dallas explains. "I've always got power around me.

"We live in a Westernised world where, when someone dies, they put 'em in the ground, and they'll reminisce every now and then – but not with us. We carry their fire on with us. That's why you could never kill the dead, 'cause we still exist.

"We are the kids of the clans they tried to kill – it really is that simple. They tried to wipe us out – and they couldn't… They failed – and we're living proof of their failure. So that's why we probably make 'em angry every time they see us."

Since OUR PEOPLE, 3% have aired successive singles – among them, the poppy Sleezy Steezy Cool featuring Tia Gostelow, Coming Home, now with Nooky's daughter Calula in a Blue Ivy Carter moment, and the Jessica Mauboy-blessed Won't Stop. Unusually, they previewed KILL THE DEAD by performing the album in its entirety for a Vivid Sydney concert (broadcast on triple j's Live At The Wireless) and holding listening parties. As Dallas says, 3% just want KILL THE DEAD "to reach as many ears as possible."

And the trio are pleased with the reception to KILL THE DEAD so far, Dallas noting that audiences have picked up on its versatility. "We all bring core fans from our own careers that we've had prior to 3%. I think you're seeing your favourite artists in a different light and go on to realms that they haven't really worked in before. That's your favourite thing as a fan – to watch artists that you love and see their growth and hear more about their life and more about the story and feel closer to them."

Like the Wu-Tang, 3% is for the children. Recently, after Nooky performed in a jail, a support worker asked him to FaceTime his daughter. The young fan revealed that she was into Land Back, a song asserting sovereignty with Meanjin/Brisbane rapper Say True God? and lutruwita/Tasmania polymath DENNI. "I was like, 'Oh, yeah, you know, it's got a few naughty words in it, that one, hey?,'" he chuckles. "She goes, 'Yeah, I don't care about that.'"

The wordsmiths themselves have their favourites on KILL THE DEAD. Dallas cites the decoloniality banger Invasion, praising Nooky for cutting "one of the hardest verses on the album." Conversely, Nooky digs the neo-soul Higher – a track Dallas initiated. "It allowed me to tap into a side that I've never felt comfortable tapping into with music," he confides. "This is a side of myself I always kept reserved just for me. So I finally let that out for everyone."

The funky Won't Stop with the Kuku Yalanji superstar Mauboy has already been synced as the Supercars 2024 theme. Curiously, Dallas was "sitting" on the concept for a couple of years. "I wrote it for someone else, and I just don't think they saw the vision I saw, and, respectfully, that's how this game goes." Yet he'd always aspired to collaborate with Mauboy, remembering when, back in 2006, she was "the first famous person" to come to the Kimberley. Dallas was a dancer at the show.

But, if Dallas was starstruck at the prospect of recording with Mauboy, he soon relaxed, the rapper impressed by her "professionalism". "It's like just none of that ego." He appreciated, too, that "She actually wanted to be there on the song."

While Nooky considers Won't Stop "a positive and uplifting song," the video is sombre, being filmed at the Bomaderry Aboriginal Children's Home near Nowra – "the birthplace of the Stolen Generation, where they took little fucking babies."

The government policy of removing Indigenous children from their families accelerated in the 1900s, its aim assimilation ("breeding out") – and, with the ensuing loss of identity, language and culture, genocide. Archie Roach, himself a survivor of the Stolen Generation, sang about intertemporal trauma in 1990's Took The Children Away – and the practice still has ramifications.

It was harrowing to walk through Bomaderry, where wardens punished children by locking them in a shed. "That's the true story of this place," Nooky stresses. "It's what really happened. It's not made up, it's not bullshit – it's fucking right there."

Today, the heritage-listed property serves as the headquarters of the Nowra Local Aboriginal Land Council, and Nooky was determined that Won't Stop be about triumph in addition to truthtelling – the community mounting a takeover of the former institution for the shoot. 3% advocate reclamation.

"There's been a lot of work over the years to bring healing to this place," he says. "I wanted, for us, as a band, as a crew, to add to that healing and add to that story of moving forward.

"Most of [KILL THE DEAD] is a reflection of our people. There is a lot of pain there; there is a lot of trauma. But there’s also a lot of happiness, a lot of strength, a lot of joy and a lot of love and a lot of pride, and a lot of resilience…

"It's like, 'Yeah, we have dealt with this, and this has happened to us, and it's not right. But we still find within ourselves the power to love and to be happy and allow ourselves to feel these emotions and try and break these generational curses and these fucking traumas and not pass it on to our kids… [So] it was like, 'Let's go to a place where a lot of that trauma and pain stems from and let's show how far we've come and where we're at now.'"

In 2018 Dallas travelled to Norway with Baker Boy to play the Indigenous festival Riddu Riđđu – meeting Sámi people an eye-opening experience. "They held a space there for everyone to showcase culture, to learn about other cultures, instead of stealing it," he says pointedly.

Dallas intuited a deep connection with Indigenous people globally. "No one wanted to see their culture die – and I think that's beautiful because that's really the stem of everything we fight for; to make sure that our kids' kids know where they come from because the people before us fought so hard to make sure that we could at least have a chance to reclaim culture and, hopefully, one day reclaim land."

In 2024 Indigenous Australian artists The Kid LAROI and CYRIL are impacting internationally – the NIMAs celebrating visibility. "Whenever you get Blakfellas in a room, it's always a good time," Nooky affirms. 3% hint at an auspicious rendition of Won't Stop with Mauboy, another guest.

Regardless, KILL THE DEAD won't be a one-off. Ever the multitasker, Nooky imagines that 3% will "coexist" with their solo activities, envisaging it as a "family structure" akin to 50 Cent's crew G-Unit or, yes, Wu-Tang. "Who knows – we might even add a couple more members in here," he teases. "Dallas has always said '3% is more than us; it's bigger than us.' There's three of us there now, but 3%'s for everyone.

"There's many stories and many songs and many voices that make this one voice that we use here. So 3% is something that will evolve over time and could go this way; could go that way. But, again, this is family. 3% is home – you don't always stay home, you gotta go for a bit and you come back when you need."

3%’s debut album, KILL THE DEAD, will be released tomorrow via 1788 Records and Virgin Music Group. You can pre-order or pre-save the album here.

3% have been nominated for two NIMAs and will perform at the awards’ 20th-anniversary ceremony on Saturday, 10 August, which you can find more information about here.

3% - KILL THE DEAD WORLD TOUR

Friday 9 August - Mayberry Darwin, Garramilla/Darwin NT (details here)
Saturday 17 August - Oxford Art Factory’s 17th Birthday Bash, Eora Nation/Sydney NSW (RSVP here)
Saturday 24 August - Blak Day Out, Meanjin/Brisbane QLD (details here)
Saturday 31 August - From The Land Festival, Mparntwe/Alice Springs NT (details here)
Friday 20 September - Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg Germany
Saturday 21 September - Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg Germany
Friday 4 October - Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Eora Nation/Sydney NSW
Saturday 19 October - Workers Club, Naarm/Melbourne VIC
Thursday 31 October - Black Bear Lodge, Meanjin/Brisbane QLD