NZ Musician, June/July 2004 (Vol: 11, No: 6)
By Stephen Jewell
South Auckland R'n'B duo Adeaze recently created another spike in New Zealand chart history with their debut album, 'Always & For Real'. Brothers Nainz and Viiz Tupa'i followed in the oversize footsteps of their hip hop soul cousins Scribe and Nesian Mystik by going all the way to number one with their first album.
Released in mid-May through Papatoetoe-based Dawn Raid Entertainment, 'Always & For Real' topped the charts in the same week that Nainz and Viiz's former Excel Performing Arts School mate, NZ Idol winner Ben Lummis debuted at number one with his single They Can't Take That Away.
This was only the second time that local acts had simultaneously reached number one on both the singles and album charts after Scribe achieved the same feat on his own late last year.
The album was the biggest 'ship', 12,500 in the first week, even outdoing Scribe's 7,500. 'Always & For Real' quickly reached platinum status by selling over 18,000 copies in its first week of release, leaving Adeaze surely set to emulate the success of Nesian Mystik, whose debut album 'Polysaturated' has sold over 50,000 copies, and Scribe, whose LP 'The Crusader' has passed the 70,000 sales mark.
'Always & For Real's' impressive performance was preceded by the success of Adeaze's debut single, A Life With You, which was certified platinum after spending 14 weeks in the charts at the end of last year, debuting at number six and climbing as high as number three.
"A Life With You was a taster," says Nainz when I met him and Viiz at St Matthews in the City church, where they were holding their album release party later that day.
"We didn't even know if it was a good song to put out first. We thought we should come up with something a bit more contemporary. Everyone is turning onto hip hop at the moment and hip hop is pumping. Then we come out with this song which is a really slow ballad," continues Nainz.
"I wrote two songs on the album, with the other being the title track (Nainz co-wrote the remainder of the album's originals with Viiz). A Life With You, like all the songs, was written from real life experience. My partner and I had a fall-out. I said a few things that I shouldn't have said, felt bad after that, went away, tucked myself in my room and wrote A Life With You. The songs kind of just spill out of us."
"When A Life With You came out, it was only played on (Hamilton radio station) UFM," continues Viiz. "There was no promotion for it whatsoever. A year later Mai FM picked it up and it was finally released as a single."
Like many Polynesian artists, Nainz and Viiz are humble and modest to the point of self-deprecation and seem well equipped to take their burgeoning success in their not-inconsiderable stride.
"A Life With You showed us that it was the music that drew people, it wasn't our fancy clothes, the marketing plan or whatever," says Nainz. "The music is what we love and that's what we want to share with the fans."
Nainz and Viiz's laidback disposition is even embodied in their band name.
"We both came up with the name in '97 for our Rockquest band," recalls Nainz. "We chose Adeaze because it was a description of our music. In army terms, 'attention' means to stand to attention and then 'at ease', which means relax."
Adeaze's relaxed attitude can be attributed to their parents, who surrounded Nainz and Viiz with music despite their father having to give up work before the pair were born to look after their wheelchair-bound mother.
"We were born in Hamilton in 1980 and 1981," says the older Nainz. "We lived there until I was 10 and Viiz was 9 and then we moved to Tokoroa, where we lived for four years and then we moved to Mangere, where we still live. But we've always done music since we lived in Hamilton, growing up in the church and playing music."
"When we were young, other kids would play outside while we would be happy inside playing our instruments," adds Viiz. "Our parents used to lay-by the instruments. First we got a piano and then we bought a guitar and a drum kit. And even when we moved to Tokoroa, our parents would still be paying off the instruments they lay-byed in Hamilton."
"They were still paying it off when we moved to Mangere in 1995," continues Nainz.
"It wasn't until '97/'98 that they really finished. They only put little bits of money on the lay-bys at a time because not many of our family were working. Our parents really taught us to appreciate what we have, just respect people. Everyone has been brought up a certain way and that determines how they will be in the future. We didn't do well at school but we grew up with a great passion for our music.
"It was also a good escape for us because we had heaps of problems in our lives and our families. You know, how you go through the teenage years with peer pressure and getting into the things that kids get into growing up. But every time we would perform or sing together, we'd just be lost. That's how much it meant to us."
Adeaze were first spotted at the 1997 Rockquest by Dawn Raid CEO Brotha D.
"At the time, Rockquest was all in one," recalls Viiz. "You just won the Pacifica Beats Award, there wasn't a separate Pacific contest. Most of the bands when we were in it were rock, and there was only our school, Mangere College, and James Cook, Manurewa, who were Polynesian."
"We were on stage and we could see Brotha D standing at the back with Phil Fuemana, UPR and all the boys," continues Nainz. "You couldn't miss them! We could tell that they really liked our music, which was really encouraging for us. We were still at school and they were out there - Polynesians doing their music. Brotha D approached us afterwards and said that he really enjoyed our set. Our friendship grew from there."
Brotha D included two Adeaze tracks on Dawn Raid's inaugural 2000 compilation, 'Southside Story'.
"Not long after that we went to Excel, which was awesome," recalls Nainz. "We learnt a lot from Excel. After that, we tucked ourselves away for two to three years and worked really hard on our sound. It wasn't until the beginning of 2003 that we approached Brotha D again and told him to listen to some of our songs. He really liked them and offered to help straight away, which was when we stepped up a gear to record the album."
"We spent just over a year recording the album," continues Viiz. "We mostly went into the studio when the feeling was there. The album has been recorded from everything we have; our emotions, all our love has gone into every song. Our main goal was to make an album that everyone can listen to. Over the past few years, there's been lots of money-making music coming out and a lot of the real music - like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and all that positive style of music - has gone."
'Always & For Real' was recorded at Dawn Raid Studios, mixed and engineered by resident engineer Vitaly Zolotarev. Nainz and Viiz are responsible for almost all of the album's musical and vocal content, except for future single Getting Stronger, which features guest singer Aaradhna. The pair wrote 10 originals in addition to putting their own unique spin on The Bee Gee's How Deep Is Your Love, Eric Clapton's Tears In Heaven and traditional Samoan standard, E Paia.
"That's a song that our mum's brother taught us," recalls Nainz. "He passed away in 1996 but always used to visit us. He taught us traditional Samoan songs and E Paia is a tribute to him as well as our culture and Polynesians."
With 'Always & For Real' now in the shops, Adeaze have turned their attention to playing live and plan to head across the Tasman later this month to promote their album's imminent Australian release. "The best feeling we get is when we play live with our instruments," declares Viiz. "But when we did the Hook-up tour recently (with Scribe, Mareko, the Deceptikonz, Sir Vere, etc), we were stripped from our guitars."
"So we had to learn to entertain without our guitars," continues Nainz.
"The first place we went to was Christchurch and we were pretty stiff. But then we kicked back and watched the rest of the show and took in Scribe, Mareko and SAS. We learnt so much from them, how to work with the crowd. We're at a comfortable stage now where we can perform without our guitars."
With their shared love of R'n'B, Nainz and Viiz acknowledge that out of all their urban New Zealand contemporaries, they share the most common musical ground with Nesian Mystik.
"We're supportive of New Zealand music full stop," declares Viiz. "We've always been supportive of Che Fu and Supergroove back in the day because as New Zealanders, you have to be proud of what comes out here. Music has been coming into our country from overseas for years so when heads like Che Fu, Scribe, Dave Dobbyn or Bic Runga do well, that's a buzz for us. If they can do it, we can do it too, so that's what we're doing. We've had offers to go overseas but we want to start here. We want the music coming out of our country to go to them, and it's working out because Australia is picking up on it now."
By Stephen Jewell
South Auckland R'n'B duo Adeaze recently created another spike in New Zealand chart history with their debut album, 'Always & For Real'. Brothers Nainz and Viiz Tupa'i followed in the oversize footsteps of their hip hop soul cousins Scribe and Nesian Mystik by going all the way to number one with their first album.
Released in mid-May through Papatoetoe-based Dawn Raid Entertainment, 'Always & For Real' topped the charts in the same week that Nainz and Viiz's former Excel Performing Arts School mate, NZ Idol winner Ben Lummis debuted at number one with his single They Can't Take That Away.
This was only the second time that local acts had simultaneously reached number one on both the singles and album charts after Scribe achieved the same feat on his own late last year.
The album was the biggest 'ship', 12,500 in the first week, even outdoing Scribe's 7,500. 'Always & For Real' quickly reached platinum status by selling over 18,000 copies in its first week of release, leaving Adeaze surely set to emulate the success of Nesian Mystik, whose debut album 'Polysaturated' has sold over 50,000 copies, and Scribe, whose LP 'The Crusader' has passed the 70,000 sales mark.
'Always & For Real's' impressive performance was preceded by the success of Adeaze's debut single, A Life With You, which was certified platinum after spending 14 weeks in the charts at the end of last year, debuting at number six and climbing as high as number three.
"A Life With You was a taster," says Nainz when I met him and Viiz at St Matthews in the City church, where they were holding their album release party later that day.
"We didn't even know if it was a good song to put out first. We thought we should come up with something a bit more contemporary. Everyone is turning onto hip hop at the moment and hip hop is pumping. Then we come out with this song which is a really slow ballad," continues Nainz.
"I wrote two songs on the album, with the other being the title track (Nainz co-wrote the remainder of the album's originals with Viiz). A Life With You, like all the songs, was written from real life experience. My partner and I had a fall-out. I said a few things that I shouldn't have said, felt bad after that, went away, tucked myself in my room and wrote A Life With You. The songs kind of just spill out of us."
"When A Life With You came out, it was only played on (Hamilton radio station) UFM," continues Viiz. "There was no promotion for it whatsoever. A year later Mai FM picked it up and it was finally released as a single."
Like many Polynesian artists, Nainz and Viiz are humble and modest to the point of self-deprecation and seem well equipped to take their burgeoning success in their not-inconsiderable stride.
"A Life With You showed us that it was the music that drew people, it wasn't our fancy clothes, the marketing plan or whatever," says Nainz. "The music is what we love and that's what we want to share with the fans."
Nainz and Viiz's laidback disposition is even embodied in their band name.
"We both came up with the name in '97 for our Rockquest band," recalls Nainz. "We chose Adeaze because it was a description of our music. In army terms, 'attention' means to stand to attention and then 'at ease', which means relax."
Adeaze's relaxed attitude can be attributed to their parents, who surrounded Nainz and Viiz with music despite their father having to give up work before the pair were born to look after their wheelchair-bound mother.
"We were born in Hamilton in 1980 and 1981," says the older Nainz. "We lived there until I was 10 and Viiz was 9 and then we moved to Tokoroa, where we lived for four years and then we moved to Mangere, where we still live. But we've always done music since we lived in Hamilton, growing up in the church and playing music."
"When we were young, other kids would play outside while we would be happy inside playing our instruments," adds Viiz. "Our parents used to lay-by the instruments. First we got a piano and then we bought a guitar and a drum kit. And even when we moved to Tokoroa, our parents would still be paying off the instruments they lay-byed in Hamilton."
"They were still paying it off when we moved to Mangere in 1995," continues Nainz.
"It wasn't until '97/'98 that they really finished. They only put little bits of money on the lay-bys at a time because not many of our family were working. Our parents really taught us to appreciate what we have, just respect people. Everyone has been brought up a certain way and that determines how they will be in the future. We didn't do well at school but we grew up with a great passion for our music.
"It was also a good escape for us because we had heaps of problems in our lives and our families. You know, how you go through the teenage years with peer pressure and getting into the things that kids get into growing up. But every time we would perform or sing together, we'd just be lost. That's how much it meant to us."
Adeaze were first spotted at the 1997 Rockquest by Dawn Raid CEO Brotha D.
"At the time, Rockquest was all in one," recalls Viiz. "You just won the Pacifica Beats Award, there wasn't a separate Pacific contest. Most of the bands when we were in it were rock, and there was only our school, Mangere College, and James Cook, Manurewa, who were Polynesian."
"We were on stage and we could see Brotha D standing at the back with Phil Fuemana, UPR and all the boys," continues Nainz. "You couldn't miss them! We could tell that they really liked our music, which was really encouraging for us. We were still at school and they were out there - Polynesians doing their music. Brotha D approached us afterwards and said that he really enjoyed our set. Our friendship grew from there."
Brotha D included two Adeaze tracks on Dawn Raid's inaugural 2000 compilation, 'Southside Story'.
"Not long after that we went to Excel, which was awesome," recalls Nainz. "We learnt a lot from Excel. After that, we tucked ourselves away for two to three years and worked really hard on our sound. It wasn't until the beginning of 2003 that we approached Brotha D again and told him to listen to some of our songs. He really liked them and offered to help straight away, which was when we stepped up a gear to record the album."
"We spent just over a year recording the album," continues Viiz. "We mostly went into the studio when the feeling was there. The album has been recorded from everything we have; our emotions, all our love has gone into every song. Our main goal was to make an album that everyone can listen to. Over the past few years, there's been lots of money-making music coming out and a lot of the real music - like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and all that positive style of music - has gone."
'Always & For Real' was recorded at Dawn Raid Studios, mixed and engineered by resident engineer Vitaly Zolotarev. Nainz and Viiz are responsible for almost all of the album's musical and vocal content, except for future single Getting Stronger, which features guest singer Aaradhna. The pair wrote 10 originals in addition to putting their own unique spin on The Bee Gee's How Deep Is Your Love, Eric Clapton's Tears In Heaven and traditional Samoan standard, E Paia.
"That's a song that our mum's brother taught us," recalls Nainz. "He passed away in 1996 but always used to visit us. He taught us traditional Samoan songs and E Paia is a tribute to him as well as our culture and Polynesians."
With 'Always & For Real' now in the shops, Adeaze have turned their attention to playing live and plan to head across the Tasman later this month to promote their album's imminent Australian release. "The best feeling we get is when we play live with our instruments," declares Viiz. "But when we did the Hook-up tour recently (with Scribe, Mareko, the Deceptikonz, Sir Vere, etc), we were stripped from our guitars."
"So we had to learn to entertain without our guitars," continues Nainz.
"The first place we went to was Christchurch and we were pretty stiff. But then we kicked back and watched the rest of the show and took in Scribe, Mareko and SAS. We learnt so much from them, how to work with the crowd. We're at a comfortable stage now where we can perform without our guitars."
With their shared love of R'n'B, Nainz and Viiz acknowledge that out of all their urban New Zealand contemporaries, they share the most common musical ground with Nesian Mystik.
"We're supportive of New Zealand music full stop," declares Viiz. "We've always been supportive of Che Fu and Supergroove back in the day because as New Zealanders, you have to be proud of what comes out here. Music has been coming into our country from overseas for years so when heads like Che Fu, Scribe, Dave Dobbyn or Bic Runga do well, that's a buzz for us. If they can do it, we can do it too, so that's what we're doing. We've had offers to go overseas but we want to start here. We want the music coming out of our country to go to them, and it's working out because Australia is picking up on it now."
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