The gritty MC Dallas Woods was starstruck when footballers first showed him love. Not that the AFL super-fan drops any names – or is getting used to the adulation.
“I come from a place where you don’t give people their flowers,” he explains. “That’s why it’s been hard to take people telling me that they’re proud of me and stuff. It feels weird, ’cause I’m not finished yet.”
A relaxed Woods, sporting a NYC baseball cap and singlet, is speaking to NME via Zoom. The Noongar man currently resides in the gentrified regional city of Castlemaine in Victoria – far from home in East Kimberley, North Western Australia. He’s booked and busy, having just shot a video for ‘Moonboot Freestyle’, a “fun”, if raw, retro-funk track off self-released “mini-LP” ‘Julie’s Boy’. The title is a tribute to his mum, a single parent and pillar in “EK’s” local community.
Woods is known in the Australian hip-hop scene as Baker Boy’s mentor and chief collaborator – he was heavily involved in the latter’s 2021 hit debut album ‘Gela’. But the rapper has also steadily forged a solo career with successive singles since 2018, featuring the likes of Miiesha and Kee’ahn. ‘Julie’s Boy’, though, marks Woods’ arrival as an artist. He offers more tenacious socially attuned rap and experiments sonically, liaising with producers new and old: JUJO, Jerome Farah and Pip Norman.
Born in Perth, Woods moved with his mum and six siblings to the town of Wyndham at seven. Woods’ formative musical memories are of country music, Archie Roach and the Warumpi Band. But he soon latched onto more rebellious fare. The “big homies” exposed him to ’90s rap – and, Woods says, mum didn’t know. “I come from a very Christian household, so hip-hop wasn’t allowed in my house – in that sense of gangsta rap.”
A teenage Woods freestyled in ciphers, which he found liberating. “That actual freedom to just express yourself and [to let] whatever come[s] out, come out was really something that I hadn’t felt before – because there’s always these walls up,” Woods recalls. “[Freestyling] was just something that I was drawn to, because I’m a very expressive person. I wear my feelings on my face.”
Initially, Woods focused on breakdancing. When the Indigenous Hip Hop Projects dance troupe came to Wyndham in 2007, Julie suggested they recruit her son, anxious that the early school leaver not wind up in “juvie”. They did, and Woods spent the following 13 years mentoring Indigenous youth about dance and wellbeing across Australia. He’s aware of the irony: “For someone who didn’t wanna go to school, I ended up being in the schools pretty much every single school year, every week, teaching.”
“It’s been hard to take people telling me that they’re proud of me and stuff. It feels weird, ’cause I’m not finished yet”
Woods befriended another b-boy – Danzal Baker, the future Baker Boy. Woods encouraged Baker to rap, and later helped him adjust to big city life in Melbourne. Baker doesn’t cameo on ‘Julie’s Boy’, but Woods lauds his achievements. “He’s done so much – and I’m so happy for him,” he says. “Now obviously we’re on two different paths with our careers – and that’s what’s meant to happen when you grow, you’re meant to go on your own ways.
“But I look back on those days and I really do cherish being able to say that that’s my little bro. I’m just very proud that he might have took on a few things I said and made it his own.”
In fact, Baker’s success prompted a restless Woods to pivot. “Once dancing [had] become a job for me, I couldn’t do it anymore,” he admits. “If I’m not having fun, I don’t wanna do it. It’s a bit selfish, but I can only give my best to what I’m doing, if I’m enjoying it, you know?” Determined to remain relatable to “younger mob”, Woods launched himself with the single ‘9 Times Out Of 10’, about the reality of police violence for the “young, black and gifted“.
“I really do cherish being able to say that Baker Boy’s my little bro”
On ‘Julie’s Boy’ Woods honours his greatest supporter – and gratefully claims a label that he hadn’t always wanted.
“I started working at 15,” Woods says. “I was the one that made it out at 15. So I was sort of like a little bit of a local hero. [But] wherever I went, no matter how much I did and how much I achieved, I was always ‘Julie’s boy’ – ’cause [of] how much respect people had for my mum.
“When I was young, I was like, ‘I don’t wanna be Julie’s boy, I wanna be Dallas.’ Now it’s my biggest compliment – I’m Julie’s boy. I understand what she did for me… It sounds corny, it’s cliché, but this comes from a place of pure intent.”
And, on ‘Julie’s Boy’, Woods shows a new maturity, his lyrical messaging taut and purposeful as he tackles racial inequality and daily trials while voicing his pride in Blak excellence and solidarity. Especially compelling is ‘Colorblind’, a blistering critique of white apathy to the Black Lives Matter movement. Woods spits: “Don’t play the devil’s advocate, I ain’t having it / See that’s privilege, that’s arrogance / There’s a truth but you can’t handle it.”
“When I was young, I was like, ‘I don’t wanna be Julie’s boy, I wanna be Dallas.’ Now it’s my biggest compliment”
In the song Woods specifically calls to account non-Indigenous people who don’t deem themselves racist but stay silent. “We’ve already drawn the line between who’s in and who’s out – that’s the reason we’re in this situation,” he explains. “Now it’s about the people sitting on the fence. Just ’cause you’re going home at night, knowing that you don’t believe in both causes enough to agree with any of them, doesn’t mean you’re any better or any worse – [you’re] part of the problem.”
Woods ventures beyond his beloved old school hip-hop, veering into dub-reggae and EDM on his new songs. “I want them to be different, ’cause that challenges me,” he says. “But I also wanted something for everyone – and just to let them know that no matter what it is, I can rap on it, because this is what I do.”
The album’s rapid-fire revelation is ‘Grime’, a song Woods demoed years ago. He likens British grime rappers’ inventive slang to Aboriginal Kriol and connects to UK genre’s themes, bar the references to “guns and all that”: “I understand that lifestyle and that feeling of being a little bit lesser and living in places where it’s not as well off as places you can see right across the road.”
In April Woods will tour nationally, and with the release of ‘Julie’s Boy’, is starting to come round to the idea that he’s one of the best out here. “I think I was stuck in the state of being too humble,” he ruminates, “in the sense of: I know I’m good enough but I’m just happy to be where I am and me, personally, I’m happy here. I don’t wanna stand out, because I don’t like the actual fame; I don’t like the attention. But I also know that I’m right up there with them.”
Ultimately, Dallas Woods is a storyteller making music for the next generation – including his own descendants. “I’m not in competition with no one. I’m independent. I’m paying to do this. I don’t have to do this. I wanna do this because, first of all, this is my way of legacy… It’s just for my people. It really is just for me and my people.”
Dallas Woods’ ‘Julie’s Boy’ is out March 11. His Australian tour begins April 1, find more info here