Rapping the suburb

If rap music is about giving a big voice to those living on the fringes of cities, Sista She is the sound of thousands of girls hanging around shopping centres in Sydney’s south western suburbs.

Best known for their hilarious Triple J hit What R Yooze Girls Doin about a ginger-haired, Stubbies-wearing bloke who tries to pick them up at Gymea Train Station, Sheila MC EILA and Rasheda EDA MC are all about their own suburban lives. They’re not Straight Outta Compton, and they’re not pretending to be. For the record, the gross Gymea pick-up is based on a true story.

You can’t make this shit up, Rasheda says.

Everything we say is our perspective on our lives and things that have happened to us as young women growing up in the suburbs of Australia -” the western suburbs of Australia. We talk about Gymea station or Mawson Park in Campbelltown and we don’t cringe away from that stuff. We don’t go in a rap -˜from Australia to Brooklyn to New Zealand’. We’re more like -˜from Sutherland to Campbelltown to Central Station’.

The story of Rasheda and Sheila’s meeting at Gymea Train Station is just one of the ones featured in Inna Thigh, The Sista She Story. Rasheda says that unlike their recent efforts at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, Inna Thigh is the Sista She 8 Mile.

The show we did at the festival was us in concert, in superstar action. This is the back story, we’re talking about the birth of Sista She, she says.

In Inna Thigh we don’t just do straight hip-hop. There’s a blues number with a bit of hip-hop thrown in. There’s a musical theatre number with a big phat beat that comes in. It has an epic ending, a big finale and a Broadway opening. And there’s some hip-hop interpretive dancing involved as well.

Hip-hop is one of those art forms where you can really reappropriate stuff. You can really push it any where you like. Put a soul chorus in, a few orchestral strings. It’s the perfect creative art form for what we want to express.

INFO : Inna Thigh, the Sista She Story runs from Tuesday 18 May until Saturday 22 May at The Studio, Sydney Opera House. Tickets are $22 (full) or $16 (concession). Bookings: 9250 7777 or sydneyoperahouse.com/thestudio.