One of the universal qualities of hip-hop is how artists use the genre to express where they come from and the needs, fears, frustrations, and successes they experience along the way. This has set the stage for Australia's A.GIRL-real name Hinenuiterangi Tairua-a 22-year-old rapper who is putting western Sydney on the map.
Over the last two years, she has gained national recognition thanks to her raw style and distinct sing-rap mix that yields attention-grabbing moments of musical brilliance.
On the strength of tracks like We Them Boyz (featuring Jaecy)-her first to be featured on Spotify's flagship A1 hip-hop playlist-A.GIRL has enjoyed a rapid rise. She's won both the Next Big Thing award at the FBi SMAC Awards and triple j's Unearthed competition, which netted her a slot at the dance music festival Listen Out. She's even been tipped as a rising star by U.K. publication Wonderland Mag and was named one to watch by Ticketmaster. Building on this momentum, she's since joined Aussie grime icon Chillinit on his sold-out national tour, has shows coming up with the billion-stream rapper Masked Wolf, and will headline Sydney's Spilt Milk festival in September.
Most recently, Spotify's A1 playlist brought A.GIRL together with Chillinit and another homegrown hip-hop artist, Day1, to launch a limited-edition menu with BUTTER, a hybrid fried chicken, hip-hop, champagne, and sneaker venue. (Fans can indulge in the custom menu's offerings through the end of June at BUTTER's four Sydney locations.) A.GIRL's creation for this menu is the A.GIRL Nashville Sandwich, a spicy fried chicken sandwich with buttermilk ranch, a fried runny egg, and lettuce.
I had a long think about it, and I was like, what is missing from burgers that I always add when I go home? she told For the Record. Like, how do I personalize? The runny egg. I don't know if it's a Maori thing, a Pacific Islander thing, but we always put runny eggs on everything. So I was just like, chicken sandwich with a runny egg-that's a wrap!
NEXT
Photo credit: @dreamsyndicator
Her sandwich isn't the only thing she's personalizing these days-A.GIRL has big dreams to export Aussie rap to the world in her own unique way.
What is unique about the rap and hip-hop scene in Sydney? In Sydney, I think we bring our own culture to hip-hop, but it took a while for us to develop our own culture. We were sheep following America and London for a bit, but we have this whole eshay culture about us; we've got this whole brand that we can stand solid on. And it's taken us a minute to get there. But people like Chillinit, people like A1, people like ONEFOUR, 100%. Australian hip-hop is a full thing now that other people can jump on and be like, oh, I support. I can't get this anywhere else in the world but Australia. It's pretty unique how we've kind of come into our own and then we all kind of did this like 360. But you know what? Our accent is hectic, the way we dress is hectic, our tn's are cool, everything that we've done back in the day and brought back to life, times ten.
Why should people from around the world tune into the music coming out of the area? Because of American hip-hop, we know there's food stamps over in America; we know that there's Section 8 housing; we know all of those like little things from rap culture in different places. I feel like it's time for others to learn about the things that we have to deal with, Centrelink, houses-things that are in Australian culture that Australian people can relate to. But it might take the world a minute to get onto what we're saying.
Who are some of your biggest musical influences? Definitely The Weeknd. Love Him. I'm not sure if I adapt that into my own sound or music, but his demeanor, his presence, how he carries himself as an artist, for sure. Freddie Mercury, weird one, but bro, he's just him. No matter what he does-getting people to sing weird ad-libs back to him? But he's just so undeniable wherever he goes. And I think he had the whole world against him at one point. It must have felt like it, you know? And he was like, f it, you know? And I just love him for being that. Also Doja Cat. Obviously.
How did you find your voice in hip-hop? What role did music play in your upbringing? I think by pushing through the noise and just kind of disregarding everyone, even if they had something good to say about me. I was just like, for now, while I'm trying to find myself in this male-dominated hip-hop realm, I literally only should listen to me. And that's why I did songs like Vision, where I spoke about the differences in areas and area beef.
When I first started coming out as a rapper, I was touching on topics that I felt needed to be addressed. And topics that I feel like other rappers were shying away from. And I know that if I listened to anybody outside of my own brain, I would have just steered left and done some commercial sh*t, and I wouldn't have stuck to what felt true. But it took me a minute to find my voice in hip-hop, because as much as I say that I didn't listen to anybody, I did. You know, I let people get into my head and it was very f hard.
What is your biggest piece of advice to aspiring artists? Stay true to yourself. It's really easy to get caught up in all the high pressure, easy to get caught up in the hype. No one prepares you for when you get to that point. The lights and cameras are in your face. Everybody wants to know your name. Everybody wants to get a picture. Nobody ever really keeps an 100 with you about how overwhelming that can be, about how easy it is to kind of just fall into that trap of pushing everyone that's close out of the way.
So stay true to yourself, remember who your day ones are, reme
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Agentic AI is getting physical.
At COMPUTEX on Tuesday, NVIDIA announced NVIDIA JetPack 7.2 and NVIDIA NemoClaw support on NVIDIA Jetson.
JetPack 7.2 brings a...
01/06/2026
Financial institutions have spent years building AI: fraud models, credit models...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
One of the universal qualities of hip-hop is how artists use the genre to express where they come from and the needs, fears, frustrations, and successes they experience along the way. This has set the stage for Australia's A.GIRL-real name Hinenuiterangi Tairua-a 22-year-old rapper who is putting western Sydney on the map. 
