Sleek The Elite: Rap Battler

Sleek The Elite 'Hard For A Rapper'

Every rapper knows it’s a jungle out there, just ask Sleek The Elite.


As he prepares to release his long-awaited third album, the Sydney MC and actor looks back to where it all began and the road he’s walked to get where he is today.


“Life was pretty tough on me for a bit with bad situations I was in but what I’m trying to do, and I think I’ve succeeded, is turn all that negative shit into a force of energy,” says Sleek.


“If I didn’t, the pain would have consumed me and there wouldn’t have been any more Sleek as you know it. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be here anymore, but I wouldn’t be here in the same capacity.”


Sleek’s 1997 debut album ‘Sleekism’ turned Australian hip hop on its head, introducing a razor-sharp firebrand MC who didn’t mince his words. Angry, earnest and succinct, the record and its creator became an instant underground phenomenon.


“The album was before its time, ‘Sleekism’, I know that now more the ever,” Sleek recalls. “You could still play a lot of those tracks and not know what era they came from. ‘Child Of The Cedar’ especially, and ‘Freak Of Nature’; there are a lot of tracks like that which are timeless, it doesn’t matter.”


It would be another seven years until Sleek released his follow-up record, ‘Hard For A Rapper’ in 2004, the distance between albums embodying his creative approach of producing music with meaning.


“It seems like it [the album] was a natural progression,” he says. “If I had my time again I probably would have done some of it a little bit different, but that’s also applicable to everything I’ve done in life.


“It’s not even about having regrets, not even mistakes that might be too hard a word, but sometimes you listen back on things and it’s hard to tell. I am happy with it, the lyrics are good and there are some solid hip hop tracks on it.”


As a multi-faceted performer, Sleek wears many hats and titles: MC, rapper, actor, comedian; but more than anything, in his heart he considers himself above all, a simple poet.


Admitting to a level of selfishness, Sleek confesses to making music for himself rather than attempting to appeal to populist mentality and taste. This highly personal, slow-burn approach has resulted in a discography that, while limited, represents Sleek’s truest self.


“All my bodies of work, all my albums as one encompass or describe where I’m at at [sic] that point, or what I’ve experienced in the past which has brought me to that point. I’ve got enough lyrics for a third album easily, and I find it hard to work on the fourth or fifth albums so to speak without getting the third one out. It’s the story of Sleek.”


Over a decade on from ‘Hard For A Rapper’ and Sleek is on the cusp of completing and unleashing his third as-yet-untitled album. With all lyrics completed and production ongoing, Sleek is hoping it will be the next great chapter in his Homeric tale.


“All in all, the album is coming together and it’s going to have something like a lighter side and a dark side,” he says. “I went through some dark times and they definitely fashioned me. I’m proud of the lyrics on the first two albums but I hope I’m right I saying the lyrics on the third album will blow you away. Sincerely that’s what I want to achieve, to blow people away.”


As for those dark times and bad days in the aforementioned jungle, while there’s always a cloud on the horizon Sleek has emerged from the storm a stronger, wiser and more determined person overall.


“A lot of bullshit came at me, a lot of evil and a lot of negativity; some of it I dodged [and] deflected but some of it got me. It’s all good now; I’m on top of the world.”