Suffa, Hilltop Hoods

Suffa provides half of the MCing and most of the production for Adelaide's Hilltop Hoods. His mum's only musical advice has apparently been, "You should not swear."

SUFFA: My brother’s a bass player and he was in a punk band called Capo F. Other brother’s a guitarist, the one that plays on the album. He was in a couple of bands, one of ’em was called the Undecided. My mum’s a music teacher, she teaches eurhythmics to little kids, which is music and movement. And my dad’s a massive record collector. He’s got a couple of thousand blues and jazz CDs and vinyl. So yeah, really musical family.

Has that been helpful then having especially your dad’s collection to dig through?

S: Yeah, that was super helpful. I mean The Calling, our third record, was made nearly solely off my dad’s record collection ’cause I couldn’t afford breaks. I mean it’s also helpful when you’re a kid and you’re growing up and from one room one of your brothers is listening to Bad Brains and Bob Marley and whatever and another brother’s listening to Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees and your dad’s upstairs listening to, I dunno, blues, jazz, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and that sort of thing and your mum’s teaching music and movement. You get everything and you sort of mish-mosh it into your taste, I guess. Especially from a producer’s point of view, who samples, I think that’s a really good place to come from.