The Spanian paradox

Spanian is a 37-year-old content creator from Sydney’s Inner City. He’s a man of many talents, some might even call him a “multi disciplinary artist” , he wouldn’t though, he would hate that, he would just say he’s being himself - which is why he’s so well loved.

I came across Spanian pretty early. I don’t want to be that guy but I started following his gram when he had 5000 followers. Being an Australian hiphop nerd I came across Spanian during a time when Aus rap was really on the come up, in 2018. Spanian was one of many rappers to come out of a renaissance in Australian hiphop after a fairly dull few years. His horrorcore inspired music was not really my cup of tea but I could appreciate his level of writing, it was different and he was pretty much the only one doing that style. It’s that style of hiphop that takes itself VERY seriously. Inspired by American artists like Immortal Technique and Ill Billl, his lyricism mixed with epic instrumentation from the European hiphop scene attracted a cult following from those that might call themselves fans of, “real hiphop”.

Early Spanian song - “Morbi Mosaics”

Spanian’s level of fame since then has grown so much that at this point many of his followers may have no clue that this is where he was introduced to Australia. Spanian represented a forgotten era in Sydney culture. The turn of the millennium, inner-city, searcher. A searcher is Sydney slang for a person that steals and most likely uses Heroin. This era has been viewed with a strange nostalgia by many Sydney siders that romanticize the wild west era of Sydney, where bank robbers and ram raiders were roaring through the city making tens of thousands a day all to be spent on a crippling heroin addiction, and when the Inner-city was dangerous enough that it was actually affordable. The fashion, slang and demeanor has come to characterize a lot of local Inner-city Sydney’s style and mentality decades after that culture has become extinct.

His representation of this culture generated a lot of curiosity from fans of not only Australian rap, but Australian culture in general. Making a career in Australian rap is a near impossible feat, and Spanian intelligently realized a career pivot was necessary. Fairly early on he started expressing his thoughts, opinions and stories on his Instagram to his audience. His crazy history, speaking abilities and give no fuck attitude made these some of the most interesting Instagram stories I’d ever seen. The music didn’t really hook me in, but these stories? Yeah, I’m definitely a huge fan of this guy.

Spanian’s first ever big internet moment came from a short documentary from a small youtube channel called Bulls Pro Media. The video mainly consisted of Spanian walking through Woolloomooloo talking about his rap career, street stories and his opinions. It was my first introduction to Spanian’s longform content, not just 1 minute instagram clips and it was very obvious to me this guy would be sticking around. Every friend I showed him to was instantly curious about this guy.

Spanians first interview

What really caught people's attention in that doco was him slapping a local guy in Woolloomooloo giving him attitude. It was raw and uncut, his authenticity was impossible to deny, you couldn’t take your eyes away from it and it was both shocking and refreshing in a world of perfectly curated online personalities. 

Spanian would slowly start to shift from rapping to talking. He would start a podcast and a myriad of youtube shows, from food reviews to racing cars to teaching people about working out and self defense. He would even write a biography. There was something strangely inspiring and even relatable about him.

Not the life of crime and a decade in jail bit, but the honesty and matter of factness of the things he talked about. He was not apologetic about his life of crime and carried no shame being from the Searcher subculture, yet he was only growing in popularity, it was inspiring to see that it was possible to gain a following online being yourself. People that would mock Australian rap were now talking about this Spanian guy. He had become The Voice for housing commission Australia. He wasn’t intellectual but his street smartness and life experiences made up for it and he was able to attract not just working class fans, but people from all walks of life to his content.

Spanian was steadily growing as a genuine entertainer and not just being an Aussie rapper that sometimes has an opinion.

Me and my brother used to always tune into his crazy late night youtube streams where he would play chess, surf the internet and talk about conspiracy theories to an audience of probably 100-200. They were intimate and wildly entertaining. While his opinions were sometimes very out there and wacky, it was clear they were coming from a working class perspective and I could appreciate them, somewhere along the lines this all changed.

Spanian would go on Instagram to call out a provocative mural during Pride month in the CBD. The rant, and the fallout from it, would eventually lead to a week of him spreading the idea that this is all just a big movement to make this kids gay, sharing videos of children being brainwashed by these evil people that want everyone to be gay for some reason. He would later be dropped by his management and his book taken off the shelves. I know a lot of people at the time were criticizing this saying it was just an opinion. The thing is though, when you convince people that gay people are grooming children it actually leads to violence, because fuck people that groom children. His management and publishers have every right to drop him if that goes against their crazy high standard of morals that is, “hmm maybe we shouldn’t bring back gay bashing in 2023”.

Many people forget but months before he was “cancelled”, he actually went online to say the opposite.

Spanian was hosting notorious local rapper Snoee Badman, a brash, in your face rapper that has extremely violent lyrics. On the episode, Spanian touched on the delicate subject of Snoee’s sexuality. Snoee said that because of an assault he suffered as a child he had confusion with his sexuality and would have sex with older men and then rob them in public toilets as a youth. The podcast was an interesting look at how homosexuality is treated in the underworld and Australian jail system. Snoee explained that he is not homosexual and that he was just confused back then, but the podcast that was later deleted had already brought a wave of hate into Spanian inbox.

Snoee Badman

Spanian would soon make a video dedicated to talking about the episode and defending his friend. He expressed his shock that there is still homophobia in this world and that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. He explains that being from the Inner-city, LGBT culture was all around him and he thought homophobia was just exaggerated because he couldn’t imagine people still caring about this in the year 2022. 

Both the Snoee Badman interview and Spanian’s defense of it have been erased from the Internet.

If you’ve tuned in to some of Spanian’s recent candid videos you’ll know just how hard this is to even imagine him saying that, and that’s really sad.

Like many Australians, Spanian was very vocal about the covid-lockdowns. There’s no doubt in my mind that seeing the applause he received from talking about some of the reasons why they were doing this is what emboldened him to take such strong opinions today.

Spanian’s openness to any and all conspiracy theory, including the fact that the vaccine was actually the Mark Of The Beast as written in the bible and that a huge chunk of the population should now be dead or mind controlled, can perhaps have been birthed by some of the artists that originally influenced his rap music. Immortal Technique and others have all been known to have their own conspiracies, albeit, from a left-wing perspective.(I’m not saying this is the cause, just that it was maybe an early influence cos I loved Immortal Technique growing up and was definitely into some conspiracies because of him)

Spanian on the other hand has slowly adopted what I call, ‘conspiracy-Christianity’. A very simple to understand, largely American phenomenon that has grown with the Trump-Q-Anon conspiracy. It’s way more exciting than all that church, charity and forgiveness. The idea that the world is controlled by demons attempting to destroy Christianity and all that is good in the world is a lot more fun and is a perfect explanation to why all these conspiracies are even happening.

Satan-panic is no longer reserved for old ladies that love church, it’s slowly entered the mainstream. A few days ago I stumbled across a video of Spanian on a live-stream at VIVID Sydney, he was saying how he was going to find all the hidden pedophile messaging throughout Vivid. I cringed so hard at this absolutely wild take and it was a sad realization that this version of Spanian was slowly becoming the only version of him. Like most conspiracies, when he didn’t find anything and he conveniently forgot he ever said it. A lot of people reading this may think, “No one actually takes Spanian seriously right?”, I wish you were correct. Every single time I have ever made a post that even mentioned him I have been met with DM’s defending him as if I had insulted one of their family members. Spanian has become a serious thought-leader and if he wants to be taken seriously then he and his fans should be open to criticism, especially from someone that was a fan of his before most.

The hope that Spanian would be a genuine working class voice for Sydney’s inner-city has now morphed into the reality that he is a right wing content creator that makes videos talking about how he wants to see more national flags in the street, depression isn’t real and his favorite one, “their turning the kids gay”. 

I would much rather his opinions be well known rather than hidden, and I’m not the biggest “cancel him guy” (I don’t think many people are), but I do think it’s good for people to call out these ideas that he loves to casually drop in his video but not defend.

Figures like Spanian that are growing into some of the biggest creators in the country will be the reason why Australia enters the American styled ‘culture wars’. 

I’m not going to write a whole explanation to why these distractio-I mean, conspiracies, are bullshit, there’s way smarter people out there, but I wanted to write this because I’m sad that someone that was doing such a good job representing the “real Sydney” has fallen down this pipeline.