Joint Force talk 95

Joint Force were DLT, Otis, Slave and Mo Delay (Angus McNaughton). This interview is from the NZ music show Frenzy, which screened 11 May 1995, on TV3. Directed by Ross Cunningham, animation by John Pain, voiceover by Kate Stalker.

Sadly, all of Joint Force's releases are currently out of circulation. These days you can catch Slave MCing with Fat Freddys Drop. Otis and his wife run the Lucky Taco food truck.

Joint Force (OJ, DLT, Slave). Photo: Greg Riwai

MC OJ and his boots

Photo: Audioculture/Murray Cammick

There's a great piece freshly posted up on Audioculture this week by Gareth Shute, documenting the rise of a couple of AK honky rap boys, MCOJ and Rhythm Slave, loads of awesome photos too. My old band Hallelujah Picassos played with them a bunch of times, they were/are great guys. We even played the Auckland Town Hall with them, on a weird ass bill headlined by Push Push. And I remember we did a support slot alongside Joint Force (OJ, Slave, DLT) for Supergroove, in a basketball stadium in Mt Maunganui. That was a funny gig.

OJ (from Audioculture): "Back then, people always said – you’re just two white middle-class honkies, you can’t rap, it won’t work. We were like – just watch. And that’s how we gained our place in the history of local rap music. There’s some fucking gems in our hip-hop careers, but we never expected that we’d blow up and be huge. We just wanted to have a lot of fun and we definitely succeeded in that respect.”

The post on Audioculture mentions a song we did, called MCOJ and his Boots. I dug it out and uploaded it to Youtube...





LISTEN: Hallelujah Picassos - MCOJ and his boots / Picasso core, both off the 1993 album Drinking With Judas. OJ and Slave did a song called Dr Martens, about OJ's boots, and we did one too. Listen and you will hear OJ's disgust with our song. Sorry, OJ. On the end, OJ and Slave do a lively acapella of Picasso core. Warning - some swears.

Joint Force (OJ, DLT, Slave). Photo: Greg Riwai