Avondale-born artist, Melodownz took out three awards at last month’s annual Pacific Music Awards in Manukau, New Zealand: Best Pacific Male Artist, Best Pacific Music Video, and Best Pacific Music Album Award for Lone Wolf.
Melodownz, who debuted as a musician in 2013, beams gratitude at being recognised by the Pacific community, the wider community and at a greater level, the music industry.
“It’s also really cool to see all the hours and all the hard work that people don’t see us musicians put in get acknowledged. It’s cool to celebrate that as well. I’m just so grateful.”
Named Bronson Price at birth, he is a New Zealand MC, rapper and urban poet from Avondale, Auckland. He was raised in Avondale by his Samoan Catholic grandmother, English grandfather and his mother. He has Samoan, Pākehā and Ngapuhi heritage.
Price has been performing hip-hop music for around 10 years, composing hip-hop songs inspired by his upbringing. His first project was Avontales, an EP. He released his debut album Beginners Luck in 2014. Lone Wolf is his latest album. Price has toured around Australia, Europe and the United States of America and has plans to tour around the Pacific.
Early Beginnings
“I was into writing, poetry and graffiti art back when I was younger and from there, I just developed a passion for rap music and hip-hop. I could relate to a lot of hip-hop that I was listening to at the time and so I figured that I would try and rap myself,” he says. “I started freestyling at parties, eventually I started writing my own material. That’s kind of how it started. I was influenced a lot by my cousins and some of my boys that I grew up with in Avondale. I just grew an obsession from there.”
Growing up in Avondale, he found it diverse, with a different culture that inspired him a lot.
“A lot of events that happened when I was a teenager,” says Price. “Growing up in Avondale allowed me to have a voice in my community.”
Lone Wolf (the Album)
“I started creating Lone Wolf in 2019 to around 2022,” he says. “This was kind of the time stamp of the album. It’s just a collation of songs, moods and emotions that I was going through at that time that I created the music.
“Lone Wolf for me is being confident within yourself no matter where you go in the world. Knowing where you come from, knowing your identity allows you to be the best version of yourself in whatever industry or whatever platform or whatever it is you choose to do in life. I guess that’s my definition of what a lone wolf is.”
There are a lot of collaborations in the Lone Wolf album.
“We have Troy Kingi, who is another Maori artist. He is in the last song. I also went to my old school, Avondale Intermediate and got the choir involved in one of the songs – it’s called That Love and it’s the last song on the album.
“I was also in LA a couple of years ago and I collaborated with James Brown’s bass player Bootsy Collins who is pretty much the godfather of funk music. He is in one of the songs. I also have Denzel Curry; he is an artist from Florida. Bailey Wiley is another local singer from New Zealand. I also have Lisi on my album who is a Samoan artist from Brisbane. I just love collaborating. For me, it’s important to be able to connect with other artists from around the world and let it shine through my music.”
Heart Chakra
Price hits a philosophical note while talking about the song Heart Chakra, describing it as being about all the trials and tribulations that people go through in life.
“I feel like Heart Chakra represents the resilience and the strength that you find within yourself to be able to navigate through the hardships that you deal with in your life journey,” says Price. “My aunty, my mother’s sister, passed away a week before my album released so I dedicated that song to her.”
Spiritual Inspiration
“I’m a firm believer in the universe and God as well,” says Price. “And it’s something that we as creators are able to channel and bring to a physical form. Making music is quite a spiritual process. I feel a lot of it comes from our higher selves. It comes from the life that we live and the experiences that we go through in order to be able to express our art through ways where other people can resonate with it as well for their lives.”
Success
“I don’t think I can pinpoint one (successful project),” says Price. “But I feel like that the journey as a whole and being able to have a music career in this country is quite a success in itself. It’s very hard to be a full-time artist in New Zealand, because we are such a small country, the market is very small here.
“That in itself and also a few years ago, I went to Berlin, in Germany and I played in a few shows in Europe and I also did a project – a session called Colours – which is a world famous platform. So, for a NZ artist to be on that platform was quite a big deal at the time. That got my name out there a little bit more.”
Branding
“I’m a fulltime artist in NZ,” says Price. “It has its peaks and its lows. To be sustainable, you always got to be hustling. You always have to build your brand up. A lot of artists have the best music, but they don’t have a brand that they can bounce off. Once you develop a brand, you need to get your brand out there to people. Then you can start working with big companies like Nike, Puma and Samsung and things like that. That just helps with the cashflow when it comes to the music things as well. Once it becomes business, you have to try and put the business hat on and navigate that side of things as well. It’s much of a balance to be able to keep it sustainable.”
Most Memorable Moment
“The most memorable moment would be before all the accolades, when I was just starting out – when I used to record at my friend’s basement at his house,” says Price.
“I felt those are the most memorable moments because those moments are the ones that brought everything together and enabled me to do what I do. That was kind of setting the foundation I guess, before a lot of things happened in my career.”
“Another one would be travelling to Europe and going around the world, being able to see the world, doing the thing that I love which is music.”
Distribution
“I did the album Lone Wolf under Universal,” says Price. “Now I’m looking to distribute through an independent distributor. I haven’t released any music this year and I’m still in talks with different distributors. There’s DRM from NZ, there’s Distrokid, there’s a lot of different distributors that you can go to and it’s very cheap and it’s very easy to set up for those artists that are looking to start their career and releasing music on Spotify and I-tunes and stuff like that.”
Where to now?
“To the top!” says Price.
2024 is when he plans to release “a lot of music.”
“I’ve been working with a lot of youth in the community,” says Price. “Build them up as well.”
“I wish everyone a safe summer and safe travels for those travelling. And I hope that everybody who’s going through something can find some kind of peace and happiness within themselves, and free Palestine.”
