Zion Garcia is the new up-and-comer that everyone is talking about. Hailing from Western Sydney, the rapper, writer, producer and film director has dominated the underground scene for the better part of a year, but, as usual, the journey started long before his success began to show.
“I released Plastic Woman when I was about 16. It was just random ideas. Cause back then, the scene that I knew of in Sydney was a lot different, and I didn’t really have many mutuals in the scene, so I was just kind of creating alone after school and then just releasing it.”
Departing from his first foray into the scene, Garcia’s discography now boasts a string of highly acclaimed singles and pairs nicely with a blossoming fanbase who are all dedicated to his alternative take on hip-hop. His last release PRIM-PROPER FREESTYLE has quickly risen through the charts and has become a favourite, but his new single, MUNCH (out June 7th), sees Garcia try out something new.
“I had two ideas in the same session that, in my head, did not go together. I showed them to my bro Solly – he’s my trusted pair of ears. I always show him shit, and I showed him all this other music that day in 2020, and he was just like, ‘Oh, it’s cool, man,’ but I was getting so frustrated cause nothing seemed to be translating.
“Anyway, before he leaves, I’m playing him what would become Munch, and he goes fucking bananas.” He recalls, smiling at the memory.
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After listening to the song, it’s pretty easy to understand why MUNCH stood out so much to Western Sydney musician SOLLYY. With seemingly perfect lyrical choices that highlight Garcia’s unique timbre and flow, MUNCH ups the energy and draws sonically on baile funk techniques. It’s clear that MUNCH will be making dancefloors shake all over the country, with the rapper noting that he’s played the song at a couple of shows already, and it’s quickly become a crowd favourite.
On top of the single, Garcia is gearing up for a much larger release at the end of the year, ready to hand over, in his eyes, his first full body of work.
“The whiteboard over there,” Zion refers to the back of his room, “is the confirmed track list, but I’ve made an absurd amount of songs for this one project. I’ve narrowed it from, like, 170 and then to 70, then to 30 and now six for the moment.”
It’s common practice for artists to write hundreds of songs before narrowing down to a mere six or seven before release day, but what’s always perplexing is how they separate the good from the bad or even the good from the great. For Garcia, he sticks to his gut and chases a feeling above all.
“It’s funny cause it’s probably not even the most efficient way to work because feelings change every day, but it’s just trusting that you know the ones that feel right, even outside of the actual feelings of the music.
“I’ve technically only put out like seven or eight songs properly. But every time before I released those songs, I had that feeling, and I only get that feeling a few times. So I trust that.”
Following the feeling has served Garcia well so far, with his fan base growing with each release and key industry players starting to take notice, but the idea of ‘following a feeling’ is easier said than done. It’s a process that can take years to fine-tune a track ready for release.
“I made my last track, Prim-Proper, in that 20 minutes. With every song outside of Prim-Proper, it’s like the fifth or seventh version I put out.
“I watch a lot of big musicians I look up to, and they always write a song one year and then come back to it five years later and re-record it.”
“I wish I was the type of person that could write off a momentary feeling, but every time I open my fucking computer, I have no idea what I’m gonna make.
“Afterwards, when I’m listening to it, I’m like, ‘Oh shit, so that’s what I was thinking about or feeling.’ It comes through afterwards, and then I go, ‘I should probably do this, or I should probably talk to this person.” He laughs.
Alongside music, Garcia is a major film fan, with the rapper noting that his film passion is “just as important” as his passion for music.
“I feel like music is so self-indulgent to me. Film is a lot more of like an external process of like, ‘I would love to get these people together to make something.
“Currently, I direct a lot of my friends’ music videos, which is a lot of fun because I get to approach it as a director, but it’s quite daunting to approach my own music videos because I’m a writer-director almost. It’s just like a different thing. It’s a lot more daunting, but this year is the year to get it.”
The friends that Garcia often refers to are fellow musicians in the greater Sydney area, but a special few belong to the very unique artist collective, Full Circle, that Garcia is a part of. Other players in the supergroup include SOLLYY, FRIDAY*, Dylan Atlantis, Nick Ward and Breakfast Road, which I’m sure most Aus music fans would agree, makes for a group bursting with talent, passion and creativity.
“When I was 16, I was just feeling like – well, I didn’t feel alone, but I was technically just doing it on my own. If you told me back then that right now, at 21, I would have all these friends to talk about music with and just spitball about shit you’re listening to and making, like that was always a dream.”
Despite a lot of curiosity following the group, Full Circle aren’t really a band or, as Garcia puts it, “We’re not trying to be like odd future or Rockhampton.” Rather, they’re just a group of friends that can lean on one another through the industry’s lows and highs. At the supergroup’s heart is the idea of fostering community, not competition.
“Believe it or not, we actually don’t collaborate that often on each other’s stuff. Cause I feel like we’re more of a support network for each other, but we still are very separate.
“Sometimes we’ll collab, and then often that’ll come out, and then people think that we only work with each other and, to be honest with you, we barely work together. It’s important to us to keep our shit, our shit. At the end of the day, we’re just best friends making really different shit.”
All of the members of Full Circle are based either in or around Western Sydney, which in recent years has become a gold mine of talent, passion and phenomenal music that breaks barriers and guides trends. Curious about what was in the water, I ask Garcia if he knows where this mass overflow of talent has come from.
“I mean, my brother Solomon Solly [SOLLYY] would kill this question ’cause I feel like he has a better way of answering it, but, I think structure-wise in Sydney, I guess there just hasn’t really been a lot of incentive in place to help people do stuff and make stuff.
“There just hasn’t been a lot of support in the past for artists in Western Sydney. So I think out of that, everyone just kind of pushed against it, and unintentionally, sparked such a passion ‘cause if you really loved it, you would just do it. Then everyone just kept pushing against this thing they didn’t even know was kind of holding them down.
“Never really had a lot of artists to look up to and stuff, and, and I, I felt like there wasn’t a lot of support, but then it was just like a moment of just having to trust your own tastes and trust your own passion for what you want to do.
“So then to see everyone kind of release their stuff, I think people see it as really special and really refreshing. I’m just glad that people are really seeing what Western Sydney has to offer cause it’s been a long time coming.”
MUNCH comes out this Wednesday, June 7. You can follow Zion Garcia here to get updates on his next few releases.