Ranui to the World

Nā Ranuimarz (Te Māramatanga Nathan) | Ngāpuhi, 135 

Georgia Tārani Paige Gifford | Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa, Ngāi Tūhoe

Content Warning: Suicide

Over the past few weeks, I have had the honour of talking with Ranuimarz, an up and coming rap artist from the 135, Ranui, West Auckland. We have worked together in this piece to collaborate Ranuimarz’ experiences and hope that his, and his brothers' stories can be received as a message of hope and resilience in times of extreme hardship.

His story, structured by lyrics from his newest single “A New Beginning” encapsulates the challenging reality of what it is like to be a Polynesian male fighting the system.  

“I’m signing the deal
I’ll rip up treaty
I’m here to heal
My people, we broke.”

My whole family are musicians. All of my brothers played guitar, even my old man! He’s the one that taught us. That’s where my passion started. It's crackup that I’m a hip hop rapper cos I never fell in love with hip hop at the start. I used to listen to rock music. 

The way hip hop came around was when I went to school and my English teacher got me into poetry. She gave me this book by Tupac. I ain’t ever heard no Tupac song but “Changes'' back then. I picked up this book and read his first poem and it immediately touched me so heavily and very deeply. It spoke to me directly. I read that and was like “fuck, this is my life right now.” I saw myself as that rose that was growing out of concrete. I took the book home, read the whole thing, and wrote my own poems. 

One day I came home, bumping Tupac hard and falling further in love with his music. I had a brick phone and I threw it on the bed and it bounced off the guitar and sent waves through the amp. I heard the music and I started downloading instrumentals and reading my poems out over it. I started rapping. 

From then, it became the mental outlet for all of my struggle. We were so poor. My dad had no job and he had to do 300 hours community service to fulfill his sentence. We’d go to school with $5 for the whole week. We wouldn’t have power Friday to Monday. It went on like that for years. But I’m thankful because all of that stuff gave me a story to tell. I just wrote everything down because my stomach was rumbling and I had no other way to process things apart from writing. 

“Children and women they burning in fires
Two of my brothers like shoes on a wire
Send me a message and this the reply
Too many times we missed all the signs”

My older brother passed away in 2004 a month after his 20th birthday. Fuck he was cool. I remember the last time I saw him. We were chilling inside my house playing GTA3 and he walked in. He was going through a lot of mental issues, so he was at a home during that time. The doctor brought him around for a visit and he was laying down asking questions like, “what's this game?” because he’d been in the home so long he hadn’t even heard of it. That day, he was chasing us around the house and wrestling us and stuff, it was so fun. And then he had to go. I didn’t understand what was happening, I just knew he had to go. He got to the end of the hallway, looked back, smiled, and waved at us. That’s my last image of my older brother. Smiling and waving and saying goodbye. He walked out the door and never came back. 

The next day, the cops came to our house and I answered the door but my mum came out and told me to go to my room. Three minutes later I heard this scream and I just knew. It was one of those screams. A mother’s scream. It’s like a nightmare, hearing something like that. I still hear it today. It hurt us so much because he was the first suicide in our extended family. I remember going to that same hallway door and I opened it and saw my parents hugging each other. I was wondering “what the hell could have gone so wrong?”

I never cried at his funeral. I didn’t understand death. I didn’t even know people could die at 20. I was too young to comprehend it, but when I turned 12 I really started to think about those moments because I knew I had them suppressed somewhere. And I started feeling really sad about it. That’s also when my parents broke up. Through all of that shit, I started to think about my older brother and I just cried about it. Really hard. His name was Simon. After that, I feared every single day of losing another sibling.

“Drinkin this codys
That be the poison
Why do I feel like a disappointment
Hearin these voices
All of these noises
All in my head
They comin for me”

Cut forward to 2018, my other brother passed away. Dartagnan. He was named after that third musketeer. He was the man and he was honestly just a ruthless cunt. The only one that swore back at my dad! He was just one of those characters that you don’t fuck around with. He was on some kill mentality lol. He was hard, but he loved real hard too. He loved all of us. Back in 2018, about a week before he died, he told us about depression. He was suffering from psychosis. He told us he had voices in his head that were telling him to end it. I took notice of it and we took him to the doctors. We thought it would help but it didn’t.

During his last week he went to see my mum and my little sister for a day. I was always worried about him, but that day I got back from work and he wasn’t in my room so I knew something wasn’t right. Something felt off. I was confused, but little did I know he was saying goodbye. He had gone to see them for the last time. The day after that I remember waking up and going to his bedroom door. He went to course in Kelston so I always offered him a ride. I had my hand on the door handle but something in me told me not to bother him. So I just went to work. 

“Māori you broken
Māori you homeless
Islanders lost
The system is hopeless.”

Fuck it was a hard moment. I instantly thought, again? Again? A second brother? It’s an ongoing problem. I’m still traumatised from my little brother's death. I can act happy as, but deep inside, I’m still so, so hurt. You just never know what people are going through. It was very hard for our family. My brothers were crying and I was so fucking down. I was pretty much at my lowest point of my life. Something like that makes you hit rock bottom. But the good thing about rock bottom is that you can only go up from there.

After he died, I started to get noticed for my raps. Dartagnan’s passing brought attention to my music all around Auckland. Ever since then, I’ve only grown. In a way, I feel like he gifted me with that recognition. His passing brought me a lot of fearless energy. It pushed me. Everytime I made something I’d always show it to him. But after he died, everytime I wrote something, I’d go to my other brothers with it. So in a way, I’ve still got heaps of brothers left and I know I can get through it with them. 

“Got me thinkin of takin my life
If I do it I’m payin the price
So I tell my children
And I tell my People
That we all gon get a piece of this pie”

Even though I contemplated suicide many times, I had something in me that kept pushing me. After losing my brothers, something pushed me to believe I could change my future. I just had to figure out how. I asked myself, what do I have to do? What do I know how to do? Write. And all I did was keep writing and never gave up. I held on to that passion ruthlessly for years, and I will continue to do so. If you can survive through two brothers passing away, you can get through fucking anything. That’s my mentality now. I’ve been through a lot. A lot of people wouldn’t have survived that, but I overcame it. 

I’m not even at my prime yet. I haven’t even started yet. People are already buzzing but there’s still so much in me that needs to be let out. Years and years of trauma. At this stage, I’d have to be shot for me to stop telling my story. Music was the ultimate cure to depression for me. It’s been one of the greatest influences that I’ve found, and if I hadn’t found it, I would’ve been that third brother.

I’m going to be a father and I will love my son. Just love him. I will show him the struggle, how hard it can get, and how well he will have it compared to some people. A lot of kids these days are big headed because they go off what they see on the media, like sponges. They’re like “I wanna be like them. I wanna be rich. I wanna have a big house,” but they don’t know the backstory. 

I will make sure my kid knows how those big houses get there, who put them there, and who’s land they’re built on. Every child should learn about the system and I know my child is destined to be a future political activist. But for me to break this cycle of trauma, I mainly just need to love him and be present in his life. I’ll teach him right from wrong and whenever he’s down, I’ll be there. And I’ll pay my power bill. 

“U know they worried to see a brown brother
come up from nothing
White people they fear
Your color.
Your skin.
Your culture.
I fight for my rights till it’s over.”