I talk to kiwi conspiracy rapper, "Sesh"

The rapper formerly known as "Derty Sesh" has dropped the derty. Now he focusses on doing his own research. Oh no.

Hi there.

Phew, how are you doing?

What is it, the middle of the week already? Seems like an eternity. So much has happened. It’s a blur.

I got so emo I tweeted an earnest tweet. I never tweet earnest tweets. Things must be bad!

But there are some rays of surreal, amusing sunshine.

Kellyanne Conway’s daughter, 15-year-old Claudia Conway, has been sinking her teeth into Trump on TikTok.

In a week of blundering, changing narratives on Trump’s condition from his medical team and Trump himself claiming COVID-19 is “far less lethal” than the flu, Claudia feels like a breath of fresh air.

So with another week of disastrous, confusing misinformation and disinformation from the White House well underway, I thought it could be amusing to turn to a New Zealand rapper who’s doing the same thing.

We’re not immune here in Aotearoa.

Not by a long-shot.

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I hadn’t heard much about New Zealand rapper Derty Sesh in about 10 years.

Back then, it was all drama for Derty — real name Nathan King:

“The fallout over a music video depicting the stalking and killing of women is taking a toll on New Zealand rapper Derty Sesh, his record label says.

Nathan King did not respond to messages left at his record label.

Move The Crowd [Derty’s label] boss Kirk Harding today said King was “exhausted from the whole ordeal”. The outcry over the video was “affecting his music and his writing”, Mr Harding said.”

New Zealand rapper Scribe waded into the fracas, telling the paper “I’d knock that guy out before he even came up my driveway, if it came down to that kind of thing.”

Derty Sesh kept making music — claiming Eminem was no longer an influence — but I hadn’t given him much thought until a new music video caught my eye a few week’s ago.

The song was called Vaccine.

More specifically, the thumbnail for the video showed the word “vaccine” being crossed out.

It was from an artist called “Sesh” — who I assumed was probably Derty.

The comments seemed largely receptive to the message.

I looked through Sesh’s other videos — with names like “Broke”, “Control” and “Distraction” I could see a pattern forming.

I clicked on another video called “Sheep”.

All these had come out in the last month.

Post-Covid.

Oh dear.

I don’t often speak to people who have embraced conspiracy theories, but I was curious about Sesh.

I figured if he was making music about conspiracy theories, then maybe he’d be open to telling me why.

I got in touch over twitter, then e-mail. Primarily, I wanted to know why he’d dropped the “Derty”. He seemed keen to talk.

“I dropped the Derty because that was the old Me, the young uneducated artist who was signed to MTC/Universal” Nathan King told me.

And then he agreed to talk some more. I’ve left his answers largely unedited, so they read as they did over email.

I wanted to know what made pivot into rapping about conspiracies, including references to COVID-19 being overplayed, “Pizzagate” and plenty of anti-vaxx material.

I guess I hoped by talking about these subjects in the light of day, he might begin to reassess his thoughts.

Maybe I was naive.

A lot of your recent output seems to have a focus on what could broadly be termed “conspiracy theories” — songs like Vaccine, Plandemic and Sheep. Why are you focussing on this at the moment?

From the time the whole world shut down and went into lockdown in the beginning of the year. I started focusing on these topics the more the year went on and got a lot more bizarre.

I also kept my ear to the street (Social Media these days) and was listening to what the public was saying.

Half of them were confused and the rest of the majority were doing as they were told, didn’t ask questions and started throwing out “Stay Home, Save Lives” slogans.

Obviously as the months progressed I was doing my own research which ultimately led me to creating these songs and my album God Bless America.

Let’s just back up and get some background. I don’t really know you, so this will be a good activity. Tell me a bit about yourself. Where are you based? What are you up to when you're not making music? Who do you admire? Do you have a cat?! 

I am a Maori New Zealand boy, I grew up in Auckland, now based in Brisbane, Australia.

I am back in New Zealand for the rest of the year now though, due to not being able to see my children since January.

When I'm not making music, I’m usually editing Music Videos or creating new content to keep myself busy, oh, and auditioning for TV shows, commercials etc..

I admire people like Dr. Dre, Martin Scorsese, Quincy Jones, Quinton Tarantino, Kanye West, Michael Jackson, Eminem, Michael Jordan.

I follow the greats and try to aim for greatness!

Aaaand No.

No, I do not have a cat lol I did, but he died when I was like 9 (RIP Sam)

Okay. When did you first start paying attention to ideas like Pizzagate?

I had heard about Pizzagate over the years, but never paid any real attention to it.

Until we were forced to stay home for months, and those words kept popping up on the timeline more and more which got me intrigued to look it up and I spent a lot of time researching it & was shocked, yet not surprised to find out what I had seen and read.

What’s your stance on Covid-19 and how it's been handled? Here in New Zealand our death rates are much lower than overseas. We’re lucky, in my mind. You seem less sure.

First off, I think the disease aspect of it is very much real, so let me get that out of the way first and foremost. 

But overall, I look at Covid-19 as a brand that has been sold to the world just like a Nike or McDonalds. 

Only in this case, it’s BAD for you. It’s sold in a morbid way. To make people in fear for their lives.

I believe if the media never mentioned this virus and never sold it to the world as they have & we still went on with our lives. No one would even notice or be affected by it, except of course people that would have caught it, just like the flu.

If you now in October look at all the mistakes the CDC and WHO have made in terms of rule changes, death rates, false death certificates etc, it is obvious & common sense that this virus should have never shut the entire world down.

What has the response been like? I see a lot of people agreeing with you in the comments on YouTube and your Facebook.

The majority of responses have actually been positive and they agree with the messages I have put out there.

You get a few people here & there disagreeing. But that comes with anything in life.

No ones always going to agree with what you have to say and I understand that.. It’s human nature.

Where do you do a lot of your research into this stuff? Are you on Reddit? YouTube? Where are your sources when you are looking into the topics you're rapping about?

My research comes from everything.

I know when you listen to the music from face value with no context of who I am, it may come across as some nut job who watches YouTube all day and then writes these songs.

But I’m an open minded person.. I’ve watched CNN, FOX, TV NEWs (pretty much all Mainstream Media), Documentaries, and I also watch a lot of Podcasts from people who agree that there’s something off about this, to people who are absurd that anyone would even think the government would create this problem on purpose.

I try to gather everybody’s perspective & then make my own judgment from there.

Never from a bias objective.

Lyrically, this content seems a new direction for you. Is there a particular reasoning behind his? Is this a new you?

SESH is independent, and as a brand name is a lot more simplified and mature, plus that’s what everyone calls me & has called me from the beginning anyway.

So it works out great.

In terms of music direction, I have been making music under the name SESH for a while, but I think this album God Bless America I recently put out, has made the people look at me a lot more different, in terms of “oh, he does have substance? he does have something to say? It’s not just Money, B*tches, Bling bling.” 

Will I continue down this path? Well, let’s see how the world shapes itself going into 2021.

God Bless America was literally something I needed to get off my chest & out to the world. But in a tongue & cheek manner where during parts of the album, it does lean more to the “Tin Foil Hat” wearing character. But there are a lot of truths said amongst it all. 

What’s next for you, Sesh? What’s your plan?

I’ll still be making music, I’m dabbling in other avenues as a creator as well, a lot of comedy styled content.

And I also shoot and direct Music Videos for a lot of huge independent artists which will hopefully lead me into Film making in the near future.

One more thing. I am pretty sceptical of this stuff. I don’t think there is a global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. I don’t think Bill Gates is trying to de populate the planet. I think vaccinations are a good thing. Have I got this all wrong? 

Whether you have it wrong or not, I think this world is a lot more cruel and evil than what we are sold to believe, purely based off the fact that we as humans are all born with that little piece inside of us, even if we don’t want to admit it, but most of us do not indulge in that realm and we rely more on the friendly, kind, positive and loving side. 

I think there are too many “coincidences” in this world not to see the bigger picture. '

It’s not about “conspiracy theories” or not, it’s about common sense.

But I understand that for most people, their brains can not comprehend a lot of that information or just blindly choose to ignore it and live in a world where everything they’re told on television is exactly what it is.

It’s called being conditioned. 

Thanks, Sesh.

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New Zealand is so small, everything is linked.

I just remembered that Nathan King is the son of Mike King, a well known mental health advocate.

As for Nathan, I’m not sure what to make of his career.

What I do know is that he referenced “doing his own research” a lot in our interview. I feel sad for him.

It seems to be a year of hearing that refrain — and I don’t think it’s going to stop anytime soon.

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Before I leave, I wanted to end on a high — with the story of a group of foul-mouthed African Grey parrots.

A few weeks back, they’d been removed from public earshot at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park, due to their excessive swearing.

This week, the parrots are back.

And I think we have the best three paragraphs I’ve read all year:

A major problem of the parrots’ language, he said, was that it was hilarious.

“When a parrot swears, it’s very difficult for other humans not to laugh,” he said. “And when we laugh, that’s a positive response. And therefore, what they do is they learn both the laugh and the swear word.”

“It’s not so bad with one on its own,” he continued. “But then, if you get five together, once one swears and another one laughs, and another one laughs, before you know it, it sounds like a group of teenagers or an old working men’s club.”

What a maniacal closed system of laughter and swearing. The mind boggles.

Stay safe out there, and try not to listen to too much conspiratorial rapping.

David.