This is Jackie Onassis, a duo consisting of Kai Tan and Raph Zarkov. The guys met in high school and are both currently in our last year of uni. Zarkov handles the majority of the beats and Kai the majority of the rhyming and singing, although both contribute to all aspects.

Jackie Onassis have been listening to Hip-hop since early high school, but their tastes are varied. Kai was once part of a rock group called Origami Kitten. Zarkov has also featured on dubstep and glitch hop compilations and is part of the Tape Death beatmaker collective (www.tapedeath.com). Zarkov has released remix work for Spit Syndicate, Horrorshow, Lotek, Pagen Elypsis, and many more.
Their sound is influenced by the wide range of music they listen to although it’s undeniably Australian Hip-hop. They use a lot of synthesizer in their production and love the sound of the classic drum machines like the 808, the 202, Linn 9000 and other classics. This particular tune, The New Dumb, was intentionality selected as their first release as it’s a kind of journey through genre. It starts with simply a classic hip-hop break and 808 with distorted dirty vocals as a kind of ode to the raw lo-fi 90s hip-hop that the guys grew up on.
It then flips up into some more Southern 808 stuff before they add a kind of dubstep bassline in at the end. The tune’s about having fun and getting messy and that was the process they took when making it, throwing in everything they could and just going large. Jackie Onassis are currently working on a debut album that will be out around October.