Saving the best for last

Our best known rapper announces his retirement with a reflective farewell set.

- SCRIBE IS DEAD By Scribe

The strings are ominous, the waves lapping at the shore a portent. It opens less like a new album from Aotearoa's most famous – and most troubled – rapper and more like a big-budget true crime documentary. Soon, there's a spoken word introduction and a clip from a 2017 TV news report. Then the confessions begin, the kind that sound like our subject is staring down the lens of a Netflix camera. “My broken heart’s still bleeding,” spits Malo Luafutu, aka Scribe. “I spent all night with my demons.”

Drowning is the first song on Scribe is Dead, Luafutu’s third and purportedly final album, and it sets the tone for what’s to come. If you’re here for another dose of the fiery chart-toppers that saw Luafutu help usher in a new era for Aotearoa hip-hop in the mid-2000s, you’ll see only occasional glimpses. Luafutu’s not in the mood to repeat the verbal dexterity of