Last fall I went to Australia and visited a juvenile jail with the Heaps Decent organization to encourage the kids to make music. You can read my full blog post about it here. We actually came up with a song that day, which I produced with them, and it’s just been released.

Here’s what the Heaps Decent blog had to say:

In September last year, A-Trak came to Australia with the Parklife tour. While he was here he joined Heaps Decent in Wagga Wagga, NSW where we took him to Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre for a day of music making with the young artists inside the centre.

Nina and Levins had spent the week beforehand running workshops at the centre, writing lyrics and practising flow and mic control. When A-Trak arrived at Shepherd’s Park, the school within Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre, everyone was ready to make something awesome.

‘Anywhere But Here’ is the product of our day spent recording with A-Trak. The four boys you can hear on the track wrote their own raps, as did MC Huz, a volunteer from Riverina Community College who joined us on the day. Some of the other boys played didgeridoo and made wild noises, which A-Trak sampled and used as the base for the beat.

While we are offering this for free and encourage you to spread the word by sharing the song, we please ask that you consider making a donation to Heaps Decent so that we can continue running great workshops like this one. Click here to make a donation, it’s really easy and we really appreciate any amount you can afford!

Grab the song below… and please make a donation!

Heaps Decent feat MC Huz & The Riverina Crew - Anywhere But Here (Produced by A-Trak) by Heaps Decent

As posted on the fab Fader blog.

On one of my days off during the Parklife tour in Australia, I flew to a small town called Wagga Wagga to do some workshops for Heaps Decent. Heaps Decent is an organism that Diplo launched with two of our mutual friends, Levins and Nina Las Vegas. They bring music resources to underprivileged, mostly indigenous kids Down Under and help foster creative environments for them. It’s a wonderful cause and I was very motivated to take part in it. The plan for the day was to go to the Riverina Juvenile Justice Centre with Levins and Nina, meet the kids and work on some songs with them. (more…)

Today I went to Wagga Wagga, Australia with my buddies Levins and Nina from Heaps Decent. We did a workshop for kids at the Riverina Juvenile Detention Center and I recorded 2 songs with them. I’ll write a LOT more about this when I’m less sleepy but I just HAD to post this video immediately. 2 of the kids did this amazing dance routine to “Pop Lock & Drop It”. It’s illegal to divulge the identities of inmates at a juvenile jail so they had to wear these masks to be filmed… but that just makes the choreography even more theatrical.