rova | Original
13 episodes listed below
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Phil Bell AKA DJ Sir-Vere captures the stories from the people he’s lived his life with - the NZ Hip Hop community. He’s left no stone unturned to get the most important stories from the people who lived them. This podcast is a deep dive into Aotearoa Hip Hop History, it's a timeline from its inception, Aotearoa Hip Hop: The Music, The People, The History. Made with support from NZ on Air.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
A scene history built from firsthand memories of the records, relationships, and working methods that shaped Aotearoa hip-hop.
Aotearoa Hip Hop: The Music, The People, The History builds a living chronology from firsthand recollections, with Phil Bell AKA DJ Sir-Vere guiding artists and producers through the moments when careers, records, and local infrastructure began to take shape.
At the record-store counter, you find out why the B-side was doing the selling.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A brisk account of how Dawn Raid-era connections turned a demo into a scene marker.
The episode moves through Aotearoa hip hop at full tilt, tracing how label moves, studio runs, and a single demo can set larger things in motion. Dawn Raid, Four Corners, Smash Proof, and the wider scene are folded together into a clear account of how momentum gets built.
A clear, inside-the-room look at Aotearoa hip-hop's breakout years.
The episode maps early-2000s Aotearoa hip-hop as a scene still shifting under its own momentum, with DJ Severe moving from Beat Merchants and the Severe Punishment bootlegs into the Major Flavours mix CDs and then the Hip Hop Summit.
An insider-led chapter on Dawn Raid, Swing, and the long studio grind behind Time Is Not Much.
This episode follows Dawn Raid's reboot after the IRD skirmish and the voluntary liquidation of its subsidiary businesses, then turns to the call that set Swing on a wider path.
A practical clue opens into a wider, looser portrait of the scene.
This episode keeps Scribe's rise at the center, following how Stand Up and Not Many pushed him toward the commercial break he had long earned.
A brisk, scene-level history of Mareko and the underground that shaped him.
The episode centers Mareko's rise and places it inside the wider Aotearoa hip-hop underground with unusual clarity. It moves from an early Run DMC spark and Public Enemy influence into the battle MC energy that shaped his first steps, then widens to the South Island and Auckland…
Beat Merchants is the spark.
This episode traces the rise of the Decepticons, a seminal South Auckland hip-hop crew, and their label Dawn Raid Entertainment in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Dawn Raid is barely steady again.
Not Many was selling in the sideways way hits do before everyone catches up.
Back to 2003.
Alan Jansen says Paulie Fuemana and he wrote eight songs the night before the January 1995 Big Day Out tour, and "How Bizarre" was one of them.
Episode Five profiles Phil Fuimana, founder of Urban Pacifica Records, who left school at 16 to work at Fisher & Paykel and used music to lift his family out of poverty.
DLT describes leaving Upper Hutt Posse in early 1992 after a phone call about his time with non-Māori people, then forming Native Bass with Kuru Apirana and Fred Harrison, who became Damn Native with rapper Hyper D.