Sidney Phillips: The Mayor Of Morayfield

Since the release of her seismic 2023 mixtape, ‘I’m So Tired Of Being Staunchly’, the Brisbane-born, Melbourne-based rapper’s re-shaped the Australian rap landscape, showing an alternative path to the hypermasculinity that has been the modus operandi of the scene for decades to date. If you’ve ever watched a TikTok with Subway Surfers in the top corner, that’s how listening to Sidney’s music feels sometimes. It’s rap for the Internet age, feeling somewhat designed to make the brain release as much dopamine as possible.

When Mixmag ANZ sits down to chat with the firebrand rapper, she’s a couple of weeks out from releasing her new album, the provocatively-named ‘C**T’. A departure from her previous projects, the 11-track album is decidedly leaner than anything she’s released before, as well as more melancholic. With frequent collaborator Rapallo (aka Bootleg Baby) at the helm as producer, ‘C**T’ captures an artist who’s comfortable in her own skin, but isn’t afraid of expanding.

The shorter run time and elevated polish make the project more palatable to the Australian music industry (and beyond) than ever before. Following the drop, she’ll make her debut at the Australian music industry conference Bigsound in September, further illustrating how she’s bridging the gap between Internet rap and mainstream Australian music. No longer doing it all herself, she’s built a team around her, recently signing to indie label Tabloid Recordings. Having a team has allowed her to push further than ever, which she acknowledges. “Many hands make for light work, or teamwork makes the dream work. That's it. That's the thing I'm trying to do. Behind every really successful artist, 99% of the time, there's a good team.”

That’s not to say she’s lost her edge. For the first time in her career, the Yung Lean/Bladee comparisons feel genuinely apt, because the soundscapes spread across the record are often dark and dreary, as opposed to the hyperactive Pluggnb beats heard on projects like Staunchly and Penance. Speaking about making C**T, Sidney says she changed things up. “With my last two records before this one, the songs were made more loose and fast and quick. That's how I like to record when I record by myself. I'll get like a burst of energy or inspiration, sit down, punch out a song.

“These ones, we were sitting down sometimes over multiple sessions. I’d do a verse one time and then do another bit the next time, and I was really sitting down there listening to Rapallo make the beat, sitting there for hours writing these songs.”

Across the 11 tracks, Sidney takes on more traditional topics, still with her own twist. The lovelorn ‘Levitate’ is arguably the highlight of her discography so far, while on closer ‘Packed Up’, she flips the middle finger to those who ever doubted her. Undoubtedly cleaner-sounding than previous releases, songs like ‘In My Room’ have a level of sheen seldom seen in Sidney’s discography to date. There are only a couple of features on the project, too: Bootleg Baby on ‘Hahaha’, and British UDG MC phreshboyswag on ‘Bikie’. This collab is the latest in Sidney’s connections to overseas rap scenes, following on from 2024 track ‘Make It Back’, which features Ricky Chix, a member of much-beloved U.S-based rap group Shed Theory.

The shift in energy from her previous projects is intentional. Never one to rest on her past work, Sidney tells me that a new project always offers her a chance to evolve. “Every time I do a new project, I like to say, ‘Alright, like what's gonna set this project apart from the last one?’I never want to make the same record twice, or feel like, ‘Here's more of the same shit.’ Some of my favourite artists always like to reinvent themselves.”

Those past projects still leave their mark on C**T. Eagle-eared listeners will notice multiple references to 2023 single ‘Sick Kunt’, which has remained a crowd favourite. When I point this out to Sidney, she smiles. “I like tongue-in-cheek referencing myself. I like it when other rappers reference their own songs or albums. There's a Drake line off on Iceman where he was like, ‘I am so far gone that a thank me later is useless now.’ And I was like, oh, I like the intertextuality. I’ve always liked intertextuality. Actually, I guess it's self-textuality, referencing your own shit.”

One of my most burning questions is asking exactly how Sidney arrived at the title C**T. While it’s a motif that’s appeared in her work before, this album presents as her most palatable to date — yet the title causes a moment to pause. Explaining the title, Sidney says, “I'll blame it on Rapallo. It was his idea. When he was pitching it to me, he was like, "C**T’s really cool, and it's a cool name because there's layers to it. It's Aussie because C**T is Aussie, right and then it's also sort of LGBT because it's cunty and stuff like that, and it's also provocative because it's so punky.” Much like Sidney, there’s more to the title than meets the eye.

One of her most enduring influences is creating a lane for LGBTQ+ rappers. Self-describing as a trans adlay, she’s helped to shift the narrative around what it means to be an Australian rapper, one song at a time. On her 2023 track ‘Baccy Cones In A Holden’, she raps, “I'm transgender, but I can fight”, which has become a kind of shorthand for her artistry at large. I put it to her that she’s been at the forefront of changing Australian rap, and shifting who’s visible as a rapper in this country.

Always overly modest, she says, “not to toot my own horn, but I feel like there's more people doing my sort of thing these days, and that's dope. Not necessarily the Sidney Phillips thing, but doing an Aussie accent with American underground rap beats.” Her influence has helped influence the development of a sub-genre known as Aus UDG. Shorthand for Australian underground rap, the largely Internet-based genre draws heavily from America and the UK, with overseas artists like Fakemink, Xaviersobased, and Nettspend making distorted 808s and thumping basslines staples of their music.

The ways people discuss music have shifted, too. Sidney’s part of a thriving Internet-based crew called stealthyn00b, who have a Discord server where fans can chat about music and interact with the group’s members. Underground rap culture’s indebted to these platforms, and the Internet’s culture of collaboration has helped not just Sidney thrive, but her fellow stealthyn00b members. Consisting of lil ket, ggabriel, jx333, luvlxckdown, Skratcha, twinlite, and Sidney, the crew has never all lived in the same place at once, and yet, they’ve been able to collaborate via the Internet. The times, they are a-changing.

Reflecting on the changing times, she points to the successes of artists like 4orttune, Cult Shotta, and Jonny Chopps as Australian rappers who have eschewed traditional Australian boom bap sounds but still carved out lanes for themselves. This year alone, 4orttune and Cult Shotta teamed up with rappers Jords and lil golo, videographer mp4oscar, and producer DON! to form the collective Lonely Souljaz. Having already seen success individually, their powers combined helped elevate them to new heights, with the group selling out venues like Bourke Street Courtyard and Manning Bar in support of their self-titled mixtape. A knock on Australian rap has often been that online hype doesn’t translate into ticket sales, but 2026 has shifted that narrative.

Jonny, meanwhile, has been co-signed by the likes of Ninajirachi and The Kid LAROI, with LAROI bringing him out at a Brooklyn show to perform his track ‘Cognac For Christmas’. The momentum hasn’t stopped there; on his recent mixtape Catalyst, Jonny worked with producers that have collaborated with the likes of Playboi Carti and Yeat. Australian rap once felt like a separate world, a bubble set apart from the rest of the global hip-hop community. Over the last few years, the gap’s never felt smaller.

But does she feel pressure to change things up, now that people are taking inspiration from her? She gives me a resounding answer. “I don't feel pressured to change stuff up because I think of it as other people are doing their take on stuff and I'm doing my take on stuff,” she says. “While we make similar music, everybody's doing their own thing.

As a leader of this new wave of Australian rap, Sidney’s become a figurehead of sorts. It’s a responsibility she’s well aware of. “I can be like, ‘I'm not a role model’, but at the end of the day, when you're in the spotlight, when you have people that look up to you, you are inevitably a bit of a role model. So I do have to think about what I'm doing, what I'm promoting, you know.

It's definitely changed the way I write, the way I think about stuff ever since Staunchly came out. I still deal with people, because I have lyrics about drugs and that, and some people will take it the wrong way and think I'm like, “yeah drugs” or I'm like a drug rapper promoting drugs and that. They'll hit me up about drugs, and that I gotta be like, ‘nah, guys, I don't support that’.”

She’s also aware that she can’t change how people interpret her music. All she can do is document her life experiences. “I don't think I'm a model for living a perfect life,” she explains. “I definitely make a lot of mistakes. That's why the whole being-a-role-model thing is hectic. Being an artist, I just want to write down my experiences and chuck it out and that, but words have power. At the same time, I can't fault myself if someone's gonna read something, listen to something, watch something, and get the wrong idea about it. It's like the whole thing about violent video games causing violence, right? It's not really their fault.”

With success comes live shows; 2026’s seen Sidney tour a lot. From performing as part of the Bikie Tour alongside Skem, Choc and Adnam, and Fokelore and Jani Cruz, to supporting 2charmm, it’s become a constant in her life. It’s something she doesn’t take for granted, either. “After tours, I like to spend a week at home and not do anything because, like doing all that flying and waiting around, it's a lot of missions. It's not like I'm breaking my back; it’s not hard yakka. It's an awesome job, and it's my dream job, so I can't complain, right? But yeah, it's tiring, but it's awesome. It's the best thing in the world.”

The time on the road hasn’t slowed down her prolificity though. Over the last few years, Sidney’s released a plethora of projects, from Staunchly, 2024’s Penance, 2025’s Northside Dream and more. It’s hard to imagine a month going by without a new Sidney Phillips song coming out, whether it’s on streaming or SoundCloud. She tells me, “Sometimes I’m like, ‘I’ve already been in the game for three years’, but then I’m like, ‘what’s three years?,’ right?

Her attitude is certainly one that exists within this current generation of Australian rappers, who are less afraid of revealing themselves before they’re fully evolved. Go back a few years, and projects were a rarer thing, seemingly restricted to those with funding or backing from the industry proper.

These days, though, rappers at every level seem more comfortable releasing a project, even if it paints them as a work in progress, rather than a finished item. In doing so, the scene’s become more in step with overseas counterparts. While we might have largely missed the DatPiff era, SoundCloud has become the de facto home for Australian rap — and it’s thriving.

In the lead-up to the Bikie Tour, Sidney’s nickname as the Mayor of Morayfield took on a new dimension. In a promo clip for the tour, Sidney pitched herself as the new Prime Minister of Australian rap, pushing a vision of a world where Australian rappers lift their game, and bad rappers get banished.

While all tongue-in-cheek, it’s hard to argue that Australian rap, at least in parts, is being remoulded in Sidney’s image. Listening to C**T, it’s clear that the shift in Australian rap that has been crystallising over the last few years has solidified. Genres like gutter rap and drill, long beloved by Australian rap fans, are known for being gritty, dark, and fuelled by testosterone. Sidney’s aesthetic and music have both drawn from gutter rap: on her 2024 single ‘Crucify Me In My Tommy And Lacoste’, she celebrates a couple of brands long associated with eshays, but C**T feels like a step away from those influences, towards something that feels more broadly Sidney.

When I ask her where she sees things going from here, her message is one of hope. It’s positively Parliamentarian. “I hope up and up. Global music is getting accepted by American audiences and whatnot because of the internet. Globalism is on the rise and the world is more connected these days. Look at Esdeekid, phreshboyswag, artists like that are getting big in countries like America.

“In the old days that would never have happened. And think of genres like K-pop or something, right? Western audiences don't even understand the language, but that's one of the biggest things in American music right now. I think the future for Australian music, Australian rap, is bright, brighter than it's ever been. It's looking up.” From the mouth of the Mayor to our ears.

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Ben Madden is a Naarm/Melbourne-based writer with bylines in Sydney Morning Herald, Esquire, Guardian Australia, VICE, Junkee, NME, with a focus almost entirely dedicated to local music. Find him on Instagram & his website.