Thick Skin, Big Heart: Baker Boy’s Next Chapter
Fresh from a mesmerising performance at the AFL Grand Final, Baker Boy has dropped his highly anticipated sophomore album, DJANDJAY. Chatting with The Note, Danzal opens up about the beginning of his music career, the making of DJANDJAY and the impact the result of the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum had on him.
Words Emily Wilson // Image Sulaiman Enayatzada
When Baker Boy first burst onto the scene in 2017, it was a watershed moment. He was hailed as the artist the country needed, the artist the country had been waiting for. And ever since, the Yolngu musician’s career has been climbing to dizzying heights, garnering him awards and glory, the title of Young Australian of the Year in 2019, performance slots at the AFL Grand Final and at the Commonwealth Games… The list goes on.
He walks me through it, bright-eyed. “I went to a performing arts school and studied dance for a whole year, and then moved to Melbourne to do some dancing. And the music came a bit later. Back in 2017, I worked in a remote community where I was teaching young kids to write and make music in their own language, which kind of inspired me.”
He decided to record some music, but insists that he was “mostly just joking around. And then all of a sudden, we recorded it, went back to my community where I grew up, did some dance workshops, filmed a video clip for the track that we recorded, and then we put it on YouTube.” The video was solely for his family and community to watch - to make them smile. “But from there, it just blew up. It was just going crazy. I was like, ‘Oh my god, what have I done? I’m a dancer, not a rapper!’ And then I was having my first interviews - I wasn’t media-trained, I was freaking out – English was still not my strong suit. I found a passion for making music, and it just kept snowballing. It’s still surreal, just insane. And now I’m jumping on the AFL Grand Final with Snoop Dog!” His smile is dazzling, and his good cheer is infectious.
It has undoubtedly been a giddy whirlwind of success. His debut album Gela - released in 2021 and featuring first-rate turns from the likes of G Flip, Jess B, Uncle Jack Charles and more - was universally revered, the first, intoxicating taste of a fervent new voice. It swept the 2022 ARIA Music Awards, scooping up the title of Album of the Year. In Rolling Stone Australia’s recent list of the best Australian albums of the 2020s so far, it sits high at Number 30.
It is an undeniably tough act to follow.
Baker agrees. “Like, how am I going to beat an album that’s won five ARIAs? Not beat it, but just be more evolved sonically. It was very hard to navigate. I guess with this new album it’s more about being vulnerable, but also taking back that power and having authority and being resilient.”
He is gearing up for the imminent release of his sophomore album, DJANDJAY. It is a defiant, arresting work, a colourful and complex tapestry of experience and belief.
“It was definitely different from Gela. With this one, it’s more thought-out, more of a deep-dive into how to tell a story, which I’ve never done properly.” When it came to DJANDJAY, the writing and recording process was far more cohesive. “With Gela, it was more kind of in and out, a lot of touring and trying to find time to book in sessions to work on the album, and then still touring around that.” There wasn’t much time to focus. DJANDJAY, on the other hand, gave him clarity, gave him room to breathe and to be inspired.
“Djandjay is my late grandmother’s name, but also in Yolŋu culture, it means the spiritual being that takes the form of an octopus and with its tentacles guides the soul into the afterlife,” he explains. “And I thought that it was the perfect name for the album. My late grandmother was such a prominent figure, always exciting, always got people dancing, [and] had no shame. She spoke her mind, which I definitely inherited from her. She was also the one who introduced hip hop to my dad and my uncle and the whole community.” Her indomitable presence seeps through the album, aching through every roaring and tender sound.
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The centrepiece of DJANDJAY is the track ‘Thick Skin,’ a song inspired by the result of the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, which features an iconic choir of singers like Thelma Plum, Emma Donovan, Kee’ahn and Jada Weazel. It is at once haunting and soulful, muscular and resistant. On the dynamic track, Baker’s unwavering voice offers hope and empowerment amidst ignorance and injustice: “Not a silent soldier, my pigment is my pride / I'm like red dirt, gold chains, blak knight, thick skin.”
When the referendum was rejected nationally and by a majority in every state, he was weighed down by an all-consuming grief. “I didn’t like this feeling, this eerie heaviness, this thing in the atmosphere that was just making me feel anxious and depressed and sad and angry and I could not focus on working on this body of work. So we just thought, why don’t we talk about it and write about it and get it all out so we can move past this feeling.”
He describes hearing the powerhouse collaboration coming together. The voices of “the Blak choir” were “extra-terrestrial… I literally just got shivers down my spine.” His eyes, he says, pricked with tears.
When the single was released, division and racism continued to fracture across the country - he points to the constant Marches for Australia, and the recent attack on Camp Sovereignty by white supremacists. He sighs, “I hope [the track] made a lot of the mob feel powerful and strong in their skin.”
He adds, “When you see something that constantly makes you uneasy, you’ve definitely got to talk about it. Because I felt like I was drowning. I felt like I was drowning in full hate, and not doing anything about it… It was definitely affecting me and my peace.”
He recently performed ‘Thick Skin’ at the AFL Grand Final in front of scores of people, and joined hip hop icon Snoop Dog onstage, playing the yidaki - it was, in fact, the first time he ever performed the song live.
“I felt so proud and very empowered,” he says, especially in light of the constant racism that Indigenous football players are inundated with. “To be able to perform ‘Thick Skin’ - a track that is a full middle finger to racism - to perform that was just incredible. It was such a moment. 100,000 people is a lot of people!” He grins.
There is, of course, undue pressure on him as a successful indigenous artist to represent and speak for a whole plethora of diverse communities when he is simply one person with a specific story. “If I think about it too much… it becomes a full crash-out.”
Baker performs in a mixture of English, Yolŋu Matha and Burrata, something that is seen as a radical act of cultural preservation. But it is, of course, simply what makes sense to him.
“Growing up, me and my siblings, most of the time we talked to each other in a mix of those three languages. We just made up our own little language - it makes sense to rap like that now.”
Music is also the greatest educational tool we have, he explains. “I want to put [these languages] in music because then they’re there forever. I want to educate people through music. There’s a lot of culture and a lot of language in Australia that a lot of people don’t know about,” he says, especially at a time when indigenous dialects are rapidly going extinct.
At the end of the day, of course, cultural preservation and cultural crossover cannot be totally up to Baker Boy alone. He is doing the best he can with what he has. “Representing mob is really important, but it’s just natural - I’m just being me.”
DJANDJAY by Baker Boy is out now and available to stream here. Catch him performing as part of the WOMADelaide 2026 lineup on Sunday 8 March. Tickets on sale now via womadelaide.com.au.
