Sovereign Aboriginal rapper, singer, and producer Miss Kaninna kicks in Australia’s door and spits in the face of its colonizers on her slick, provocative EP, BLACKPRINT, out now on Soul Has No Tempo / AWAL Recordings. Each track arms you for protest with enough juice left over after to start the party, all in the honor of her bloodline.
The opener ‘CHAT MY SHIT’ is a commanding sixty two seconds that serves as a thesis statement on exactly who Miss Kaninna is and exactly what the project is here to say. She has a flow on this one that brings to mind East Coast rap over a beat that feels like A Tribe Called Quest.
It is important to know that Kaninna hails from Bruny Island, Tasmania and is of Yorta Yorta, Dja Dja Wurrung, Kalkadoon, and Yirendali heritage. So when she calls out, “I’ve got land back on my mind and I’m looking for a fight,” you know exactly what time it is.
Based off of her delivery on this title track, if I found out she was a student of Notorious B.I.G., or just 90’s New York in general, I wouldn’t be surprised. At its core, ‘BLACKPRINT’ is punk with a beat instead of a band. If you find yourself skeptical, lock into the last thirty to forty five seconds and let the screaming rage speak.
Underneath all of that is a slow and low synthesized pulsating that adds darkness, depth, and ends up being the backbone sonically.
‘MOB TIES’ is the first single from ‘BLACKPRINT’ and it’s the song that made me a fan. As a Black American that was raised on hip hop, I was both surprised and proud to hear such pro-Black rap from the other side of the world. Of course diasporas all over the globe connect, but I feel like I rarely hear anyone celebrate being Black this loudly outside of the US and it feels major.
Plus, I can’t resist the nonchalant “Aussie Aussie Aussie / Oi Oi Oi,” followed by “Fuck you and your Southern Cross / To all you Aussie boys.”
“It’s an observation of British colonialism, claiming rights over this land when sovereignty was never ceded. If you’re not Aboriginal, Torres Strait islander or Micronesian, you are an immigrant. It always was Black land and it’s always going to be Black land.”
MISS KANINNA on ‘MOB TIES’ via Rolling Stone Australia
I don’t want to go and spoil every surprise, but I will say ‘HANDOUT’ featuring Jamahl Yami is the perfect follow up to ‘MOB TIES’ and the production has notes of industrial. Miss Kaninna’s punk ethos show up all throughout the EP, but I say this is the most direct display. I understand how she ended up opening for Amyl and the Sniffers in 2025.
BLACKPRINT is ancestral veneration as much as it is brazen confrontation. It is an impeccably produced invitation of unity sent out to all those with an ancestry that colonization has attempted to erase. The progeny of those brutalized, displaced, and oppressed by the Empire have something potent to say and they are not relenting— just like this EP.
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