Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains names of people who have died.
The last time Baker Boy played Riverboats Music Festival in Echuca, Victoria, in 2022 it took him an hour to make the meagre 50-metre walk from stage back to the green room.
Why? Because the Yolŋu artist was besieged by fans wanting selfies and autographs.
“Like a full path, straight off stage, a line of the biggest mob of kids,” the boy born Danzal Baker tells Double J’s Dylan Lewis.
“I [wasn’t] going to say no! They look so happy. So, I think for maybe an hour I was just signing. [But] it was such an amazing feeling.”
It’s a testament to the 29-year-old singer, rapper and dancer’s enduring popularity.
Since his breakout in 2017 with triple j Unearthed hit Cloud 9, Baker has continued to hoover up milestones — a 2019 Young Australian of the Year who has dominated both the ARIAs and National Indigenous Music Awards.
Baker Boy poses with his 2022 Album of the Year trophy, one of five ARIA Awards he took home that year. (Getty Images: Hanna Lassen)
Best known for his feel-good bilingual hip hop bangers he’s widely perceived as the happy-go-lucky Fresh Prince of Arnhem Land. But it’s a persona he’s been steadily shifting in recent years.
“I guess the Fresh Prince of Arnhem Land is still being used. Some people are already calling me King,” he says, quoting his 2024 single of the same name.
“Turned the prince to a king.”
Heading into touring mode once more, and having started work on “pretty exciting” new material, Baker Boy is looking forward to getting back on country.
“One of the things I’m most excited for is going back home,” he enthuses. “I say it every time, every festival, everywhere I go, and always proudly with my chest.
“Because from the end of April to early June is the mud crab season. I’m going on the first of May to Darwin, and the first thing I’m doing is asking my family to have an esky full of mud crab waiting for me when I get there.”
Baker has certainly earned his stripes as First Nations royalty. He’s an OAM recipient who has brought Yolŋu Matha language and culture to the mainstream.
However, sometimes heavy is the crown.
Responding to racism
Baker Boy’s second album, Djandjay, subverts the exuberant persona he’s cultivated as a beacon of party-starting positivity.
After first speaking to the ongoing issues First Nations people face on 2021 debut album Gela — most pointedly on Survive, featuring the late Uncle Jack Charles — Djandjay expands on the tougher side of Baker Boy’s sound.
Baker Boy’s inspiring Gela is all for vibing and thriving, not surviving
“I bring a country together / Still, it tears me apart,” he raps on War Cry, which fuses a traditional Yolŋu songline with dramatic brass and cutting beats.
“I fight for my mob in real life, not an online mention / It’s like you’re forgetting / My thick skin is black 365, 24/7.”
Freak Out pairs Baker Boy with Briggs, best known as one half of incendiary duo A.B. Original, who were once considered the outspoken yin to Baker’s upbeat yang.
But the hard-hitting collaboration proves that the Yolŋu artist and Yorta Yorta man are personally and politically aligned, with Briggs spitting:
“Me and Danzal getting mental with the pencil / F*** you and f*** what offends you.”
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These moments are reactions to “just constantly having racism thrown to your face every day,” explains Baker, “and seeing a lot of these different crazy things that’s been happening around us.”
Baker was “in the middle” of working on the album when the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum was defeated.
“I didn’t feel like I was focused on my work and I was struggling. So we just decided ‘let’s just write the feeling I was feeling’. And so that’s what I did. That’s when Thick Skin was born.”
Bristling with punk rock energy, Thick Skin sees Baker barking lines like: “You know the only crime was our skin colour” and “you should be ashamed / We all know it’s easier with ignorance.”
Baker also enlisted a “Blak choir” for the song’s haunting coda comprising fellow artists Thelma Plum, Jada Weazel, Kee’ahn and revered Gumbaynggirr, Dhungutti and Yamatji singer Emma Donovan.
“I thought I was just going to do a full yidaki [didgeridoo] solo at the end, make it real strong and heavy. But then I reached out to the sister girls and they said ‘yes, we’ll come through’.
“They just added that extra spices … and it just went crazy.”
Baker Boy had the opportunity to take Thick Skin to one of Australia’s biggest stages — performing the song at the 2025 AFL Grand Final moments after sharing the stage with headliner Snoop Dogg.
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Expressing anger has never come easily to Baker Boy, he was made to feel uncomfortable speaking publicly on 2020’s Black Lives Matter movement.
However, Djandjay adds further dimension to his artistry with more serious subject matter sitting alongside playful material, like the anthemic Biggest Mob and the slinky R&B of the J.Lo-inspired Keep Up.
A family legacy
Djandjay is named in tribute to Baker’s late grandma, a family matriarch who is credited as “the reason hip hop was brought to Arnhem Land”.
In the late 1980s Djandjay and Baker’s grandfather, Robert, honeymooned in Hawaii and before jetting home stopped in Atlanta and Los Angeles, picking up VHS films and hip hop records.
“They had Grandmaster Flash on the record player and watching a Fred Astaire dance film on the TV on mute, dancing to Grandmaster Flash,” he said.
Baker remembers “seeing all the dads getting influenced from all that … breakdancing on the street with a cardboard box on the ground. They start picking up on all that and using all those movements. Just a deep dive into the hip hop world and culture”.
His father and uncle, Josiah and Jeremiah, would go on to form the Baker Boys dance crew.
“They travelled around remote communities breakdancing. Everyone paid to go and watch them. Then they used their money to fly to another community,” Baker said.
As the youngest member it’s where Danzal Baker got his stage name. Living between the remote north-east Arnhem Land communities of Milingimbi and Maningrida the teenage Baker earned a name as a dancer.
He’d find work touring with renowned NT dance troupe Djuki Mala — formerly known as the Chooky Dancers — and later the Indigenous Hip Hop Projects, a Melbourne-based initiative operating in remote Indigenous communities.
“I grew up with a background of hip hop dancing. That’s number two. Traditional dancing, number one. And it’s all thanks to my late grandmother Djandjay. She’s the one.”
It’s a fairytale origin story befitting of a prince — scratch that, King of Arnhem Land.
Djandjay is out now.
Baker Boy plays Riverboats Music Festival in Echuca on Friday February 13, Perth Festival on Saturday February 21 and WOMADelaide on Sunday March 8. He then tours around the country through April and May.