Vv Pete & UTILITY’s VARVIE WORLD is truly global, blending regional club sounds from every continent on the map. But it’s also uniquely local. Each genre the duo touches already has a community and a story behind it in so-called Sydney, and this mixtape unites them all within Vv’s own utopic universe.
From Chicago to South London to Mount Druitt, there’s nothing more core to this project than drill. Its aesthetics may be absent - there are no writhing 808s or skittering hi-hats here - but it was a drill beat which brought Vv Pete and UTILITY together five years ago. A viral video of Vv freestyling in front of OneFour at Mount Druitt’s Street University hit UTILITY’s feed, with Vv rapping what would become the lyrics to early single ‘Frauds’ over the sound which made her suburb famous. It was the catalysing moment of their creative partnership.
On VARVIE WORLD, Vv Pete still carries the staunch energy of drill with her, but always with a smirk. She’s magnetic, dangerous and imposing when dropping a line like “Don't make me chew on your brain / Rip out your braids / Don’t make me f**k on your bae”, but you know it’s all jokes unless you really cross her.
Baile funk made it from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to a warehouse in Glendenning in 2022, when the Hotter Out West crew started throwing parties in their own postcode. After years of trekking into the city for overpriced, underhyped club events, the West decided enough was enough and hosted the sweatiest, loudest event of the year in their own backyard. Picture FRIDAY* riling up the room while SOLLY Ywheels a Soundcloud rip of a Baby Keem baile funk edit. Moments like this forged a connection between Vv Pete’s home turf and the unhinged sonic experiments of Afro-Brazilian producers. Though at this point it was a couple of steps removed - processed through the proxy of US artists biting the sound for fun flips of songs everyone already knew.
Just a year later though, Brazilian-run, Naarm-based event Inbraza let everyone know exactly where baile funk comes from, and fans of the genre like UTILITY took note. Inbraza’s creator, Luara Brandao, used social media to educate people on baile funk not just as a style of music, but as a political movement, and her parties backed this up by embodying the sexually liberated spirit of the bailes she grew up attending in Rio. The young, often queer, Afro-Latin DJs playing these events loaded up their USBs with overstimulating, eardrum-shatteringly experimental funk that gets asses shaking and umbrellas popping in São Paulo, and a new local movement in club music started taking shape.
The influence of baile funk’s local rise on VARVIE WORLD comes through loudest on tracks like ‘BACARDI PAPI’ and 'MASHALLAH’. UTILITY’s snarling, muscular production rides the iconic tamborzão beat at the heart of modern baile funk, and Vv’s purring tongue-rolls in “I might just sit on his rrr / And gimme that krrr” say everything without saying everything.
While UTILITY’s beats on these tracks are more minimal than something you might hear DJ Ramon Sucesso chop up, they’re just as ingeniously discordant and cacklingly chaotic. His signature hulking siren sample is constantly slammed into the mix and cut short a second later, as if summoned with the blunt instrument of a CDJ’s Hot Cue button. Glock-cocking Jersey club percussion gives way to piercing gunshots, while the sub rattles so much you won’t be able to stand up. It’s confronting for the unprepared and satisfying for the sickos.
This global to local pipeline also shows through UTILITY’S sample selection on VARVIE WORLD. At the end of,’GO DUMB,’ Rye Rye calls out from Baltimore in 2007: “Young-est se-xy.” Those four syllables punch in time with the beat, as they did on her original track with DJ Blaqstarr, ‘Shake It To The Ground’ - one of the most iconic and most-sampled Baltimore club tracks of that era. Meanwhile on ‘Wicked (Woah)’, a pitched-up snippet of Brick & Lace’s Diwali Riddim-powered dancehall classic ‘Love is Wicked’ loops under the entire track, like an impromptu Dutch-style bubbling remix for Vv Pete to dominate.
In Sydney in the late ‘00s, you could hear both ‘Shake It to the Ground’ and ‘Love Is Wicked’ out the back of Spanish restaurant La Campana in the early days of legendary spot Goodgod Small Club. Regional sounds like Baltimore club and dancehall had a home there thanks to parties like Hoops, Dutty Dancing and Ro Sham Bo, run by DJs like Nina Las Vegas, Anna Lunoe and Shantan Wantan Ichiban. These songs have rippled through the DJ culture of the city ever since, with artists like UTILITY giving them new life almost 20 years later.
Gqom pioneers Formation Boyz bring yet another international influence, turbocharging Vv Pete’s undeniable hook on ‘WASSA’ with the juice of the genre they helped shape. South African club music has had a huge impact locally over the last five years, first with the tuned log drums and shakers of amapiano, and more recently with gqom’s urgent, slamming percussion and breathless pace. Community-based events like Radar Sounds have built a scene for the slower, sexier side of the SA sound, while DJs locked into faster, harder African club sounds like C.Frim have been holding gqom high.The relentless energy of gqom in particular is such a perfect fit for Vv’s baddie persona – who can deny her when she shouts out “I’m the Queen of Sydney / Open the gate!”
From baile funk to drill, dancehall to gqom, VARVIE WORLD is tapped into the city it was created in and deeply inspired by the scenes Sydney connects to around the globe. Vv’s menacing charisma and UTILITY’s atmosphere-shaking production elevate this brash blend of dancefloor traditions into a bold, singular whole. It might make you dream of what our city’s club scene could sound like with boundaries broken down, infrastructure built up and cultural gatekeepers thrown out. If there’s anyone we can rely on to guide us to a more hopeful future in the club, it’s Vv Pete and UTILITY.
Words by Sandro Dallarmi