Thomas Gaynor is a South Australian comedian. You might know him better as Allday.
The other day one of my mates told me he’d been binge-watching The Good Wife; that legal drama about a lady who is a lawyer, but in her spare time is also a wife. I could not let that viewing experience go unpunished, because he is a twenty-year-old man and that show sounded like something my mum would watch. I took the piss like a racehorse on a drip. You can only imagine how shocked I am to find myself up to season six.
One would have to assume the shock is similar to the way Thomas Gaynor feels about being one of Australia’s biggest hip-hop stars. Thomas Gaynor is a South Australian comedian – a deadpan, ‘deadbeat stoner’, who made it to the National final of RAW Comedy in 2011. You might know him better as Allday.
Hip-hop was not Allday’s first love. In high school, he developed a passion for “making people cry…I got a tremendous thrill out of that.” He made them cry by saying horrible things, which is about 80% of what telling jokes is about, so a transition into comedy was only natural from there.
After coming runner up in 2011’s RAW Comedy National final, Gaynor debuted a new character he’d developed – MC Disturbance. First recorded in bedroom Youtube videos, his rapper persona dropped nothing but diss tracks directed at his stepdad Mark.
MC Disturbance graduated from the bedroom, to genuine rap battles, to performances at comedy clubs. At some point it must have clicked in the 21-year-old Gaynor’s mind that he wasn’t half bad at this rapping stuff, if only he could do it seriously. So he did.
It only took four months from posting his first MC Disturbance video for Gaynor to open up a dedicated Allday account on Youtube. Since then, the now 24-year-old rapper has stomped all over Aussie hip-hop, bringing a melodic and heartfelt element to a genre typically dominated by lads and bogans.
Allday swiftly made fans on the Internet, translated those fans into love on Triple J unearthed, and consequently translated that into some serious airplay.
Influenced by the likes of Odd Future crooner, Frank Ocean, and Australian legends, Silverchair, Gaynor now has a swathe of EPs under his belt that have culminated in his most recent release – Allday’s debut album, Startup Cult.
Startup Cult is a definitive showcase of everything that makes Allday worth listening to. Some tracks consist of an effortless drawl, while others have every word being spat with force. Opener ‘Got It’ sounds laid-back enough that you’ll genuinely believe you’ve got nothing to worry about; Alldeezy has you sorted.
Allday has a tight handle on the balance between talking yourself up a whole lot then smack-talking yourself right back down. The M-Phazes produced ‘Wolves’ is Gaynor at the top of his braggadocio game, asking how he can be as big as Jay-Z, only to be followed up two songs later by ‘Another Night at Windy Point’ – a ninety-second long, no-chorus jam about a night out under the stars dodging fights with the boys.
Listening to Startup Cult is just a matter of sitting back and letting the ‘Fat Fuck Superstar’ hop, skip, and jump over piano and trap-drum beats, slotting straight into the post-Drake era of semi-emotional rap.
What’s best to see is that becoming Allday hasn’t cost Gaynor the ability to make people laugh. Some songs are deeply personal, some are party anthems, but no matter what, there’s at least one clever punchline in them all. Next time you go to make fun of something, stop and wonder if there might be a very successful career in it for you. Allday did, and it’s fair to say it’s paying off.