Right down to its r00ts in 1970s DJ culture, taking others' ideas and flipping them to fit your own context has always been a fundamental process in rap music. While some Aussie rappers seem all too happy to copy and paste ideas from the US and UK without much attempt at putting on their own spins, one lyrical domain that has enjoyed a largely successful nativisation down under is car culture. And it's a natural fit. In Australia, as in global hip hop vernacular, cars are iconic symbols of wealth, aspiration, and masculinity. That said, the idiosyncracies of traditional Aussie (car) culture and its modern manifestations have resulted in a fascinating range (rover) of takes on car bars in contemporary Aus rap.
Where to start but the originals: in car-land that's your Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores, on the rap side, it's adlay pluggnb originator Sidney Phillips. Phillips's frequent references to Commies, Falcons and Rexys paint a colourful lyrical picture of her life on Brisbane's sprawling semi-urban reaches.
Her major contribution to the Aus rap car lyric canon (and to Aus rap in general) has been her uncanny ability to seamlessly blend unlikely cultural references and identities. References to cars in hip hop globally are inevitably highly gendered, however, the watertight association between certain classic car models and the stereotype of the white Aussie bloke means car references in Aus rap are imbued with a Australia-specific masculine significance.
Phillips's early music in particular (where she whimsically sings about TNs and Holdens with pitched-up vocal melodies over ggabriel's glittering production) both co-opts and subverts hypermasculine Aussie subcultures to create an authentic expression of her identity, rewriting the script of what it means to be an Australian rapper in the process. For a more recent example, see 2025's "White TNs" featuring Skratcha and produced by astrid.
Another peculiarity of classic Aussie car culture is its lionisation of workmanlike vehicles like stationwagons and utes - again, connecting to national mythos of the down-to-earth, hardworking bloke. In referencing these cars, rappers advertise their Australianess ("look how Australian I am") as well as authenticity ("look how down-to-earth I am").
Taking this expression of humility a step further is my fav car-themed Aus rap track, Rh3tt's "Ford Falcon" (2023). Despite nominally being about a Ford, this seminal track is at its heart a love letter to the humble white Toyota Camry. The relationship is an emotionally complex one, as Rh3tt vents his teen bogan angst and laments: "Mum wouldn't let me buy a Ford Falcon, but I still go crazy in the Camry".
Ultimately, however, Rh3tt's loyalty to his trusty Camry beats out his desire to swap to a higher-prestige model - a poignant demonstration of the tall poppy mentality that enforces the Australian culture of unpretentiousness. Years later Rh3tt has got a haircut and moved to Melbourne but he still "still goes crazy in Camry", repping his Albury r00ts via the piss-yellow NSW plates featured in Tetohundred's "Rip Seams" vídeo musical.
While Falcons and Commodores live on in the cultural memory, the reality on the ground is that the modern Aussie bloke has eyes for only one model of car: the Ford Ranger. Flying the flag for modern suburban Australian's favourite car is Australia's most marvellously modern rapper, Western Sydney phenom Jonny Chopps.
The Ford Ranger fulfills the masculine Aussie need for vehicle with pretensions to utility while importing the American man's desire to physically (and emotionally) dominate his suburban dominion. Chopps's embrace of the Ranger tracks the changing preferences of contemporary Australian car shoppers. Modern Australia is certainly more skeptical of the idolisation of bloke culture than ever before, and so it's no wonder modern Australians are less drawn to the very culturally-specific appeal of old-school stationwagons and more interested in the global phenomena that is the Ranger.
In Chopps's music, the Ranger represents an escape from complacency and mediocracy, in a classic hip hop exaltation of the virtue of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. His lyrics on "Ranger Racing (2026) read almost like a direct rebuttal of the down-to-earth mindset that old-school Aussie car culture represents: "Cause this sh*t's amazing / The Ranger racing / Don't be complacent / We move adjacent / I f*cking faced it / Now I get paid, b*tch / What the f*ck you say / This seems like hate, b*tch". At the same time, the Ranger represents Chopps's status as an authentically (modern) Australian voice on "WHAT THE UCKY" (2025): "Baby get out the hatchback, step in the Ranger this sh*t's spacious / We're in Australia, we get plastic notes, not no paper".
Probably the most outrageous car reference I've found on this mini research tour is Villyszn on "Gundaroo" (2026), where you will find in amongst a swathe of unashamedely crass lyrics the all-timer "I could never drive a Tesla / That sh*t is g*y". As Villyszn poignantly demonstrates, EVs have taken on their own cultural significance in Australian car culture, derided by some and embraced by others. Where Villyszn comes at the issue from a place of defending the traditional car culture hierarchy (his other tracks rep Lancers and BMWs), other artists are moving the narrative forward to better suit modern Australian.
Straight outta Newcastle, "The Rocks" by Ruumi and Dobbie contains a fascinating duality that demonstrates two possible takes on EVs in Aus rap. In the first verse, the softly-spoken Ruumi raps that he's "In a new car, with the plugs and charger / EV money, different colour, evolution", repping his electric vehicle as a symbol of wealth and forward-thinkingness. On the next verse, his mate Dobbie replies with a more ocker delivery that he's also "In a new car", but "This a Rex not a Charger", taking us back to petrol-land and flexing his Australian-aligned taste for Subaru WRXs over the American Dodge Charger (see my interview with Dobbie and Ruumi's myrapscene collective for more on how they think about Australianess in their music).
The final word on EVs has to go to koreancrashout with his 2025 track "Indie Sleaze", with its (count them) 9 consecutive BYD bars. This relentless embrace of the Chinese electric vehicle brand is most of all a proud statement of koreancrashout's Asian-Australian identity (a major theme on this album), as well as maybe a symptom of his origins in Sydney's progressive inner west region. That said, the dark accompanying lyrical context on this and other tracks of the koreancrashout's Sydney don't necessarily paint a rosy picture of our EV-driven future: "Blacked out in the BYD / Riding 'round in the BYD / Can't see a f*cking thing in the BYD...Gooned out in the BYD / Crashed out in the BYD".
Hopefully it hasn't shown in this blog post but I don't really know anything about cars! My jam is public transport and bikes, so let's finish off with a quick look at some artists forgoing references to car culture in favour of celebrating alternative modes of transport. On "crossroads" (2023) with harvest, Sidney Phillips reveals that all the talk about cars was just a front - she doesn't even have her licence! "And I never got my Ps / We gon' have to catch the train". Tetohundred on the other hand has his licence, but conscientiously chooses to take advantage of his local public transport options: "I got my licence but I like the bus though" he croons on the aforementioned "Rip Seams" (2026). Last but not least is Scan00, who stays true to his r00ts in Canberra's bike-loving inner north with his proclamation "Riding on a bike, not a car, I don't got one" on 2021's "Lose Freestyle" (he's just like me fr 😍).