INTERVIEW | MZ BURN DISCUSSES HER LATEST SINGLE ‘DON’T WANNA’

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In a bold music­al state­ment, Mz Burn takes cen­ter stage with her latest single, “Don’t Wanna.” Draw­ing from her own exper­i­ences, the song exposes the subtle manip­u­la­tions of abus­ive rela­tion­ships while embra­cing unapo­lo­get­ic strength and fierce lyr­ics. Col­lab­or­at­ing with pro­du­cer Nvx, they craft a dis­tinct­ive sound fea­tur­ing a spicy trap beat and eth­er­e­al ‘organ-like’ synths. Through “Don’t Wanna,” Mz Burn sets the stage for her upcom­ing EP, a jour­ney that delves into themes of exist­en­tial­ism, deliv­er­ance, and trans­form­a­tion, reflect­ing her unwaver­ing com­mit­ment to empower and inspire through her artistry.

Can you tell us about the inspir­a­tion behind your latest single “Don’t Wanna,” and how it reflects your stance against abus­ive rela­tion­ships?

The inspir­a­tion comes from first hand exper­i­ence. Some­times you don’t real­ise how badly you’re being treated until you’ve got some dis­tance and hind­sight. I wanted to speak on the subtle men­tal manip­u­la­tions whilst hint­ing towards the more sin­is­ter acts. Des­pite the dark and vul­ner­able top­ic I wanted the lyr­ics to be unapo­lo­get­ic­ally power­ful, strong and fierce.

The pro­duc­tion in “Don’t Wanna” is described as hav­ing a spicy trap beat and subtle ‘organ-like’ synths. How did you and Nvx work togeth­er to cre­ate this unique sound?

Nvx sent me the beat and it cap­tured me straight away. I kept free­styl­ing over it and record­ing voice memos until the lyr­ics came into form.
The demo was recor­ded in a make shift booth made of couch seat cush­ions in my par­ents liv­ing room. I was study­ing audio engin­eer­ing at SAE at the time so I took the oppor­tun­ity to use the stu­dio with the Neve Con­sole to re record the verses with the help of my buddy J Quan.
When I recor­ded the first draft I knew it was spe­cial. I had writ­ten about some­thing that was deeply per­son­al to me, that matched the abso­lute fire beat that Nvx cre­ated.
I used my time at uni to mix all of the songs on my EP using vari­ous stu­dio suites & Pro Tools. Once I was done I sent them back to Nvx for mas­ter­ing.

As the first single from your upcom­ing EP, what themes and mes­sages can listen­ers expect to explore through­out the rest of the pro­ject?

The songs are a sequen­tial story of how I man­aged to nav­ig­ate a hor­ribly dark time in my life.
The main theme of the next release ‘Los­ing Con­trol’ is exist­en­tial­ism. This song was recor­ded in one go as a free­style when I was on magic mush­rooms and I couldn’t bring myself to change any of the lyr­ics! I loved this raw­ness that flooded out of me, ask­ing who is in con­trol? Who can I com­plain to? Con­demning the powers that be.. and in the end sur­ren­der­ing to the power­less­ness. There will be a music video for this one! Keep an eye out.
The third song on the EP ‘She’s My Knight’ car­ries the theme of deliv­er­ance in the realm of a fairy tale. It tells of a knight that res­cues me from my tower. A twist in the tale, depict­ing a female knight who is the res­cuer. Whose “armour is of a dif­fer­ent kind, she’s got a wicked mind” her power is in her philo­sophy and her fero­city. Lead­ing me away from the dark­ness, through the forest on horse­back car­ry­ing dag­gers and wands.
The last song that wraps it al togeth­er, ‘Wiser’ is all about trans­form­a­tion. Acknow­ledging my past and how I have man­aged to meta­morph­os­ize my pain into my power and my strength. I have found my pur­pose and the reas­on behind the suf­fer­ing. My music is my escape and my sal­va­tion.

Your jour­ney into music seems to have been sparked by a serendip­it­ous encounter with an Amer­ic­an pro­fess­or. Could you share more about that moment and how it influ­enced your decision to pur­sue music?

Actu­ally it star­ted before then. Fun­nily enough I recor­ded my first song by com­plete chance in 2015 in Brazil! I made friends with this strange Brazil­lian dude who dresses as a gnome and goes by the name of Gnomo Brasil at a fest­iv­al called Uni­verso Par­al­lelo. He spoke no Eng­lish and I only spoke very broken Por­tuguese, but he invited me to stay at his mums house in Belo Hori­zonte. The day I arrived he had booked a record­ing ses­sion at a stu­dio for him­self and asked if I wanted to come.

I said ‘oh I write songs too!’ com­pletely ignor­ant to the fact that they were not songs, they were just little strings of poems.. any­way when he fin­ished record­ing his stuff at the stu­dio I jumped on the mic and spat some of my verses. There was no music or any­thing, I had no idea how a record­ing stu­dio worked.

The engineer/producer said he liked the sound of what I was doing and he sent me a track! He said I could keep it and if I came back the next day he would record me free of charge.. so high on life and a little bit of LSD I danced through the streets of Brazil and came up with lyr­ics for this song and returned to record it the next day!

Brazili­ans have mad cyphers in parks. One night I don’t know what came over me I just jumped up and star­ted free­styl­ing in front of like 40 people while someone was beat box­ing.. then I kinda real­ized what I was doing and stopped and then every­one star­ted clap­ping and cheer­ing haha it was crazy. So I def­in­itely caught the music fever in Brazil..

When I was liv­ing in Bolivia in the jungle I would write songs and draw in my journ­als and even exper­i­mented using fruity loops a few times. So I guess I was just chas­ing that feel­ing when I enrolled in the ‘intro­duc­tion to music tech­no­logy’ course at ANU which is what lead me to meet the Amer­ic­an Pro­fess­or Lampl.

The first class was like some­thing out of a movie! He must have noticed me just hav­ing fun and enjoy­ing myself in the com­puter lab so he asked if I could give him the head­phones to have a listen. I was embar­rassed as I’d nev­er used Logic before.. I had no idea what I was doing but I was just hav­ing fun.. I declined but he was like ‘let me listen!’ so I gave him the head­phones.. He falls to his knees laugh­ing! He kept say­ing how good it was and then he puts it on the speak­ers and every­one in the class was bop­ping up and down and cheer­ing and lov­ing it. It was so sur­real. I was on the biggest high! I was rid­ing my bike around cam­pus call­ing my best friend leav­ing mes­sages like ‘You gotta come out and meet me now!’ She thought it was an emer­gency. I was so excited and that was really the turn­ing point when I felt like I could pur­sue music ser­i­ously.

Then all these little serendip­it­ous things kept hap­pen­ing that would keep push­ing me fur­ther and fur­ther to keep cre­at­ing. Sha Rock, the first female rap­per and ‘The Moth­er of the Mic’ invited me to her appre­ci­ation day zoom party dur­ing cov­id lock­downs. She saw a post I tagged her in on Ins­tagram of her speak­ing in an inter­view, reaf­firm­ing the true mes­sage of hip hop which is about escap­ing neg­at­iv­ity and being in your ele­ment. That it’s about peace, unity and hav­ing fun. So there was lil old me in a zoom call with all the found­ing fath­er and moth­ers of hip hop like Big Daddy Kane, Grand Wiz­ard Theodore, Angie Stone, Rahiem, Grand­mas­ter Caz which was just so crazy to me.

Then when Nvx wanted to col­lab­or­ate with me it was just anoth­er sign to me that this I what I am meant to be doing with my life, and we’ve been in an awe­some part­ner­ship for a few years now.

You’ve men­tioned that your forth­com­ing EP addresses tough sub­jects. How do you approach these chal­len­ging top­ics, and what do you hope your music can bring to those going through sim­il­ar struggles?

I just try to be real. This is what I was strug­gling with at the time. I hope that any­one who has been through sim­il­ar exper­i­ences feels like they are not alone and that they can over­come the trauma of it.

At the time I was com­ing to terms with my exper­i­ences, all this hor­rible news was com­ing out about rape in par­lia­ment house in Can­berra which was where I was liv­ing. Grace Tame was Aus­trali­an of the year. Hear­ing oth­ers speak about the unfathom­able shit that they endured inspired me to speak up too. Women were finally telling their stor­ies of sur­viv­al from abuse.. and we were MAD. Protest­ing at par­lia­ment house.. I actu­ally got up on stage and sang one of my first songs called ‘Gotta talk about it’ with middle fin­gers up at par­lia­ment house.. I was raging and the mes­sage was ‘Fuck the pat­ri­archy.’

But When I was lost in the depths of that deep dark place that sexu­al abuse takes you.. and trapped inside due to lock­downs.. I would blast the Mise­du­ca­tion of Ms Lauryn Hill in my room and sing and cry and let it all out.

I just want those who hear it and who are still strug­gling to know that there is a light at the end of the tun­nel. The import­ance of build­ing strong friend­ships because those are the people who will give you guid­ance and get help you out of those rela­tion­ships if you are stuck and feel there is no way to escape. That ulti­mately we have the power with­in ourselves to trans­form all the shame, guilt, pain and suf­fer­ing we have endured into strength, resi­li­ence, per­spect­ive and power.

Your exper­i­ences as one of the few women in your audio engin­eer­ing course and often the only female per­former in loc­al male-dom­in­ated hip hop ven­ues are com­mend­able. How do you chan­nel that empower­ment and break bar­ri­ers through your artistry?

Luck­ily the people who I was at uni with were awe­some and we all just got along. I think if I had of been there a few years before I prob­ably would have struggled being the odd one out, but because I’d already gone through a lot of soul search­ing, I wasn’t try­ing to be one of the boys, I car­ried my own energy and we hon­estly just all became mates and had fun being there. I’ve shared to my uni dudes that they actu­ally got me out of the hor­rible head­space I was in of that ‘hat­ing all men’ men­tal­ity. We were all very open with each oth­er, close prox­im­it­ies in the stu­di­os, learn­ing togeth­er, we all have our own ideas, some­times we’d argue and fight, but we’d always make up. It was very cute the dynam­ic we had.

If I get a bad feel­ing at a ven­ue or with oth­er artists I’ll just avoid them all togeth­er. I’m not stick­ing around in a place I don’t feel com­fort­able in, espe­cially when I hear what they’re rap­ping about. Some­times it can bring up trau­mat­ic stuff for me so I’ll just say ‘Thank U Next!’

Hav­ing lived a life defined by pas­sion and per­sever­ance in the Bolivi­an Amazon, how has your con­nec­tion to nature influ­enced your music and cre­at­ive pro­cess?

Good ques­tion. I would say it influ­ences me massively. I really crave adven­ture, being in nature, swim­ming, camp fires, just being in the moment and appre­ci­at­ing the beauty that we are sur­roun­ded by. It’s some­thing that kind of re sets me. I always bring a journ­al with me when I’m camp­ing, or my water col­our paints. My cre­ativ­ity def­in­itely can get stifled if there is not enough of this in my life!

Can you share a bit about your exper­i­ences work­ing with diverse wild­life and the impact it has had on shap­ing your per­spect­ive and music?

I volun­teered for over 3 years with an NGO called ONCA (Organ­iz­a­tion for the Nat­ives and the Con­ser­va­tion of the Amazon) in the jungle of Bolivia. We res­cued wild­life from illeg­al pet trade and rehab­il­it­ated them to be wild and free again. We would work with loc­al author­it­ies, the navy, the police and coun­cils to res­cue wild­life from people who were keep­ing them as pets, chained up in the back yard or selling them as pets or for their skin or teeth on the black mar­ket. We res­cued capuchin mon­keys, squir­rel mon­keys, spider mon­keys, howl­er mon­keys, night mon­keys, jag­uars, coatis, mar­gays, ocelots, tou­cans, sloths, you name it.

We built everything with mater­i­als from the jungle with the help of Mario our loc­al neigh­bour, co work­er and guide to all things jungle liv­ing. There was no wifi, roads or hot water. We’d have to take the peque peque boat down the river to get to town and pick up sup­plies. For the baby mon­keys we’d take turns wak­ing up every 2 hours in the night to give them milk. Or if it was rain­ing & storm­ing in the night we’d have to go empty the water from the boat so it didn’t sink. We sur­vived a flood! There was nev­er a dull day. Always busy, always some­thing crazy going on.

It is a long pro­cess and not as easy as it might sound to rehab­il­it­ate and rein­tro­duce into the wild the anim­als that we res­cued, but we suc­cess­fully rehab­il­it­ated one group of capuchin mon­keys in the time that I was there, so they are now liv­ing wild and free in the jungle. It’s the most reward­ing to know the kind of fate they escaped.

Some­times I see on Tik Tok people have capuchin mon­keys as pets and I see them tied to a high chair, wear­ing a nappy, clearly dis­tressed. I can’t stand this kind of stuff. I think most people just don’t know how cruel it is.

My per­spect­ive at the end of the day is that humans can try to con­trol things, but in the end moth­er nature is the boss and she is full of sur­prises. We are here for a short time so we may as well make the most of our lives while we can. Live your beau­ti­ful crazy jungle dream. Live your becom­ing a badass rap­per fantasy. Whatever it is! Fol­low your heart. Do your best not to harm any­one along the way and have fun!

Mov­ing from the Bolivi­an Amazon to Can­berra, your life took an unex­pec­ted turn. How did you nav­ig­ate this trans­ition and find your path in music amidst the chal­lenges of the pan­dem­ic?

I was so lost after decid­ing not to return to the jungle! I really did not know what to do with myself. I attemp­ted to become a Jill­aroo for a few months (an Aus­sie cow­girl) in cent­ral Queens­land.. but that was not for me. It just so happened that my best friend Mad­die was study­ing her Mas­ters in Forestry at ANU (Aus­trali­an Nation­al Uni­ver­sity) in the ACT (Aus­trali­an Cap­it­al Ter­rit­ory) and I thought I may as well go and live over there and study uni too see­ing as I didn’t know what else to do! Then after a few weeks of liv­ing in Can­berra the whole pan­dem­ic arrived.

Since I wasn’t able to use the com­puter labs any more to prac­tice using Logic Pro, my pro­fess­or con­vinced me to bor­row some money from my par­ents to buy a laptop. I got myself an inter­face and speak­ers. My cous­in sent me a 2^nd hand RODE NT2 micro­phone and I set myself up in my room and just taught myself how to pro­duce, record and mix. Can­berra actu­ally has a really good com­munity for musi­cians. They held these ‘Music ACT’ ses­sions every 2 weeks over zoom where we were able to learn so many dif­fer­ent things about the industry, when they held one in per­son, that was where I met Nvx and we decided to col­lab­or­ate which was awe­some cos he would just send me a bunch of tracks and then we could work them up togeth­er.

In the midst of cov­id I was also accep­ted into the Women in Music Ment­or­ship which was aimed at empower­ing women in the music industry to nav­ig­ate their careers. That was a huge con­fid­ence boost and I got partnered with an awe­some ment­or, pro­du­cer and mix­ing engin­eer Becki Whit­ton who told me about school of audio engin­eer­ing in Mel­bourne, so when the time came, I moved back to Burn City, full circle, to con­tin­ue on my music­al jour­ney!

Your jour­ney in music seems to be driv­en by a desire to make a pos­it­ive impact. How do you envi­sion fos­ter­ing a pos­it­ive and inclus­ive space in the music industry through your artistry and influ­ence?

Just keep on mak­ing music and bring­ing the pos­it­ive vibes! The rest will fol­low.

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Rishma Dhaliwal

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds

Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voice­less. Cur­rently work­ing in TV, Rishma brings her PR and media know­ledge to I am Hip Hop and oth­er pro­jects by No Bounds.

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