Tha Movement (aka David Saotupe): "I teach kids how to write music with their hearts, not get caught up with the new fad that's out there now." Photo: THA MOVEMENT / Facebook
Kiwi-Samoan hip-hop artist Tha Movement (aka David Saotupe) is a proud son of Ōtara who also works as a music therapist with local kids.
On the 2017 track Graduated, he writes about what it was like being sent back to his parents' birthplace of Samoa without a return ticket.
Although it was tough at the time, Saotupe tells TAHI that the experience taught him invaluable lessons about what his parents went through as Pasifika immigrants.
"Back in the day, a lot of people who flew over from the islands, it's quite hard for them. They go through these anxieties of coming into a foreign country and when they come here to school they get laughed at because they don't know how to speak English.
"Our oldies would probably threaten us with being sent back to the islands where you get your privileges stripped off from you."
Having been raised in a "foreign land", in Samoa Saotupe got to discover for himself what cultural isolation felt like.
TAHI presenter So'omalo Iteni Schwalger and Tha Movement. Photo: TAHI
"When I fly over to the motherland and I'm from here, they laugh at me because I don't know how to speak Samoan.
"[They're] very smart people… Man, I felt really stupid around them, just because of the language barrier."
Being away from home comforts was also no joke, he says.
"I missed my fried chicken, I missed my bakery… all these things got stripped away. I forgot what ice cream tasted like, that's how bad it was."
Saotupe says he now feels "truly truly grateful" for the experience.
"I got to hear all my parents' stories, how they lived... It was like 'you guys are dramatic, you guys didn't live through all that' but guess what, they did.
Although it might "sound a little bit cliche", Saotupe says music truly saved his life and gave him an opportunity to see a world beyond South Auckland.
"There's a lot of people that live in the city that never experience life outside of Ōtara. The anxiety levels that our neighbourhood faces are just quite insane."
As well as making music, Saotupe teaches local kids of all ages about the power of music, truth and accountability.
"I teach kids how to write music with their hearts, not get caught up with the new fad that's out there now and the streaming platforms but just music that resonates with what's going on at home or what's going on at school and how it can help somebody else.
"I was a gang member at one stage in my life but now I just want to influence all our local babies here and just want to be involved and try and guide them and try and capture them because they can be distracted just like that and things will just all go left."
Growing up in Ōtara, you either "pick up a mic or pick up a ball", he says.
"There's a lot of talent in this small suburb that I live in and I just want to be there and catch all the creativity around. I just want to try and support them as much as possible or put them on the right paths, really."
Back in 2019, the feedback from the Ōtara community was "insane" when Saotupe's track 'MASTA' was featured on the Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw soundtrack.
"Just because people knew where I'd come from and also the fact of Polynesian people being acknowledged in movies… it was just a great experience, really."
Tha Movement's latest album Cut From A Different Cloth will be released on 20 October.
It's been in the works for five to six years now, Saotupe says, but that's okay because the kind of music he likes to create is "timeless".
"It's one of those albums you can listen to it three years, five, ten years later... It's got a whole lot of life in it."
'Lie Like That' is the first single from Cut From A Different Cloth:
