Auckland-based hip-hop artist Zaidoon Nasir, who performs as Who Shot Scott, is the support act for Snoop Dogg's Auckland concert on March 11.
Auckland-based hip-hop artist Zaidoon Nasir, who performs as Who Shot Scott, is the support act for Snoop Dogg's Auckland concert on March 11.
Auckland hip hop artist Zaidoon Nasir on Snoop Dogg and the music that’s shaped his career.
BEAUTIFUL — Snoop Dogg, with Pharrell Williams (2002)
I was just a kid and this was the first rap or hip-hop song I’d ever heard in my life. And that music video — itintroduced me to another world. I’m Arabic, and at home my mum played a lot of Arabic music and was super into The Beatles and The Bee Gees and classical music like Tchaikovsky and Mozart. So that was all I really knew until then.
Pharrell is one of my all-time favourite producers and his vocals are in the chorus as well; that song is just drenched with his style. Next Saturday, I’m opening for Snoop Dogg [in Auckland] which is pretty cool so, yeah, a full-circle moment.
US hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg last performed in New Zealand in 2014, headlining the Big Day Out.
To me, its sonically aggressive approach exactly mirrors what it’s stating lyrically — the feelings of paranoia, of being desensitised to police brutality and things of a really graphic nature in the age of the internet. When I discovered this song, I was in a place where I’d closed down all my social media and was just staying offline. It accurately depicted how I felt about the whole nature of the times that we live in.
NEW PERSON, SAME OLD MISTAKES — Tame Impala (2015)
The first time I heard this was an incredible moment for me. I listened to it in silence and when it got to the end, I listened to it again — three more times. I’ve never had a song affect me so strongly that way. It just blew my mind. That was the catalyst for my discovery of Tame Impala. Kevin Parker is now one of my favourite artists.
I love her so, so much and everything she does is incredible. But Hunter, in particular [from her third studio album], I related to. I’d just released a couple of projects and was feeling a little bit of pressure myself, the dilemma of wanting to express myself authentically and not conform my sound to fit into anything I’d already done or what people might expect of me.
That’s what this song is basically saying: I’m a hunter, I’m here to explore and look for new worlds. She says, “I’ll bring back the goods, but I don’t know when.” That speaks to the whole artist thing — it will take me as long as it takes me. Listening to someone of her calibre going through that was super-liberating for someone like me.
52 GIRLS — The B52′s (1978)
My favourite drums ever in a song. I love the pace, the sound, the vintage warm feel, and the guitar riff and vocals are so funky and cool. I can never listen to it at 80 per cent volume. It has to be 95 per cent to 100 per cent volume blasting in the car, just having the best time.
— As told to Joanna Wane
Who Shot Scott's new EP, Mercy III.
Auckland-based experimental hip-hop artist Zaidoon Nasir fled Iraq with his mother at the age of 2. His musical project Who Shot Scott has just released a new EP, Mercy III, and is the support act for Snoop Dogg at Auckland’s Trusts Outdoors on March 11, before a four-date Australian tour in April. For more details, see whoshotscott.com
