Mason Dane on playing This That and birthday parties with US rapper T-Pain

Not Mason Dane. Last week the former Lambton High student was doing "shoeys" and hitting Atlanta strip clubs with US rapper T-Pain as he celebrated turning 22.

It was all part of a brief trip to Atlanta and Los Angeles for recording and to build industry contacts as Dane plots his ever-growing music career.

The rapper and producer, who hails from the western Newcastle suburbs of Maryland and Rankin Park, is blowing up internationally after a video of T-Pain reacting hilariously to Dane's remix of the song Dash went viral on Tik-Tok.

"I wanna hate this so bad," T-Pain says in the video. "I want this to be the worst song of all time. But god dammit, this song is so good."

The video has since been viewed 6.7 million times.

While Dash and the Tik-Tok video have rapidly expanded Dane's platform, he's been furiously working on his EDM pop-influenced hip-hop since finishing school in 2017.

In 2018 he released his maiden EP Wake Up and from there a steady stream of singles, including the hypnotic Stay Down. Dane's stocks have also risen on the business side after linking with label BMG and Ziggy Annor, the one-time manager of The Kid Laroi.

However, he remains a proud Newy boy. Dane's latest EP, Chasing Home, was released last Friday and several tracks like Runaway and Detached directly reference Newcastle.

Dane spent six months commuting daily by train from Broadmeadow to BMG's Surry Hills studio to work on his music before relocating to Sydney in 2019 and he wanted to tell that part of his journey on Chasing Home.

"It's important as I'm talking about home and that's Newcastle," Dane said over Zoom from Los Angeles. "I wanted to be able to rep it and talk about it as much as possible."

Dane will return to Newcastle on March 12 to perform his biggest ever show at This That music festival after he was selected to be triple j Unearthed's artist.

"I haven't done a festival before, so it'll probably be the biggest crowd," he said. "I'm excited, I love performing and I feel like my performances are at a point now that I'm not super nervous to put myself on show in front of people."

It's fair to say Dane doesn't fit the stereotypical rapper image of golden bling, tattoos and flashy clothes. Instead he's keeping it real in baseball caps and baggy t-shirts.

"It's the age-old don't judge a book by its cover," he said. "Yeah I'm making this hip-hop music and I'm just some chubby white boy from Newcastle.

"I think it's an advantage as there's a shock factor to it. It shows people you don't have to look a certain way to be talented and have your music heard."

MASON Dane isn't the only Novocastrian making noise across the Pacific. Newcastle indie band Vacations kicked off their US tour on Wednesday in front of a sold-out crowd in Los Angeles. Vacations have 32 shows booked on their US tour before April 13, of which eight are already sold out.

The four-piece of Campbell Burns, Jake Johnson, Joseph van Lier and Nate Delizzotti have an amazing online following, which includes a monthly Spotify audience of 5.7 million listeners. Their 2016 single Young has been streamed 164 million times on Spotify.

BACK in November we reported that Cessnock star William Crighton spent five days in hospital on an intravenous drip after he slashed his left wrist open in a gardening accident.

After reading about the injury, Newcastle orthopaedic hand surgeon Dr Joshua Hunt, a fan of Crighton's, reached out on social media to offer assistance.

It proved fortuitous for the Water & Dust songwriter. Crighton developed a second infection over the summer in his wrist bone and was promptly treated by Dr Hunt.

The return to full health couldn't come at a better time for Crighton as he's supporting Midnight Oil on their farewell Resist tour.

BRISBANE'S noisy guitar-pop band Bugs will kick-off their national tour to support their third album, Cooties, at the Cambridge Hotel on April 22. Cooties is released on March 25.

THERE will be an added dose of punk class at The Hard-Ons' Cambridge Hotel show on March 26 with Newcastle's Bitchcraft named as the support.

The Hard-Ons are supporting their album I'm Sorry Sir, That Riff's Has Been Taken.