Tipene

About the Mentor

Ngati Kahungunu native from Hawke’s Bay on the east coast of Aotearoa (NZ). Tipene is a kaupapa driven hip hop artist on a mission to re-indigenise Maori through the power of his music. Despite being categorised as a hip hop artist Tipene has a broad palette from funk, RnB, electronic, alternative, soul and taonga puoro(maori wind instruments). 

Tipene has released 2 studio albums, 2x APRA Silver scroll finalist, multi music award nominee, winner of best maori urban album/artist 2019, 100k followers and over 8 Million streams across all platforms. 

Notably Tipene doesn’t use profanity in his music which means he has a wider audience across all age groups and ethnicities which is a rarity in hip hop.

Tipene has collaborated with notable NZ music icons such as Prince Tui Teka, Che Fu, Troy Kingi, Scribe, Maisey Rika, DLT, DAM Native, Sid Diamond, Mareko, Pieter T, Chong Nee.