On 14 August 2026, Kayps dropped BUNUBA BABY, which is easily his best work so far and, if you have read our review of the album, you would know just how much we loved it.
Although the album is deeply personal to Kayps and tells his story through his experiences, family, identity and connection to where he comes from, it also feels much bigger than one person’s story. There are parts of the album that look at the history of his community, what previous generations went through and how those experiences continue to affect the generations that came after them.
That was one of the biggest reasons the album connected with us so much in the first place. Kayps is at the forefront of it, but it never feels like an album that is only about Kayps.
So when he announced the BUNUBA BABY tour with a Melbourne show, I was obviously eager to go and see how an album like this would translate live.
The gig took place at Open Bar in Fitzroy, with Squid the Kid opening the night, followed by Ricky Neil Jr. as co-headliner before Kayps eventually came out to perform.
This was also my first time going to a gig at Open Bar and honestly, the venue felt just right for the kind of show this was supposed to be. There weren’t too many people in the room, but sometimes that can actually make a gig better when everyone who is there genuinely wants to be there.
That was definitely the case on this night.
There was a really positive energy throughout the room, and whether it was Squid, Ricky or Kayps performing, people were actually paying attention, reacting to the songs and giving the artists something back. It didn’t feel like one of those shows where half the crowd is talking at the back waiting for the one artist or song they came to hear.
Everyone seemed invested in what was happening in front of them, and that ended up becoming one of my favourite things about the entire night.
Squid the Kid
First up was Squid the Kid, who seemed slightly nervous at times, which is completely understandable when you’re opening a show and trying to get a room warmed up.
But even with some of those nerves, he performed his songs well and you could hear the quality of the music underneath it because Squid already has some genuine bangers in his catalogue.
I think the performance side is something that will naturally get better the more he plays live. There are certain things you can only really learn by getting on stage again and again, figuring out how to command a room, how to move between songs and eventually reaching the point where everything becomes second nature.
As a songwriter though, he is already creating some incredible songs, and that is probably the harder part to learn.
A special shoutout also has to go to his drummer, who was excellent throughout the set and really helped make everything feel tighter and hit harder live.
Then we got Ricky Neil Jr., and this is where the night became a little ridiculous.
Ricky Neil Jr.
Where do I even start with this guy?
I had listened to Ricky’s music before, and based purely on that I was already expecting him to have this slightly over-the-top, theatrical and dramatic energy on stage. What I wasn’t expecting was just how good he would be at it.
Ricky is one of those performers who has something that is incredibly difficult to teach. There is a sense of mystery and charisma around him where even when he isn’t doing anything particularly huge, you still find yourself watching him because you want to see what he is going to do next.
I’ve been to a lot of gigs over the years and seen a lot of incredible performers, but there aren’t that many people who can completely hold an audience’s attention in the way Ricky did during this show.
This was also my first time seeing him live, so maybe people who have seen him multiple times already know exactly what I’m talking about, but if this is the level he performs at every time, I’m genuinely surprised he isn’t playing much bigger stages already.
After the show, I was talking to someone about how our generation never really got the opportunity to experience performers like Freddie Mercury or Elvis Presley live. Obviously we can watch footage of those performances, but watching something on a screen decades later is completely different from actually being in the room and feeling whatever made those people so captivating in the first place.
And I know this is going to sound like a massive comparison, but while watching Ricky I genuinely had this thought that if Freddie Mercury was Australian and playing in a small club in Fitzroy, maybe there would be something similar about the way it felt.
I’m not saying Ricky sounds like Freddie Mercury or that he is trying to perform like him, because that isn’t really what I mean. It’s more about that complete commitment to performing.
It isn’t only the way Ricky moves around the stage or the expressions on his face. It’s his entire body language, his vocals, knowing which word needs slightly more weight, where his pitch needs to rise, when he needs to pull something back and when he needs to completely let go.
Everything becomes part of the performance.
And when all of those things come together, you stop feeling like you’re simply watching someone sing their songs and start feeling like you’re watching an actual show.
I genuinely think Ricky Neil Jr. is someone you need to experience live to completely understand what I’m talking about, because videos can show you what he does, but they can’t necessarily recreate what it feels like when you’re standing a few metres away from him doing it.
He was easily one of the biggest surprises of the night for me and, without exaggerating it too much, one of the best live performers I’ve seen in a long time.
Then somehow Kayps had to follow that.
Kayps and Why BUNUBA BABY Matters
And then came the man of the moment, who had just released what we believe is one of the most important Australian hip-hop albums of all time.
Before getting into the performance itself, I think it’s worth briefly talking about why BUNUBA BABY matters so much, because that context completely changes what it feels like to hear these songs performed live.
When we reviewed the album, one of the things that stood out immediately was how much Kayps had grown as an artist. He was already a talented rapper before this record, but this album felt like the moment where he really understood what he wanted to do with that talent.
Throughout the project he talks about his Bunuba and Walmatjarri identity, his family, Fitzroy Crossing, racism, colonisation, stolen wages, people his community has lost and his own complicated relationship with culture.
But what makes the album special is the way all of those things connect.
A song like “765” can talk about stolen wages, land and generations of history while somehow still sounding like an anthem that people can scream along to. Then you have something like the “UNCLE JOHNNY” interlude, where Kayps almost completely removes himself and allows an older voice to recount memories of people locking arms in the river, police arriving and people being taken away one by one.
There isn’t a verse afterwards trying to explain what we just heard. The memory is allowed to stand by itself.
Then elsewhere on the album, Kayps turns those ideas back towards himself and starts asking questions about his own relationship with his culture, including the incredibly vulnerable line, “Am I an imposter in my own culture?”
That is what makes the record feel so much bigger than simply an album about one young artist’s life.
Kayps is telling his story, but that story exists because of the people who came before him, the community around him and the history they collectively carry. And despite how heavy some of that history is, the album never reduces his community to trauma either. There is humour, pride, family, confidence and celebration running through it as well.
That was the album we were now getting to hear live.
BUNUBA BABY Live
Kayps ended up performing the album from start to finish, which I think was probably the best way he could have approached this show.
This isn’t really an album where I would want him to pick five or six songs, move them around and fit them between older tracks just because those songs might get a bigger reaction.
The sequencing is such an important part of BUNUBA BABY because there is a story developing across the record, and performing it in order allowed us to experience that journey again in a completely different setting.
Kayps brought good energy throughout the performance and the band behind him was incredibly tight, which gave some of these songs a different kind of life compared with hearing them on the record.
But once again, what really made the performance work was the relationship between what was happening on stage and the people standing in front of it.
The crowd wasn’t huge, but every person in that room seemed to genuinely care about what they were witnessing. People were listening to the quieter moments, reacting to the bigger ones and giving Kayps the kind of energy back that these songs deserved.
And honestly, I would take that over a bigger room where half the people aren’t paying attention any day.
Kayps also performed a song that didn’t make the final version of BUNUBA BABY, which was interesting because although I thought the song itself was good, hearing it alongside everything else actually made me understand why it didn’t make the album.
It wasn’t really about the quality of the song. It just didn’t feel as necessary to the larger story.
When you have an album that is this focused and where almost every song seems to have a reason for existing exactly where it does, sometimes leaving a good song out is actually a better decision than forcing it onto the tracklist.
I would still love to see Kayps release it as a standalone single at some point though, because outside the context of the album, there is definitely something there.
The set eventually closed with “Black Fellah”, which Kayps has used as the closer for a lot of his shows and felt like a fitting way to finish this one too.
By the end of the night, what stayed with me wasn’t necessarily one particular song or moment, but just how much talent had been packed into this relatively small room in Fitzroy.
Squid the Kid is already writing some incredible songs and now needs the time and live experience to become as comfortable on stage as he sounds on record.
Ricky Neil Jr. completely caught me off guard and gave one of the most captivating live performances I’ve seen in a long time. I genuinely think he has the charisma and performance ability to command stages considerably bigger than the one we saw him on here.
And then there is Kayps.
When we reviewed BUNUBA BABY, one of the biggest things I took away from the album was that Kayps’ growth isn’t simply about becoming a better rapper. He was already good at that.
The growth is in understanding what he wants his music to say.
There were not hundreds of people standing inside Open Bar that night, and maybe a few years from now Kayps, Ricky and even Squid will be playing rooms considerably bigger than this one.
But there is something special about seeing artists at this stage, when the rooms are still small enough that the separation between the people making the music and the people supporting it almost disappears.
Because BUNUBA BABY was never really about how big the room could become.
As the album itself reminds us, money comes and goes, but your community is forever. And on this night in Fitzroy, the community showed up.