Baker Boy on naming his album for his grandmother: ‘She was the reason that I fell in love with hip-hop’

Baker Boy … ‘I wanted to build music that gives courage and confidence to people like me – to go chin up and chest out, and move straight through.’ Photograph: Michelle Grace Hunder/The Guardian

In the late 1980s, Danzal Baker’s grandparents, Djandjay and Robert, honeymooned in Hawaii and Los Angeles. They returned to their home in Arnhem Land with souvenirs that would reverberate through generations: a Fred Astaire film on VHS and some early hip-hop vinyl records. Baker’s dad and uncle, Josiah and Jeremiah, would mute the TV and watch Astaire dance to Grandmaster Flash, a pastime that inspired them to found the Baker Boys dance group. Later, Josiah showed his son Danzal the mashup. Now Danzal is widely known as Baker Boy – one of the country’s most innovative, successful and beloved hip-hop artists.

“[Djandjay] was the matriarch in the family. She was always the loud one, the proud one. Always boisterous energy and had no shame. When there’s music on, she stands up, starts dancing,” says Baker. “I definitely inherited her will, being positive, bringing everyone together and having no shame, sharing language and culture. She was the reason that I fell in love with hip-hop.”