Dubbing herself “Australia’s Badeśt,” the rapper has the chops, work ethic and attitude to take it all the way. We spoke with Vv and her producer UTILITY (née Austin Benjamin) as they got back in the studio after their debut tour of Europe in early 2026, a tour realised with support from Music Australia’s Export Development Fund.

^{Photo: Jade D'Amico} 
Vv, who is of South Sudanese heritage, grew up in Merrylands and Guildford in Sydney’s west, before moving to Mount Druitt at “age 12 or 13,” where she still lives. She reps “Mounty” at every opportunity (the diverse area’s famously a fertile ground for local rap, spawning acts like Australia’s biggest drill group ONEFOUR) and credits living there with finding her self-confidence as an artist.

It's just the area… it just builds you into this person… The influence Mount Druitt has on me is definitely independence, confidence.

“First of all, everyone's super nice in Mount Druitt,” Vv says. “I don't know what they say in the news. Most people there – especially artists, rappers – when you tell someone ‘I'm an artist’, most people in the area will support you, but you'll have that certain percent that'll be like, ‘Why do you want to be an artist? Why should we follow you?’ So Mount Druitt will give you the confidence to prove yourself. I always tell people, before getting to that level where you're selling out shows, the street is where it's at. 

If you have respect from the street, you'll always make it in life. You've always got to have the block. Having Mounty on my back is a great support.

Vv started rapping in public from nine years-old at primary school, but it was when she connected with Mount Druitt’s Street University, a pioneering youth program teaching music, creative and business skills, that things started to take off. 

A fellow artist in her music class at school, Zion Garcia, convinced Vv to visit after school. That’s where she met local music champion and program coordinator Esky Escandor and started doing freestyles with other rappers, including a freestyle, over a Carns Hill drill beat, in front of members of ONEFOUR and hip hop royalty Hau Lātūkefu, who posted the clip to Instagram. That started everything.

“Street Uni, honestly, that's home. That's family,” says Vv. “That [freestyle] is what really boosted me up. That's when I started getting outreach, and then through that, I met UTILITY, we started collaborating and then here we are today.”

Vv has a keen eye for branding – her fans are dubbed “Varvies”, and her music videos have a distinctive visual language and professional polish. They’re also where “the whole gang comes out… They're all my friends. If there's, let's say 60 people, I at least know 40 or 45. The other 15 are friends of friends, but I consider them family too.”

Her beats, made by producer UTILITY and a vibrant roster of international collaborators, are born from the club, via London drill’s booming and sliding 808s, hyperpop, South African gqom, Brazilian baile funk, dembow and other influences. 

“I think V's running in this very unique, in terms of what we are doing in particular, intersection between club music and rap music,” UTILITY says.

“I feel like our beats consider authenticity, consider culture,” Vv adds. 

I feel like culture is really where it's at. That's the key to everything.

“Austin and I come from two [different] worlds, so it’s bringing that together and presenting that as ‘Varvie’ music to who we’re collaborating with.”

“We just nerd out, basically,” UTILITY adds, “and talk about what we're both into, look into those worlds and consider the people who are key in making those new styles of music, and then reach out to them and see if they want to collaborate and try to make it less of an imitation of that style and more of a collaboration on building something new.”

The result is an international sound that marries with Vv’s trilingual rapping in English, Arabic and French. The 'Varvie' sound is boosted by collaborations with artists like South Africa’s Foundation Boys, Dominican producer Kelman Duran, Brazil’s Clementaum, London-via-Lagos rapper Deela, South Carolina rapper Lisha G, and uber-cool Parisian producer Brodinski.

Vv and UTILITY are now starting to make waves in the wider world – they have just come back from their very first European tour, hitting London, Berlin, Paris, Glasgow, Brussels and Prague. 

The tour grew out of their working relationship with Brodinski, who they had linked up with over DMs and who is known for finding and nurturing emerging talent, especially in the rap game. 

Messaging over socials with Brodinski led to two co-produced tracks, Go Dumb on Vv Pete’s first mixtape Varvie World and Telephone on Brodinski’s latest album Mono City – plus a remix of Mashallah. 

“Brodinski is very collaborative in the way he works,” UTILITY says. “And a lot of the way we work with international producers is trying to build long-term, genuine relationships, that we can just continue collaborating.”

When Trackwork, the label founded by UTILITY, was celebrating its fifth birthday at the Sydney Opera House, they invited Brodinski to come and DJ. He returned the favour when they played his Mono City album launch in Paris in February; they also linked up with taste-making Berlin electronic music festival and conference CTM, which led to Vv Pete and UTILITY playing Berghain’s Panorama Bar.

“I went straight into the crowd. Everyone walked out sweating,” Vv says. 

If you didn't bring a towel, you had to use your hands to wipe the sweat. It was insane.

“It was [also] incredible just seeing Europe for the first time. I'd always hear about how Europe is where it's at musically and culturally, so going there with my team was really, really fun. It was amazing. I fell in love with Paris.”

“It was an incredible tour,” UTILITY adds. “It went such a long way in building this very real cultural exchange and we got so much out of it, whether it was playing radio shows, mixes, playing the venues. 

“We were connecting with a whole new network of people that made sense for our music. We're currently trying to develop steps towards the next time we'll go over there, hopefully alongside ADE (Amsterdam Dance Event, the electronic music festival and conference) in October.”

When we got back, it was just really obvious how beneficial the whole trip had been.

^{Photo: Jade D'Amico}
While in Paris, Brodinski connected the pair with producers from his circle to write together, including Modulaw, 3headedmamba (“she’s a great producer, really cool,” Vv says) and King Doudou (“he provided some things that are very, as we call it, Vavafied, which is very in a Vv [style],” says UTILITY). 

Those sessions will form the basis for a Vv Pete mixtape coming soon, but first is an EP slated for release later in 2026 that UTILITY describes as “an instructional EP.”

“When I write music, it's very instructional,” Vv says. “It's like ‘throw it, put your back into it, shake it, move it’. It's really instructional. As UTILITY and I were placing all the tracks together, he was like, ‘V, I just noticed all of these titles are ending with ‘It’: ‘you like it?’ ‘Move it, put your back into it’.’ 

“And we're like, well, why don't we just make a mini album and give the Varvies something? It's been a while since Varvie World. So we're currently working on that. It's going to be amazing. It sounds so good.”

Vv Pete: Instagram | Spotify
UTILITY/Trackwork: Instagram | website

The Music Australia Export Development Fund is a matched funding initiative designed to provide financial support to a diverse range of Australian artists at distinct phases of their international careers. Funding rounds occur four times a year.