When Adelaide rapper Claz found out his mother was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, he started work on a tender hip-hop record to ensure her name would be forever ingrained in the city’s consciousness.

The Son of Lilian opens and closes with soundbites of Clarence, whose stage name is Claz, as a baby, gurgling to his mother, Lilian. These were times when the only worries the rapper had revolved around sleeping and being fed.

‘The Son of Lilian’ record sleeve

Young Claz also features on the record cover. The photograph captures the musician as a toddler, wearing a moss green Snow White pullover sweater and sporting a brown bowl cut. His mum, Lilian, wears a green, knitted, turtleneck jumper, and lovingly cradles her smiley son.

Claz is decades-older now, but it was only recently he was forced to grow up, when his mum was diagnosed with a serious illness he asked CityMag not to share. But Claz knew he had to “100 per cent show up” for her at the Royal Adelaide Hospital when she was unwell and undergoing treatment.

Creating The Son of Lilian was part of Claz’s process of healing from this tumultuous time in he and his mum’s life. The record is a bewildering and deeply expressive work that etches Lilian, who is now out of hospital and doing well, into the minds of anyone who listens. It’s an ode to the relationship between a son and a single mother, drawing on many decades but honing in on specific, sparkling memories.

“I was like, ‘Man, I want my mum to be remembered forever’,” Claz tells CityMag.

“At the end of 2020, my mum got sick and there was a period of two weeks where we just didn’t really know what the future held. Around that time, I really started to think about the whole passage of life: we’re born, we live, we have experiences, we do this and we do that, and then before you know it, you’re just a piece of history.

“What you do defines how much you’re remembered, and that really stuck with me. I want someone in 100 years be able to say her name, speak her name. I want her to be a legend. I want her name to ring through eternity. I just want to stamp her legacy onto this earth with everything that she’s done, I want to speak her story.

“That’s where the whole idea came from. I was like, ‘Shit, I want to make an album’.”

Through referential, rumbling lyrics, The Son of Lilian paints a picture of Lilian as a single Filipina mother who cooked in restaurants to pay rent for she and her son’s northern suburbs housing trust homes.

Claz says Lilian also repatriated money back to extended family in Manila, the Philippines’ capital. She was always “on the grind”, he says, looking out for her parents and her son, who was a normal but sometimes “selfish” teenager that used music-making as a way of passing the time while she worked.

Sonically, The Son of Lilian is a mercurial record, spanning from dizzying, 808-filled house heaters to languid, soulful jazz-steeped singles. Claz’s love for his mother, and the richness of their relationship, is evident in the visceral stories threaded throughout the record.

The opening song, ‘Son Rise’, includes the lyrics ‘See mama, if you bleed I’m bleeding too’ and ‘You raised me with love and I’ll rise as your son’, which, over discordant piano samples, paints a portrait of Claz’s duty to be present for Lilian as she battled her illness.

“I didn’t really want to be awake,” he says of the early days.

“I just tried to sleep as much as I could and I didn’t want to face the reality. After that, I started to realise I needed to be a beacon of strength. It was my time to show up – one hundred per cent. This is my moment where I have to be there.”

The hospital quickly became Claz’s second home. Despite his constant presence, the treatment wards frightened him. He felt death lurking around the corner.

“It’s quite confronting,” Claz says.

“Literally life and death is passing right there. It’s intense. You’re making these big decisions as well. And I’m getting looked at to help with these big decisions, and you’re just like, ‘Shit, I’m not ready for this stuff’.

“It just goes back to the whole thing of me taking accountability, of me being her son.”

Like Claz, I have a strong relationship with my mum, which may explain why his record has hit so deeply with me. I share this thought with the artist, and he replies we are not alone.

There is a special bond between many parents and children, but it’s often taken for granted. Sometimes it takes a moment of crisis to realise the fragility of these relationships – and the fragile mortality of our parents.

“If you can get that perspective without having to endure or encounter the painful experience of a bad sickness or a bad diagnosis, then that’s what we should all be trying to achieve,” he says.

Discover more of the city’s sounds here.

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