Deceptikonz rapper Alphrisk on overcoming ice and finding new purpose

Taupe Daniel "Alphrisk" Maoate – the self-described quiet one in his Cook Island family – found his voice in the seminal hip hop group Deceptikonz.

The group had a big impact on Aotearoa New Zealand's music industry, helping usher in a new era for local hip hop at the beginning of the 2000s.

Savage, Mareko, Alphrisk, and Devolo emerged from the underground of South Auckland as a four-man crew, finding commercial radio and chart success.

"We've got Mareko and Sav who are Samoan, Devolo who is Tongan, and myself who is Cook Island," Alphrisk told Days Like These.

While he is close with his hip hop brothers, they're in the dark about an important detail. 

For years, Alphrisk had been addicted to crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice.

At the peak of his international travelling, he would put "work first", describing himself as a "high-functioning addict".

"I can vividly remember flushing some down the toilet. You know [thinking] I'm not flying with this.

"Discipline like that stops you from getting caught."

Alphrisk could have used his addiction as writing material but kept quiet. He had a facade to maintain at home.

"Doing the drugs, you want to feel like you're about that life," he said.

"And so when you're doing the music, it's more authentic. I'd hear about other dudes doing their street thing.

"[But] my family was very proud of me. You know, I had to live up to that.

"So to say that I was doing drugs… that would have changed the way my family looked at me and I think that's how it is in Polynesian culture.

After forming in 1996 following rap battles in the schoolyard, the hip hop group said goodbye in 2010 with their final Dawn Raid album, Evolution: Past, Present, Beyond.

In 2015, Alphrisk moved his family, children and mother to Brisbane. But without the business of working in the music industry, his addiction grew.

"Then it started getting to a point where you know you're taking days off work to support your habit," he said.

"Or you need to sleep... I let the kids have days off from school. I couldn't drop them off. You know, I didn't have the energy or couldn't be stuffed getting up.

The tipping point was a family brawl involving Alphrisk and his brother, and his mother finding out he had a drug problem.

"Before you know it, we've got two by fours and we're trying to whack each other," he said.

"Then my mum comes out. She's kind of had enough. Our partners and our kids are outside and... you got kids crying. It just looked really bad… and when I'm trying to comfort my mum, she doesn't want to talk to me. She's just had enough.

"She's just realised that we've painted a picture of how nice Australia is, but we've actually shown her how ugly it looks with the way that we were acting.

Alphrisk put down the pipe, began volunteering with a local organisation feeding the homeless, and dedicated his life to his Christian faith. 

He also moved into counselling, bringing street-level experience to his work with youth at risk in Brisbane. Eight years on, Alphrisk remains drug-free.

While music has taken a back seat, Alphrisk remains a long-serving member of Deceptikonz. The hip hop crew released a new album independently called In Perpetuity in December last year.

But his faith does make him pickier about which tracks he'll lend his voice to, and sobriety aside, Alphrisk recognises the pull ice still has.

Sometimes he breathes in a lung full of air and it actually tastes like he's back on the pipe.

"There's always gonna be things... to entice me. I just kind of hold dear to what my purpose is now," he said.

"The streets were always about being honest, being loyal, still holding the same codes of loyalty... but you know, I'm just loyal to different things now.

"I still hold some of those values, but I just shine them in a different light.

"I want to be a living example of going through that and then being able to change. [I'm] living by the same code but just shifting it."