This month Hilltop Hoods is bundling up, hitting the clubs and going back to square one.

It's definitely a contrast to what we're doing here (in Australia)," says Daniel Smith, a.k.a. MC Pressure, speaking over the phone from his home country. "But it's kind of good at the same time. It keeps you grounded having to work from ground zero again ... it kind of reminds us of how good we've got it here."

Over the last seven years, Hilltop Hoods has led the charge to bring homegrown hip hop to the Australian mainstream, long after rap stars began invading the airwaves in North America.

When the group started out in 1991, the Aussie scene consisted primarily of club DJs spinning U.S. acts like Run DMC, Public Enemy and Big Daddy Kane.

"There wasn't many Australian hip-hop acts putting on shows; there was probably only one in the city and a small handful of other dudes in the mid-90s around the rest of Australia putting on concerts of their own," Smith says.

Hilltop Hoods took advantage of open mic nights around its hometown of Adelaide to build a following and slowly fashioned its American influences into something fresh and positive.

The group's persistence would pay dividends after 12 years of hard work, when two singles from its 2003 album The Calling unexpectedly found heavy rotation on a national radio station.

[color=red]"Everything just sort of snowballed for us from there and we kind of blew up," Smith says. The group's follow-up The Hard Road hit No. 1 on the Australian Recording Industry Association charts, making them Australia's first bona fide rap superstars.

With its latest album State of the Art also topping domestic charts and earning rave reviews, Smith and company have brought not only recognition, but also respect to the Aussie hip-hop scene.

"Media ... never really took hip hop seriously until five years ago. It's taken a while for us to kick down a lot of doors and break a lot of barriers to make people stand up and take notice," he says.

Hilltop Hoods is now building something of a hip-hop empire. They've paired up with the Australian government on the Hilltop Hoods Initiative, which awards a $10,000 grant to one hip hop act each year (selected by the Hoods themselves), and they recently started their own label, Golden Era Records, to lend an additional hand to up-and-coming talent.

Thanks to their efforts, the scene is starting to thrive. "At the end of the day it's not just that we're passionate about the music, but what's good for us is good for everyone else as well," Smith says.

He hopes the Aussie scene can continue to spread a positive vibe and take lessons from rap's pioneers rather than the gun-toting, materialistic stars running their mouths on today's MTV.

"The scene in Australia is younger, it's a lot less commercial-driven and I guess hasn't been exploited yet and hopefully won't be as badly as hip hop has been in America," he says.

"Hopefully we can get nurtured and keep it sort of where it is; or get it to grow slow enough that it doesn't get ruined all over."