Hilltop Hoods State Of The Art

Hilltop Hoods is an Australian hip hop group that formed in 1994 in Adelaide, South Australia. The group's founders are Suffa (Matthew David Lambert) and MC Pressure (Daniel Howe Smith), who were joined by DJ Debris (Barry John M. Francis) after fellow founder, DJ Next (Ben John Hare), left in 1999. The group released its first extended play, Back Once Again, in 1997 and have subsequently released seven studio albums, three DVDs and a "restrung" version of the 2006 album, The Hard Road.

Four of their albums peaked at number one on the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) Albums Charts: The Hard Road (2006), State of the Art (2009), Drinking from the Sun (2012) and Walking Under Stars (2014). Three tracks have reached the top 10 on the ARIA Singles Chart—"Chase That Feeling" (2009), "I Love It", featuring Sia (2011) and "Higher", featuring Jason Chatburn (2015)—while "Cosby Sweater" (2014) became the group's first-ever top 5 ARIA single on 15 November 2014.

Hilltop Hoods have toured both in Australia and overseas, including playing at music festivals: T in the Park, Oxegen, the Big Day Out, Clipsal 500, Southbound, The Great Escape, Splendour in the Grass, Bassinthegrass, Groovin' The Moo, Falls Festival, Pyramid Rock Festival, Rollercoaster, Come Together Festival and Make Poverty History.

At the ARIA Music Awards of 2006 they won "Best Independent Release" and "Best Urban Album" for The Hard Road. In 2007, they won "Best Urban Album" for their remix album, The Hard Road: Restrung (2007). They won the same category in 2009 for State of the Art and in 2012 for Drinking from the Sun. In 2009, Debris also won "Engineer of the Year" for his work on State of the Art.

The first preview of the band's seventh studio album, Walking Under Stars, was uploaded to the Hilltop Hoods SoundCloud page on 21 June 2014, and the Golden Era Records album was released in partnership with the Universal music company on 8 August 2014. The band received their seventh ARIA award in 2014 when Walking Under Stars won in the Best Urban Album category at the 28th ARIA Awards.