HIP HOP
SMOKEY MORY BAZ JOHNNY WELFARE
ROGUE POETS Interview: Michael Fortune
I’m saying to you now, fucking five years ago it was definitely a different fucking landscape when it came to Irish hip hop music. SMOKEY: It was kind of dark as well cos Working Class was just running the circuit and everybody was trying to replicate Working Class. MORY: It was just dominated by Working Class records. S: GI was running it with Costello and Lethal Dialect. GI in particular uses that multiple syllable style and if you didn’t know multi-syllables and you weren’t rapping about Dublin city being a shit place, you were just a weird rapper! M: I still regard the lads who were making music five years ago as the better artists still. I don’t think anyone has done anything better than what they did yet. I just think what’s being done now is more approachable and people are actually listening to Irish hip hop. With the lads out there who are doing their thing now, it’s at a much more professional level. Their video quality is incredible, the production quality is incredible. S: I think creative industries have also
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grown up. There’s more people doing videos that want to get involved. M: Dublin is at the point now where it’s about to explode into something that can be beautiful and if everybody can get together and get behind that idea, there’s no limit to the potential to what Dublin can create. I can see so many people around me right now that are doing so much more than ever before. Everyone’s kind of forging their own path. Whether it’s in the media, magazines, music, photography, videography, everyone’s doing their thing right now and we just want to get a whole buzz going. Get people together and behind the movement. S: I’ve always kinda put it down to like, I think our generation is, not to sound cheesy but like, the generation of dreamers. Our parents wouldn’t have done this. Whereas we’re going to college now and we’re seeing opportunities and we’re taking hold of them. We’re coming into a more artistic age now than say 20 years ago. S: As well as that, subject matter has changed. It’s shifted. Kojaque has broken the barrier. He’s after coming out with this - it’s not essentially party music neither but it’s more emotional. It’s talking about ex-girlfriends and stuff. It’s not about drug dealers and gangs and shit. M: it’s about being a more normal Dublin lad. It’s about the session, being a bloke, troubles, and all that kind of stuff.
S: That’s it - it’s more relatable. And with Versatile, funny as it is, it’s also kinda relatable. It’s all about the session with them and that’s something that everybody does. It’s fucking relatable as shit. As great as Working Class was, you want to be at a session blaring Ketamine. M: Humour in Irish hip hop has always been very successful in Ireland. Cute hoorism is the best variety. I think Rubber Bandits are the two funniest men in Ireland. S: Even TPM are after coming out now. Fuck RTE? Man I blared that tune at least eight times the day it came out! I fuckin fell in love with that song. M: Irish hip hop is a young man’s game now as well. The balance has shifted greatly from who had the attention five years ago and who has the attention now. The taste of what people want in Irish hip hop. There’s so much more people listening to Irish hip hop than there was five years ago. Five years ago they still had this awful mentality. S: “I don’t wanna hear the Dublin accent” M: They can’t listen to it. I’m a very, very firm believer of always using your own accent. S: It’s keeping it real. It’s literally keeping it real. M: If you’re playing a character, do
what you want. But if you’re rapping as yourself, I’m a firm believer in using your own accent. Everyone in every country raps the way they are. Why should we be the suckers who have to piggy-back off a style. The problem is when everybody raps in American accents, it doesn’t give our scene any foundation whatsoever. When we are just copying and imitating something else, we will never be able to have the renaissance that we truly need. S: We can’t be jackin’ off other scenes because other scenes that had their renaissance didn’t do that themselves. At the end of the day, you’re from a city or a country and you can choose either to represent that or represent something else.
First time I met Mory we were rap battling. M: Yeah he called me out for a rap battle. S: It was fucking shockin, he murdered me, it was bad. M: But like I was still really bad as well. Just that little bit less worse than Smokey. S: That’s it. The Wispa Gold wrapper, do you remember that? Fuckin hell. M: At first we were just messing around. We were still just solo artists having a bit of a laugh and then we kept
