Rogue Poets Interview

Interview: Michael Fortune

February 14, 2019

Image: Sarah Jane Kehoe

SMOKEY: 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.

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 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.

S: 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 making a few more tunes and we were like “let’s just do this!”. When you put all of us in the same room, we’d just working together. When we go off on our own you find that we just get too fucking lazy. Can’t pull the finger out to get shit done. When we’re always around each other, we get it done. And we’ve been artists on our own for so long that we’ve had years to forge who we are as individuals so I think Rogue Poets is the four of us coming together and fusing that. We don’t really have a hive mind so we’re never gonna be one thing.

S: That’s the thing, we’ve been doing it so long individually that the four of us coming together, it’s almost like a beautiful clash if you know what I mean. Like it fuckin’ works!

Image: Sarah Jane Kehoe

S: You listen to the mix tape man, it’s diverse (Róg Tapes Vol.1). Every track is a different story. It’s a different buzz, it’s a different craic.

M: We are three different MCs with three different approaches, which gives it that uniqueness. When we’re creating songs, we’re trying to pick a subject. There’s a lot of serendipity involved. Lots of happy accidents. Everyone throws an idea into the mix and the song is borne out of that. Shinobi is that typical, bragadocious, “I’m here, look at me” hip hop.

S: Karpackie is really strange. Probably the biggest brain fart we ever had. It was so beautiful how it came together cos I’m producing my solo project Live From Somewhere and I had like every other beat made, there was just one beat I couldn’t get right. And then I finally got it right and I was like “lads I want yous to listen to this”. So I play the beat and the samples playing and Mory goes “ah fuck off Smokey”. I said “what you mean?” and he just goes “listen to this”. Plays a trap beat with the exact same sample in it. Next thing I just start spitting a verse. I fucking come out with “Karpackie, Karpackie, smoke hash with your nanny” and next thing it’s fuckin’ born!

M: He was using his voice differently and he wasn’t feeling it at all. We were just like “no man just do it, just do it, it actually sounds real cool, it works.

S: I was taking the piss man! I was dancing this shit! It was the biggest pisstake ever - I sound like I’m nearly crying!

M: When I showed my granny the song, we were in the car driving around and I played the song and my Granny goes “He sounds like a pigeon who’s found a nice piece of bread and he’s looking at it there like “Ooh! Ooh!”

S: It’s trappy and it’s fun and people love it but then when you actually analyse the lyrics there’s a few serious points in there!

M: The song is just about Karpackie though at the end of the day.

S: Too right!

M: And then Fool’s Gold, that’s just the darker, political shit. And then Jazz Cabbage was like a Cypher tune, where we all just come up with verses. And then, well Submission! Submission is a fucking unreal tune.

S: It’s just me rapping about patsy man.

M: And the trials and tribulations of trying to give it up, and then everyone saying you’re soft and then “come on, get back on, you’re grand”. It’s a fucking incredibly accurate description of the trials and tribulations of being a man who sniffs a bit too much well.

S: I feel like I caught it well. Since I started college, techno was usually the thing. Majority of nights that you go out to, it’s usually techno based. So techno and drugs are going hand-in-hand. Drugs have always been a problem with Irish youth but everyone’s doing them now. That’s part of the reason why I wrote Submission - because I had such a big problem with coke you know what I mean? But I wasn’t the only one in my friend group. There was probably six other heads going through the same shit. That was just my immediate friend group so think of everybody else who’s going through that. It’s a very relatable thing to talk about but it’s also on the darker side of things cos people don’t really wanna hear that.

M: For me the aim of the label (Róg Records) was first off to create a platform for ourselves. A label kind of unifies a scene. You could have all of us from around the same area, doing the same stuff collaborating with each other, but when we unify under the same label, it’s kind of “all for one and one for all. We’re in this together and if one of us is succeeding it means we’re all succeeding”

S: We’re trying to touch everything and have a nice charm about it as well. I want people that are going for the same end goal as me, to be with us. That’s essentially what Róg Records is to me. Just a load of respectable people doing the same thing, having the same love for it.

M: We want to promote a more positive message as well. Hip hop in Ireland, it can be quite cliquey. There’s not enough support between people in the scene. We want to send off a message, we want to create a unity in Irish hip hop.

S: With the solo EP (I call it Live From Somewhere), I’m gonna write the lyrics me self, produce the beats me self, apart from one. Every song leads into the next story. I’ve based the whole thing in a room with that after-sessiony buzz. Everybody had that one mate when you were younger that you’d go back to theirs. The ma lets you smoke a few joints in the sitting room - grand. And you just talk bollocks you know what I mean? And those five songs are essentially the shite talk. It goes from stories, to happy/funny buzz, to kinda sad, to reminiscent. You’re almost on a rollercoaster. I’m trying to replicate that after-sessiony, few-joints-in shite-talk in between to really tie it together. I’m going for oldschool, boom bap, fuckin’ funky.

M: I’ve got my solo project which I’m working on as well which is gonna be self-produced. I’ll be going for a completely different sound from Smokey though. He’s kicking old-school 90’s beats. I’m going for the deep liquid trap. Nice 808’s, loads of high hats. And my lyrical content is very much a wakeup call to Ireland. Cos shit’s fucked up.

S: Very.

M: And I feel like Yeats, when he wrote September 1913, completely disillusioned with Irish society and the lack of romanticism, and fighting an oppressive ruler essentially. But I’m not gonna be writing it in a very political way that’s difficult to listen to. I’m gonna be tackling issues that are literally effecting everybody and when they hear what I have to say they’re gonna be very much in agreement.

S: Myself and Johnny Welfare are gonna be releasing a beat EP of just hip hop instrumentals. And Bazzy’s working on his solo stuff as well. He’s actually got a dance EP that he’s gonna be releasing. Dom Slinky. And Bazzy also has a solo hip hop thing he’s working on too. With Bazzy - Massive Attack is his thing. Plus, he’s Greek! So that’s also something to keep in mind. He’s quite experimental and the Mediterranean in him definitely comes out in it.

M: Fuckin’ right it does.

S: So within the next year there should be nearly ten bodies of work on Róg Records.

Image: Sarah Jane Kehoe

S: The first show we ever did was the Lighthouse. It was the first Bodytonic gig and we sold it out. 250 was the capacity and we kept letting people in.

M: The Lighthouse is great because we’ve been crying out for a buzz in Dun Laoghaire for so long. Up until the Lighthouse started doing these gigs, pubs were closed at half 12 and that’s it, everybody home. But now the Lighthouse can go on ‘til half 2, even 3 with the late license. But it’s the only venue in Dun Laoghaire so we’re definitely gonna make sure to give it space. We don’t want to play to the same audience again two weeks later. We want to make sure that we keep spreading it out to newer places and newer things.