Hustler - myphonesjump

When historians look back on what rap looked like in August 2026, there’s a chance they’ll mark this period as the UK Poo Era. Let your eyes glaze over a string of Instagram Reels and you’ll find videos of low-effort, high-meme potential raps. Well, now it’s a full-on epidemic.

myphonesjump’s snippet came out in the middle of all these shenanigans. Somewhat unfairly, it got lumped into the pile of poo with it’s auto-generated captions and in-your-face delivery. Unlike UK poo, however, it’s actually really good. The lyrics have been running around my head all month. “I’m a hustler/ I get dopamine when I am dealing to a customer/ I’ve been pushing weight but not the type to get you muscular” he spits, with an air of nonchalance. Just flat-out good raps with zero fluff. The other snippets he’s been teasing sound very good too, like one where he’s rapping over 2 Unlimited’s Get Ready For This (“My runner said he lost the pack, I told him it’s calm, you’re doing up five nights at Freddy’s”). One to keep an eye on.

SUN KISS - TUIDE

K-Pop label HYBE, known for managing BTS and NewJeans, debuted their newest girl group this month, TUIDE. It sounds all very industry standard until you learn that Yi Hani, the youngest of the group is from Fermanagh. What??? Obviously something this ridiculous piqued my interest and so I needed to check this out. It’s not one hundred percent clear if she is from Fermanagh though, the best I can find is that she moved to England when she was six. These rumours are made even more confusing by K-Pop blogs only ever referring to her as “British”, but we’ll take what we can get and it did give me a chance to check out K-Pop as a genre, a sound that I’ve steered clear from in the past.

I look at K-Pop the same way I do pugs: manufactured to please us humans to the point that they become a perverse simulacra of cuteness. (Although I think if you gave a pug a guitar it would make better music than most K-Pop groups.) SUN KISS is a fairly breezy song and it’s got a cute beat to it that’s interpolated from a Brazilian bossa-nova/house song. It’s catchy and would make a good summer song (if it was still summer).

The video is fine too, even if it is a downstream of whatever aesthetics have been used up by the pop it-girls. We’ve got gorpcore, Y2K, and giallobrutalism all wrapped up in a neat package. The most infuriating part of the song is the outro, which flips the beat into a slick garage remix that just makes me wish that was the full song. Was there really only enough in the budget for half an Amen Break? Come on guys!

As much as I’ve been having fun dunking on this ultimately harmless pop song I should admit that I’ve had the song stuck in my head since I first heard it. And if I have to listen to mid music to support a Celtic sister then I’ll listen, goddammit!

5 Cell Phone - Bigsticktom

If Nirosta Steele is getting his dues for a magnificent album that was very nearly lost to time, maybe we should be reappraising Bigsticktom as well. 5CellPhone is a song from 2014 and it sounds like it. Sparkly plugg production, reminiscent of early Working on Dying beats, underscores BigStickTom’s aggro-flexes — “Three a.m, Mickey D’s, grab a burg-ah!”. It’s the type of thing that should have killed back in the day and, if times were different, he would be the biggest thing since Bobby Schmurda. But, thanks to The Bless’d Algorithm, his videos have found a new lease of life, peaking when he opened for xaviersobased. In a different life we would all be singing “Twisting up on public sidewalks, fuck the law!” at the top of our lungs as he headlines Longitude.

BABY DOLL - okgutta

Rapping on Crystal Castles typebeats feels like it’s overdone already (thanks fakemink) but okgutta’s pessimism is the perfect fit for the darkness of a fuzzy bass and icy synth. okgutta first caught my attention with his excellent album from last year, GOD (B)LESS AMERICA, a cacophony of cloud rap and aggressively shouted bars made up of drugs, sex and murder. His newest project from this month is a bit more focused on love and his interior emotions, but still just as nihilistic as his previous work. As he’s getting crushed by the glitzy beat, he tries to reconcile with an ex in sleazy-yet-honest terms. “I’m bad at romance, my only slow dance was a lap dance,” he admits. It’s the hopelessness of Monster-era Future put through the sleazepop blender, and the result is a cocktail that will give you the worst hangover you’ve ever had in your life.

Fire in the Streets Freestyle - Panch

The benefit of having a legendary English channel focus on the Irish rap scene is that it’s an outside perspective on what’s going on and you end up with some cool recommendations that you wouldn’t get otherwise. I haven’t heard of most of the artists that Charlie Sloth (or his boardroom) handpicked for his “Fire in the Streets: Ireland” edition but he’s done a good job here and Panch may just be the best of the bunch. His lines come thick and fast on skittish production, hitting a gallop so rapid that it feels like he’s about to lap the beat. I’ve been trying to put into words how to describe how good this is without stating the obvious but there’s no other way to put it. Excuse my Americanism, but it’s hard as fuck. Hopefully Fire in the Streets comes back to Ireland to put me on to some more good stuff (Skripteh and X35 deserve their flowers too!).

Gold - Armand Duplantis

In 2024, I was in France visiting family during the Olympics. On the fifth of August, Armand Duplantis, the best pole-vaulter alive, broke the world record and soared 6.25m in the air. The next morning, my dad bought a copy of L’Equipe, the legendary French sport newspaper, with Duplantis gracing the cover. Rising vertically and breaking through the frame of the photo, it’s an eye-catching front page that bid me to read it from cover to cover. That wasn’t the beginning of my love affair with L’Equipe. Each Olympic games prior I’d read about sports I knew nothing about written with such detail that I became instantly engrossed. I remember being caught up in the zeitgeist of Neymar joining PSG for an astronomical sum (and again when Messi did the same). My favourite profile perhaps ever was published in L’Equipe. It tells the story of Tatsuru Saito, the twenty-three year old judoka who lost against veteran Teddy Riner in the Olympic final, all in the shadow of his legendary father, who won two gold medals himself and passed away nine years prior.

The article is behind a paywall but if you skip to about 9:15 on this video you’ll see why it’s always stuck with me.

All of this to say that it’s only recently that I’ve realised how important L’Equipe has been on my own writing. It’s planted seeds that have only bloomed recently and inspires me to keep doing what I love. It’s weirdly uplifting how I can pinpoint an exact experience in my life that I can look back on and say Oh, so that’s how I turned out the way I am!

Anyway, Armand Duplantis, for an inexplicable reason, released a song this month and it sucks. But that’s okay. Somehow, Duplantis’ Kid Laroi impression made me think of where I’ve come from and where I’m yet to go.

And that’s all for August! I told you this blog would get weird. Let me know if I’ve put you on to something new and I’ll be back soon🫡

-Leo

In recent times, however, there seems to be a shift in pop culture, and artists have started to rebel against a sense of social depression by expressing earnestness and hope. On a recent episode of the New Yorker’s Critics at Large podcast, hosts Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry and Alexandra Schwartz analyse everything from Project Hail Mary to Love on the Spectrum to Lena Dunham’s memoir Famesick as evidence that audiences want big feelings and earnestness again. Schwartz describes the current moment as a “small reaction to the overwhelming sense that the people running things are cynics, liars and shitposters” and that the wave of earnest art is “an attempt to not succumb to some of that.”

If you’ve been paying attention to underground rap, you may have heard music that fits that description, rap that feels like it has a certain joie-de-vivre. In the UK underground, Feng’s nostalgia-tinted, adolescent anthems and Jim Legxacy’s diaristic bedroom pop are infused with sentimentality that still has its feet firmly on the ground. The American Dream is still alive in Nino Paid and Jaeychino songs, who’s tales of beating-the-odds are as optimistic as they are reflective. xaviersobased has accrued a large fanbase by being unabashedly himself. It goes without mentioning that MIKE, Earl Sweatshirt and Navy Blue are the forefathers of the modern expression of earnestness in rap, with their emotional, down-to-earth lyricism. Of course, rap has always been one of the most earnest and immediate forms of expression, but this new generation feels like a reaction to the vapid cynicism of the 2010s, where Lil Xan was calling Tupac “boring” and 6ix9ine was pissing people off for, well, being 6ix9ine.

If there’s anywhere that could do with a good dose of hope it’s Ireland. Despite having only four songs, earfzilla has already climbed the ranks as one of the figureheads of the Irish underground. He’s already racked up over 19k monthly listeners on Spotify in the span of a few months and he’s been getting co-signs that make it look like he’s speedrunning the Geese marketing playbook.

His music is pretty catchy; light and airy in the same vein as deathtoricky or Feng whilst documenting life as a youngster in Dublin (earfzilla recently turned eighteen, the same day he performed his first headline show). Listening to his music is like seeing the sun break through the clouds. Over the meditative synth plucks of round here, earfzilla raps “I don’t know what the day holds/ Probably the same old/ Same bus trip in the same clothes”, evoking the aimlessness of adolsescence. It’s all very lighthearted and breezy.

Along with earfzilla’s juvenile imagery includes a few words of affirmation, like when he raps “Get up and face your fears,” or his optimism on hennyinmytea when he says “Tryna chase feelings, tryna find meaning/ I haven’t found it, but I’m on my way.” But even with his happy-go-lucky energy I still feel like there’s something amiss.

On round here, earfzilla raps “And the kids got enough to pay the rent round here/ So we don’t end up dead around here”. Yes, you can blame the government for creating the situation where making rent is now a flex, but, to put it bluntly, it’s a little tone deaf. And this is where I take issue with earfzilla’s vision of hope. With his sound being too whimsical and without a sense that his feet are on the ground, it ends up sounding saccharine. As Schwartz from Critics at Large puts it, “Saccharine is something else […] Saccharine is lies. It’s kind of the opposite of earnestness.” earfzilla has the privilege to hope and dream in ways that most people can’t and his sensitive lyricism often feels too tender to be authentic. earfzilla doesn’t go through many struggles that would let us relate to him a bit more apart from a few ambiguous relationships with girls. (“If you wanna leave then it’s fine by me […] But I’m still thinking about you when I fall asleep,” is the most tension we get.) earfzilla can make a good song, and I love his newest earworm backroads, but the excessive twee-ness of his work leaves a sour (or perhaps too sweet) taste in my mouth.

Anyone familiar with the blog knows that I’m a big fan of survival, who, just like earfzilla, peppers his lyrics with inspirational quotes. When I interviewed survival and Ruka about the philosophy behind the duo’s music under the name Only Human, he said that “you’ve got all this emotion and feeling you grow up with and you just don’t know how to deal with it.” Music, for them, is a way to navigate youth and untangle their emotions, one song at a time.

On his recent album Have Faith, survival garnishes each song with pieces of advice. (“Go ahead and throw that punch, it will fix, like, everything”, “And you gotta spread the love when you can, that’s basic”, “Never date somebody who’d be rude to a waiter”.) The pure frequency of these messages often diminishes any meaning they could possibly have and as such they don’t always have the desired impact. survival is at his best when he can dodge a saccharine tone by incorporating personal experience and keep his guidance rooted in reality.

On album highlight Hitlist, survival offers more yin to his yang. On a moody, ambient synth, survival feels like he’s admitting defeat. “Felt like I had it all, then I lost everything/ I’ve been feeling like I’m done but I can’t split,” he muses, thumbing his wounds. On the second chorus, he lets the hihats skitter across the track, amping up the paranoia. These moments of introspection and darkness make his sense of hope and determination more potent. In the opening of the song, when he raps “I feel alive when I fall down”, you feel that maybe he does practice what he preaches. You start to believe that he has navigated the dark and found a light at the end of the tunnel, a sense of hope that bids him to keep going.

If being earnest is about opening up to feel big emotions again after being numbed down by an ever-present cloud of bleh, TOMOCOCKO wants to shake you out of your funk. His newest project, LEETLE, is a rocket going in all directions at joyous, supersonic speeds. On Meteor!, my favourite song of the year so far, he cranks up the nostalgia with the jingle of a Meteor phone ad accompanied by a gnarly bass drop that makes it sound like if Imagine Dragons were in the studio with Yeezus-era Kanye (complimentary). As balls-to-the-wall as this all sounds, TOMOCOCKO never loses focuses and uses the spotlight as a chance to uplift. “You feel one million emotions/All at the one time at the moment/And your face looks like you feel nothing at all, nothing at all, nothing at all,” he diagnoses. So what’s the cure?

On Tommunism (Jedi Anthem), TOMOCOCKO lets it all out with frantic energy. “Tell me what you hate about yourself, and then face it/ Tell me what they hate about you and then embrace it” he raps, horns blaring like you’re Rocky running through Philly. TOMOCOCKO takes a more political approach than his peers and openly calls out the people in power. “They sell this shit to you and it’s working/ They’re selling you the cure while they hurt you,” he chants. He sees the working-class as the ones who face the burden of a huge-scale misinformation campaign, pointing towards the contradictions of a “young fella with Tupac poster in his room/ at a far-right march smoking on a zoot.” It’s all very unpretentious and reminiscent of a pre-9/11 globalist era where we truly thought we could all live hand-in-hand together. Yes, you can argue that this all sounds a bit preachy, but I think it sounds more like TOMOCOCKO needs to let out all this pent up emotion and you’re in the front row to receive his sermon. It’s contagious and soon you start believing that there’s hope for a better tomorrow too. “Break the walls down!” he cries with the energy of Chuck D.

In an age that seems to be embracing big feelings again, it’s fun to see the youth of Ireland blazing their own path. Be it through inward reflection or larger-scale critiques of the system of capitalism that have drained us to this point, artists are detaching themselves from the too-cool-to-care attitude prevalent in rap. During the bridge of Meteor, as the music swells behind him, TOMOCOCKO sings as if he’s hit a revelation. “I feel everything! I feel everything!” he cries, eager to spread the word. Maybe we’re on the right path to feeling everything again too.

-Leo

My Way - phreshboyswag

Earlier this month, Freshblood held their third event, a gig with a host of underground rappers headlined by phreshboyswag. I had no interest in going and only saw clips of it online once it was done. In them, phreshboyswag stumbles across the stage and disassociates from the world around him. Breadzer, a rapper performing on the night, holds him up awkwardly while he stares off into the horizon. phreshboyswag is notorious for his struggles with drug addiction and brief spells of sobriety (a few hours before the show he asked on his Instagram if there was anyone selling xans) but it’s always on stage that his issues are clearest. I hope everyone in the audience still had a good time. I know the support acts had a good time taking selfies with phreshboyswag as if it was photographic proof that the Irish underground is #nextup. I met phreshboyswag, I’m never going to fail.

phreshboyswag is someone who never feels fully present, not just in his drug-induced catatonic state but in his outsider status in the underground. As a founding father of the jerk renaissance, he travelled to America and joined 1c34 and made a name for himself on bone-shuddering beats and spooky, synthy production.

After a very public debacle with his ex CLIP, in a Twitter spat that highlighted a toxic and often abusive relationship, phresh was exiled from the community he built in America. It’s still hard to decipher the truth in what was a very murky fallout — some of CLIP’s accusations were debunked and contextualised in a thread posted by phreshboyswag — but he was soon back in England as the sound had moved on without him. A foreigner in his own country, the prodigal son had returned to a place he did not recognise (I’d recommend reading Samuel Hyland’s brilliant piece about all of this, one of the best articles about the underground full stop).

As phresh looks for a new beginning, he’s become a bit of a nomad. His tours are extensive, covering everywhere from Estonia to Lithuania to Austria. “I’ve been flying to different countries trying to get away”, he raps in his signature drawl on My Way, from his highly anticipated album party boy which dropped this month. On the rest of the album, he boasts about his international lifestyle, especially on the album highlight Ran Away to USA. He’s hanging out with models in L.A., he attends Paris Fashion Week and he’s having a blast at raves. However, the more you listen, the more you sense the posturing and his lifestyle becomes less cosmopolitan and more like a man in exile.

He isn’t shy about his drug addiction (“I was doin’ all these drugs just to numb the pain”) and the most poignant moments across both Ran Away to USA and My Way are these moments of introspection. “I fucking hate the city, should I leave or should I stay?” he asks, although it’s unclear whether there is a place for him to leave to, or even to leave from. The last line on My Way is “Imma restart my whole life, I gotta flip the page”. But maybe his constant restarting in different countries isn’t the right course of action.

phresh recently vented on his Instagram about the constant judgement and attention he gets and how he wishes he could deal with his issues privately. He went on to say that he wished his fans could talk about the seventeen new songs he dropped instead. I respect it and I hope it means that he’s taking the right steps forward to recover. I know I’ve done a whole spiel that would largely be against his wishes but truthfully I’m usually apathetic towards him and I rarely even listen to his music.

In fact, my favourite song on the album doesn’t even have phresh rapping on it. The self-produced vision blurred at the rave is a steady march through heavy synths that can either sound like a victorious comeback or a rise from the grave. Just as he would like it to be, phresh lets the music speak for itself. It feels like even he wants to separate art from artist.

I can’t find a way to appropriately end this piece. I’m not going to pretend like I have any answers for phreshboyswag’s situation. The closest thing I have is a fortune I got from a Zoltar machine while I was in Montreal, where, just like phresh, I wanted to start a fresh life for myself. This is what it said: “You’ve been trying to figure out the best time to travel. You’re wondering if a business trip or vacation would be good. It is not fit that everyone should travel. You change your sky, not your mind, when you cross sea and land. A busy idleness possesses you; you seek a happy life, with ships, cars and planes: the object of your search is present within you”.

No Clicking - Ceejgang

I’m not going to pretend I’m remotely interested in New York drill. Once Pop Smoke died, there really wasn’t anyone else to get excited about. Fivio Foreign? Lil Mabu? Yes, sexy drill was fun when it had its moment in the sun but that got old fast. How foolish was I to ever doubt the immortality of drill. Ceejgang is a rapper that I found through the ever-so-trustworthy Instagram Reels algorithm. Ceejgang is so distinct, so unapologetic in her style that you don’t even care that you don’t understand a single word that she’s saying. The tempo here is off the charts and it gets hard to keep up with her flow, and when you don’t even know what she’s talking about, each rhyme and bit of alliteration pops that little bit more as it’s the only concrete thing you can hold on to. It reminds me a lot of the DMV crank scene that’s popping off right now too (Jaeychino’s album from this month is a banger and a good intro to the scene).

sold out shows - realyungphil ft. kwes e & kare

I’ve been really vibing with realyungphil’s newest project, so much so that it may be my AOTY so far. He has an ear for production and the producers he’s recruited are stellar, from an unexpectedly solemn beat from Wraith9 on can’t look back to a wavy kuru and ksuuvi co-construction on ayo ksuuvi. This track comes courtesy of Draingang affiliate Woesum. Across lush, orchestral production realyungphil boasts in his deadpan tone while kare and kwes e keep the energy up with witty bars (“Told my teacher I want to be kwes e when I’m older”). It’s a tale of flexing but there’s something about realyungphil’s down-to-earth persona and Woesum’s emotive sonic backdrop that makes it all feel deserved. Maybe you too can sell out a show in Sweden.

Surf Slowly - fearozzles & 2MANYCOLOURS

Who knew a furry singing as Gaeilge was what it would take to bring back hyperpop. Produced by 2MANYCOLOURS, who is consistently excellent, it’s a glitchy, glitzy, glossy time with some gnarly drops that can still strike a tender note. Naturally, this led me down a rabbit-hole of other furry artists. Furries rave hard as FUCK (I remember walking past a furry rave in Montreal after watching a hockey game in a bar and secretly wishing I had ditched the game) so don’t be surprised if this turns into a furry-exclusive blog in a month.

ill be there for you - amil raja

One of the things stopping me from liking the electroclash/indie sleaze/bloghouse/whatever-it’s-called revival is that it feels suspended in time with no real lineage. One of the first articles I wrote for this blog was how indie sleaze was built on empty signifiers made from Tumblr and Instagram posts that could only hint at what came before. amil raja’s music is so deeply entrenched within the DNA of UK grime and dubstep that it feels like the natural progression of the sound rather than a reflection of it. ill be there for you doesn’t feel a million miles off from a Ruff Sqwad grime tune with some Burial-esque sampling to garnish. It creates a much more grounded, much more regional sound that feels more nourishing then whatever anyone in New York is doing. It also has a cool video that may be my favourite of the year so far (it’s only after listening that I realised that amil raja is part of the “asian paper” collective, who are also responsible for the brilliant BURNERMUNDE YouTube channel. Imagine Chris Morris’ Jam but if it was about vapes and public masturbation).

That’s it for this month! I know this post has been a funny one with an extensive analysis of one artist, but it’s been on my mind for a while. I’ll see you guys again soon and, as always, let me know if I’ve put you on to something new.🫡

-Leo

BB BRINGUE - (D)Juno

Again, France proves it’s a hotbed of new talent with this song by the charismatic (D)Juno. It’s an rnb song that fits into the recent bongology wave, spearheaded by producers like panafriqana (who is responsible for this groovy beat) and rappers like luzyqv (check out his Carti flip on Maqila). Bongology is inspired by trap, coup-décalé and Congolese rumba, hence the handclaps and danceable tempo. The bongology style is delicately used on this and (D)Juno hits perfect melodies that remind me somewhat of Sampha when her fragile voice wavers at the end of each line. In all, it’s a cool and sexy anthem that works perfectly as we move into the summer months. Bongology looks like it could be the next big thing and (D)Juno knows just how to wind her sultry voice through the handclaps and sepia-tinted piano.

I first heard this song on a video for French radio station Skyrock’s series Planéte Rap, a classic rapper-and-a-microphone show, the type that has been spun off ad infinitum by the likes of On the Radar and more. I’ve grown tired of these formats and their gimmicks (Rocket Rese’s eye-rolling Chief Keef impression over a hardstyle beat being performed on a Backrooms-inspired set might just be the straw that breaks my back), so it’s refreshing to go back to basics and a hypeman shouting over the song and spamming siren effects always makes a song ten times better by default. On that note, here are three more Planéte Rap freestyles that I’ve been really into recently:

• SOURIS VERTE- Leoewski

  You know a freestyle will be good when the normies in the Instagram Reels comments are hating. Alongside a bone-shuddering bass, Leoewski maniacally raps in peak Franglais, getting more and more jitterish in his verbiage. “Show me a band ou sinon t’es un pussy now!” he raps, as the vein in his head gets closer to popping.

• High School - 63OG

  I’m not always on board with 63OG, a rising star in the French underground who popped up on Fimiguerrero’s album from 2024, but he does have his hits. His music is well inside the Glogang/Chief Keef revival sound (a sound that always reminds me that Chief Keef did it best) but this one is pretty good. He hits a nice head-nodding flow on this and Glogang songs always sound better live with a DJ to amp it up a notch.

• ABCD - Junior Bvndo

  Worth it just to see the presenter’s look of disappointment to hearing the hook (“A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z-Z-Z!!!”)

  • 

Like What? - Lil Shine

If there was anyone that was going to close out the pluggnb era, it was always going to be Lil Shine. Before he gets locked up for three years for impersonating doctors to get his hands on promethazine (what???), Shine proves that he’s the best to ever do it on his maximalist, lean-soaked album Get Rich or Die Sippin’. This is more of a personal thing, but I can’t listen to much pluggnb all at once and I find it gets very repetitive, very quickly. That’s not the case for Lil Shine, who croons some of his best melodies over glossy production. He’s definitely upped the budget on this project (Drake-inspired promos included) and this video for the runaway hit Like What? is no different. Stuck in a leaky warehouse with dancers doing flips like Kevin Bacon in that one scene in Footloose, Lil Shine flexes like there’s no tomorrow. “I grab the pint by the throat”, he sings, as if it was his Mjolnir, as the beat swells and sparkles. I hope the judge can look past Lil Shine’s past actions and lets him go early, because I need more of this.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time - Veeze

It’s funny how in a month where Drake, fakemink, Buckshot, Bladee and Lucki all dropped new albums, the best rap was on a tape of leaks. Detroit shit-talker Veeze’s tape Y’all Won is just a interlude before his next album due later in the year, but a loose format like this brings the best out of Veeze. He experiments with DS2-era Future autotune meltdowns on songs like Malice in the Palace and New Clothes or, like on this track, stretching his croaky vocals to the limit with wisecracking bars. Ludicrously witty lines like “Watered down-ass n****, like we washin’ collard green/ Give his hoe a collared shirt, make her do white collar scheme” come thick and fast, punched in and daring the audience to try keep up while Veeze keeps going apathetically, like he’s just been woken up from a nap. If this is him at his groggiest, the rappers he’s running laps around should be scared.

Machine - B0YG1RL, NOVAGANG

Novagang is dead.

That’s right, dead serious about making awesome music!

This month, NOVAGANG did the Simpsons bit irl on a Twitter post that at first seemed as if they were disbanding but was just a message to say they were grateful for the support and were looking forward to the future (cool, but please don’t start a message like that with “NOVAGANG: 2018-2026”). So what does the future of NOVAGANG sound like? Well, it sounds like fiendish Creole over apocalyptic baile funk and bouyon, courtesy of B0YG1RL’s sorcery. B0YG1RL are a Miami-based, Haitian-descended EDM duo made up of vocalist June Vinette and producer Angela Rio, and together they have joined forces with NOVAGANG heavyweight prblm to stomp their name into the underground. There’s an epidemic of underground rap that passively uses EDM sounds in an attempt to be louder and heavier (I am referring once more to Rocket Rese’s paradoxical hardstyle snoozer), but what B0YG1RL construct is a thunderous warzone that brings the rage back to rage rap. On Machine, a sparse baile funk beat clicks and bleeps as the bass rumbles under it like an earthquake. As the ground starts to open up, all June can muster are non-sequiturs like “ay ay ay” and “na na na”, a conclusion that ironically speaks to the immortal quality of NOVAGANG.

ANGEL - yeire13, Celine War

This month, we lost a legend in the Irish rap scene. Vexxodus has always been one of the most forward-thinking artists in Ireland. Whether it’s the overblown synth on Lullaby or the persistent bass and flow on Superficial, Vexxodus always had an ear for abrasive, experimental styles that made him a forefather of the Irish underground. I was in awe of him when he performed a cover of Say Something at Catacombs, as he sang, eyes closed, to the beat pulsing behind him. Performing seemed to be when he was in his element. After the show, he was nothing but nice to me and my girlfriend when we chatted briefly. He had already contributed so much to the Irish scene but he had so much more to give and it’s devastating for a figurehead like Vexxodus to be gone so soon.

His loss feels incomprehensible, so it feels appropriate that the best people to speak on it are his closest collaborators and fellow boundary-pushers, Euroworld duo yeire13 and Celine War. On a joint five-song tape, they reflect and commemorate a friend and likeminded peer, an artist that brought the best out of both of them. The tape is full of their signature oddities, from off-kilter beats to audacious Chief Keef samples, but it’s all brought home with the poignant closer, ANGEL. The production embraces a sense of levity as the clouds start to clear and the light begins the shine. “But I’m tryna find the way/With angels by my side I know imma be ok” yeire13 repeats, creating a mantra that will last long into the future. It’s a touching moment as the duo bare their hearts and reflect on years of friendship and art. Vexxodus is a huge loss for the underground and yeire13 and Celine War have built a monument with this tape.

That’s all for this month, I’ll see you guys again soon!

-Leo

Sorting through the (many) artists I did not know, I found Clueless. It turns out that I had already seen them in an Instagram Reel that I scrolled past in boredom but I decided to check them out for real. Clueless are a duo from Wexford who make funny rap songs. Well, funny is a strong word here. They deliberately make bad music and rap in silly voices about nonsense situations like Graham Norton hiding in their attic or trying to impress a girl by taking ecstasy. It all seems designed to hit the Instagram Reels Industrial Complex like a bomb. It’s a wasted spot on the Whelan’s Ones to Watch gig.

Across the Irish rap landscape, it seems that artists are trying to be funny, with varying success. Of course, humour in rap is nothing new, and in an Irish context it’s been around since the Rubberbandits were singing about horses or when Versatile were telling tales about robbing dogs (and disparaging black women in the process). Irish humour is so distinct that our shite-talking will eventually leak into anything we do. But there seem to be rappers that think that’s all being Irish means.

I’ve spoken about my grievances with Lil Skag before. I think he overuses Irish references as an easy wink to the audience, barely separating him from the rest of the chicken fillet roll-obsessed Irish media that plagues modern Irish culture. “Kickin’ it with a bitch like Sexton but we didn’t fuck ‘cos I didn’t have a Johny” is the type of line that makes you question whether you’re listening to a rap song or an R-rated Tim Vine special. That song, Yurt Cobain, devolves into a chorus of Skag repeating yurt! on a dusty Jersey club beat past its prime.

I was intrigued by his debut, Type Shite, when it came out in May last year, but he never showed any evolution in his style. It’s hard to get excited for a song called Flames Joyce or for another featuring Playboi Mcarthy (who I think is just Sugaboo under a different alias, another rapper that yet again veers too close to asinine comedy and is too boring to even elaborate on).

It does feel like Lil Skag has turned a corner and I’ve enjoyed several of his recent features. On sentence, with beddyminaj, he plays the part of a prick delightfully, over a skittish and playful beat. He raps “She finish my sentence/I finish her sandwich” and snarls “See you got booked for a festival this year/ Uh-uh, that should’ve been me” with a bitterness that suits his persona better than eye-rollers about how people call him Pat the Baker because he’s about that bread. He also fits perfectly on Talk of the Town, his collab with Curtisy, and it’s nicer to hear him actually lock in, and on a beat reminiscent of Drake’s Laugh Now Cry Later no less. When Lil Skag lowers his workload, either by going back and forth with someone else or letting an eccentric beat meet him halfway, he can really go the distance. I’m doing him the courtesy of not mentioning his first few songs, like Cunning Linguist and Pope Flow, as I think he’s progressed a lot further than those juvenile tracks suggest.

If I’m going to critique rappers for their overuse of humour, I have to bring up a few artists who I’m already fans of. I almost didn’t write this piece since it seemed to me to be a case-by-case basis; some rappers are funny, some are not. Ahmed, With Love is a good example of a well-rounded, funny rapper. Listening to his music sounds like stepping into a Looney Tunes episode. When he mocks your shit music, he monotones “Your speakers don’t want you around/Your FL killed itself” as if he’s sorry for your loss. When he needs to take-off, he hops into a “zippedydoodah”. On a ridiculous Wonderful Christmas Time flip (courtesy of producer owin), he claims “She was naughty, never nice, I heard the Grinch hit”. Lil Skag even joins in for some wholesome Yuletide fun and I would look like too much of a Scrooge if I even attempted to criticise this banger. Couple this with his fantastic Clash at the Quays series, a hybrid wrestling/music gig that has been a hit at the Dublin Fringe, and you’ve got the head honcho of silliness. In an interview with Colm from fourth best, Ahmed states his position: “I'm just pushing “silly wave”, like, we all just have to be a little bit silly, and I’m just doing that.”

He continues by clarifying “Rory Sweeney’s the father of sillywave. I’m just a disciple.” As the most prolific producer in the Irish rap, Rory Sweeney’s has been pivotal in leading the charge for a community-focused scene. Irish Hash Mafia is chock-a-block with features and Sweeney had a clear aim with the project: “Myself and a lot of the artists here are starting to get caught up in the cogs of the music industry and I think its important to put out this mixtape as an archive of the free spirited sounds we’ve been exploring together over the past 2-3 years.” If the album is intended to be one last bash before the facing the seriousness of the music industry, then it certainly succeeds in that. It’s a versatile, free-flowing album encompassing many different styles, but most of all it’s a good hang. As such, humour is aptly used in this project.

This year, Sweeney dropped a more intimate album, built from demos and tracks he had in the vault for years. Old Earth is one of my favourite albums of the year. It’s a whimsical detour into the mystic Irish landscape, explored through language and sonics, tension and release. So it seems out of place to have Curtisy and Ahmed, With Love biting RXK Nephew’s swag on Mideval Times. (“Drive a car in the medieval times/What the fuck is even that in the medieval times?”) It feels like a joke that you’re not in on and it’s luckily saved by Sweeney’s lush, Legend of Zelda—esque production. But on an album that likes to ruminate as much as cause chaos, it’s a song that never accomplishes either, choosing to stick its legs on the couch and talk bollocks instead like someone who’s stayed too long at the afters.

Where things really begin to blur is the flurry (or slurry) of artists who game the algorithms to gain attention with their (often deliberately) shit music. Outsider art, when put online, is instantly labelled as “so bad it’s funny” and it becomes hard to distinguish whether they actually have something to say or if they’ve been riding the tide of the algorithm.

I think it’s fair to say that one’s first reaction to Craic Boi Mental is confusion and an urge to laugh. He’s very smart in how he presents himself online, bordering on shallow sloganeering, but I can always see his genuine concern and care for what he speaks about. In an interview with Mike McGrath Bryan for the Irish Examiner, Craic Boi Mental makes his purpose clear. “In the past, my stuff was humorous, and now I want to be humorous in a more mature way… just trying to evolve, be taken a lot more seriously.” Speaking openly about his autism and his allyship for a host of interests has been a breath of fresh air and, like Ahmed, With Love, his humour feels more authentic and an extension of himself and the topics he covers. The Irish music scene would be soulless without oddities like him.

Wobblin Jude is another name that has been rising in Vertical Video Dimension, a confusing artist whose songs seem to intentionally bite its thumb at conventional music taste. Long, overflowing lines will tumble over the beat (they describe their music as “indie techno”) and lyrics so blunt you wonder if it’s all a parody. Wobblin Jude is aware that their music is challenging, claiming in an interview for The University Observer “The thing is, my music’s kind of different. It doesn’t sound like a lot of music. And I am trying to do something new.” It’s something new alright. I can excuse both Craic Boi Mental and Wobblin Jude as they seem to be coming from noble intentions, intentions that have fallen into the hands of brainrotted kids.

Which brings me back to Clueless. Inadvertently, Craic Boi Mental and Wobblin Jude’s unconventional music have opened the door for people to point and laugh and a cohort of people have spawned to look for the next Cringe Moment, or be the Cringe Moment themselves. Nowadays I feel like I see more shit music (ironic and not) on my feed than ever before. Clueless have a savvy operation where they flood the algorithm with milquetoast memes about “my reaction when a Clueless song starts playing in the function” or something. Class. T333RY is another Reels-spammer who boasts that he is the “only good Irish underground rapper inspired by 2010s white girl pop music”. Across hundreds of snippets where he uses obnoxious samples and raps “I’m in Minecraft/What’s the craic”, you get the sense that all he can do is make mindless engagement-baiting rap made under the guise of being funny.

I get that I sound like a grouch knocking rappers for having fun. I’m an armchair critic who feels very cosy with his laptop and opinions and wishes nothing more but for Irish hip-hop to be unfunny, uber-serious, Diary of a CEO music.

But I love Irish humour. Perhaps my favourite Irish rap song ever is Mango and Mathman’s NO SURRENDER FM, a high-octane track that features fictional song requests for Despacito and chipper orders interspersed within a hedonistic rally to spend our money on nights out rather than the houses we will never be able to afford. It balances these two proponents of the Irish psyche masterfully, but most importantly, it’s a killer song.

Now, as rap in Ireland grows faster than ever before, people who started out for the craic are stuck in no man’s land. Appeal to the Giovanni Smokes cult or make music worth listening to? As Irish rap begins to spread its wings, it’s important we don’t let our identity be diluted. And yet, we can’t rely on the stubborn belief that Irish craic is what makes us great, leaning more into the paddywhackery that should be passed us.

Gaming the algorithm by making bad music is fun for a while, but it’s still more slop for the pile at the end of the day. Wasting a slot on the Whelan’s One to Watch gig for a group who don’t care about the integrity of their art is disappointing and hopefully not the start of a pattern.

Clueless appeared on a recent episode of the JoeIrish Podcast for their first ever interview, recorded a few hours before they would arrive on stage at Whelans. JoeIrish, adamant to bring cancel culture into the conversation, compliments the duo for not giving a fuck (“it’s part of being artistic, you know what I mean?” he says.) Clueless definitely don’t give a fuck. Whether their music will stand the test of time, or at least until the next funny thing comes along, is unclear. Let’s keep scrolling and find out.

-Leo

Top 5 snoa songs of 2025

It’s been a colossal year for snoa and I was hoping to rank every one of his songs from this year, until he went on an absolute tear and released well over a hundred songs. So I may have slimmed down this list a bit.

5.

Just as the title suggests, this is a very good introduction to snoa. Over a playful cranes beat, he raps in his signature monotonous drawl about his grindset, but where other rappers would turn this into hyperbolic boasts, he is fully comfortable with taking his time. “Every day I think to myself ‘how can I improve?’/So I know that it’s only me deciding when I lose”, he acknowledges. This song is less hyped-up motivation and more like the musical equivalent of a “Hang In There!” cat poster, and no matter how naff those posters are, we do need a kitten stuck on a branch to tell us that it’s going to be ok from time to time.

4.

snoa doesn’t just use a monotonous flow as I mentioned earlier. His bests songs are when he uses his pipes a bit more. I’m addicted to the descending flow he hits on this one, with his falsetto floating over a crushed guitar riff. I especially like the ridiculously high note he harmonises with at 2:10.

3.

A claustrophobic anthem that reveals itself gradually like the sun breaking through the clouds. Completely absorbing and intense and nothing like you’ll listen to this year.

2.

At the risk of sounding like a boomer, I sometimes roll my eyes at the vapid lyrics and delivery of the new generation. Yes, I love my fair share of Nettspend songs, but can he actually rap? Recently I’ve felt that the UK underground has a bit more meat to chew on in terms of lyrics and flows, and snoa is no different. Here, snoa shows off his prowess, running laps around the competition on a beat reminiscent of the golden age of grime. I can see this with a video on Channel U or SBTV in a different life.

1.

Over the most aggressive production he’s ever rapped on (courtesy of 444jet and lost8), snoa rages war on AI. “I chat to AI for my problems/ Cos I don’t put faith in my God no more”, he snarls, playing the part of an apathetic figure. “You’re a part of the circuit, will you break through?” he asks. In the second half he lucidly croons as the beat overwhelms him, a suffocating, claustrophobic electronic barrage of noise. In a year where it felt like AI was finally going to doom the world, snoa, with his monumental year in songs, shows us that there is no limit to human creation.

Top 4 Most Overrated Albums of the Year (only four because I think it’s been a good year for music)

4. Let God Sort Em Out- Clipse

Certainly not the worst album of the year, but the hype surrounding this is a step too far for it to be justified. It’s hard to take all the “This is culturally inappropriate” soundbites seriously when you have KAWS on the album cover, and Pharrell’s production is just as creative as his Louis Vuitton collections—dusty and relying on past clout. It doesn’t matter how much Pusha T and Malice try (and they do try, as their pen is as liquid as ever), it never reaches the heights of Hell Hath No Fury or Lord Willin’.

3. Vanities—Malibu

I was really looking forward to the debut album of Malibu, the French ambient producer whose NTS Radio show United in Flames is a beautiful DJ mix of nostalgia-tinted mood setting. Listening to this album, however, it never seems to find any tone except to gesture emptily at some idea of ambience. It’s more moodboard than mood, with vapid, reverb-heavy murmur-singing. If you want to listen to 48 minutes of a voice going “haaaaaaaa haaaaaaaa haaaaaaa” with no explicit direction or purpose, repeated ad nauseum with no variation, then this is your album. The voice is such a magnificent tool for ambient (see: Grouper, Antonina Nowacka, feeo) that it’s quite a shock to see someone completely misfire like this. I’ll stick to the radio show.

2. DON’T TAP THE GLASS— Tyler, the Creator

Before the release of this album, Tyler, the Creator posted a sappy text about how phones have taken away dance culture in clubs . Of course you would think that if you party in LA! So what’s the cure? How about overproduced tat with Tyler rapping in his most annoying cadence yet. Yes, he is right that phones have dramatically shifted audience behaviour at clubs, but in an age where rap music is becoming increasingly more danceable (check out any song from the Milwaukee rap scene, which he funnily enough tries to emulate with the hand claps on the irritating Stop Playing With Me), this album feels like someone at a party asking you if you’re having fun yet. There’s a reason an AI parody is more memorable than this album.

1. Salt of the Lee— Cliffords

   

As a fellow Cork native, I should be in love with these hometown heroes. And yet, even with NME profiles, Glastonbury appearances and BBC spotlights to boast, I can’t help but feel that Cliffords are currently the most dreadful band in Ireland. There is something so gauche about their lyrics which steer straight into secondary school cliché and are sung with a desperate seriousness. My Favourite Monster opens with this bemusing verse:

Boys seek violence and they watch movies
I’m getting thinner, the American Dream
So we lie politely, with pretty teeth
You were right, living ain’t easy

What are we doing here guys??? It also doesn’t help that the music sounds like sludge too. Cliffords make music that falls into a category I like to call “crescendo-core”: songs that use excessively emotional choruses as a cheap way to make you think the song was good. Underneath all the emotion is plain Kings of Leon-style riffs and drab musicality. This EP sucks.

Top 10 Best Samples

Part of the joy of this is not knowing what the sample is going into the song, so I’ll leave these with no blurb so you can listen with no expectations. These are all bangers.

10.

9.

8.

(So nice it’s on the list twice)

7.

(Yes, the whole set)

6.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

Top 5 Ambient Albums

5. Flora— Hiroshi Yoshimura

Yes, this is a reissue of a seminal classic from 1987, but when it’s coming from Hiroshi Yoshimura, it’s always going to end up on this list. Yoshimura’s music is what got me into ambient when I was younger, so to hear this album is like visiting an old friend. Using his signature synths, Rosa is less background music and more like being taken by the hand and led through lush greenery.

4. I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away— Hayden Pedigo

2025 was a year when I travelled. From overnight flights to Canada, train trips to Carlow to see my girlfriend and nightmare Ryanair journeys to see my grandparents in Wales. Travelling through each terminal, each liminal space, becomes tiring fast. Pedigo’s command in his guitar-plucking can be seen as straightforward Americana, but when I was going to and fro from each sterile, locationless zone, it was nice to find some tangible sense of being present in the moment and with my feet on the ground.

3. sleep with a cane— Klein

I was intimidated by this album for a long time and started but never finished it several times. Like Klein’s face pressed against the glass in the album cover, it’s often suffocating and omnipotent, making it an intimidating listen. But it is this ambient discomfort that poisons Klein’s life, and furthermore the lives of Black people in general. Sirens from Klein’s environment can be heard on songs and on informa a news presenter giddily discusses Black youth “leaving guns behind” to make art in a slimy, patronising manner. Although the album is intended to be a loose, non-cohesive mixtape, the queasy feeling runs throughout the album, daring the listener to step into this paranoia and let their heads be pressed against the glass for 90 minutes.

2. Faith— Purelink

This just hits the spot.

1. Goodness— feeo

   

Listened to this whilst in Canada, only for it to remind me of the late night drives when my parents would play London Grammar and Julien Doré. So I felt more than a little homesick after listening to this stunning album. feeo makes music that makes the hair on your neck stand up. She takes the muted electronica of early James Blake and infuses it with hushed, sensitive poetry, each syllable and consonant tickling your eardrums. The warbling synth on Win!, the gothic guitar on Here, the miniature dramas she constructs, each breath so fragile they feel like they could topple over at any moment… Beautiful ambient and deservedly the best album of the year.

Best Rap Song That Also Doubles (Triples?) As The Best Ambient Song And The Song With The Best Sample

How do I even explain this one? A thirteen minute song that starts with a RXK Nephew/Slitherman-style tantrum before evolving into disorientating ambient, knocking your senses around. “We’re back at you with another song from Darkskin N****s with Lightskin motherfucking problems, lets go” Stickerbush monotones, seeming like a half-hearted attempt at being a DJ Drama mixtape. The song morphs into headspinning noise that becomes increasingly detached from any meaning, as Diddy’s I’ll Be Missing You and a Sexxy Redd song are fuzzly broadcast in the mix, as if being heard from another room. The song ambles on with no regard for any expectations you had going into it. It’s the musical equivalent of coming out of a car crash and hallucinating the last song you heard on the radio as you shift in and out of consciousness. Naturally, it’s my favourite song of the year.

That’s all for now. Back soon x

-Leo

@illdoittomorrow_blog

The first thing I noticed when I mingled with the crowd was just how young everyone was. I shouldn’t have been so surprised (Spotify got an AI to tell me I had the taste of an eighteen year old) but it is a bit disconcerting you’re being unced at twenty years old. A kid led his father through the crowd with an AirPod in his ear. For a while I was standing next to another boy who seemed no older than fourteen. I watched him struggle to film cranes’ opening DJ set as he got on his tip-toes to look over the people older than him. I nearly wanted to lift him on my shoulders. We pretended that we hadn’t made eye contact and I moved along.

I navigated through the crowd of Vetement hoodies and $80 merch in my jeans that my girlfriend bought me and arrived at the side barricade with a good view of the stage. I dislocated my knee a few weeks ago (don’t ask) and I wasn’t looking to join any moshes. The kid next to me was livestreaming the concert on TikTok. Soon, DJ Rennessy came onstage and started to pump up the energy. I never really knew what his whole deal was apart from being xavier’s hypeman, but my god he’s a good hypeman. “WHAT THE FUCK IS UP MONTREAL?” he shouted and he jumped straight into a set tuned specifically to get the party started. It was a mix of modern classics (EsdeeKid, Che) and bonafide crowd-pleasers (Bladee, Chief Keef). He was spamming the effects button and no matter how many times I hear it (and find it deeply offensive), I will always get chills when I hear the “I’m 34 years old and I’m dying!” tag.

I was at this gig alone as my only other friend who liked xaviersobased had an exam the next day and couldn’t come. It was my first time going solo to a concert and I was hoping to make the most of it. Even if I have great friends in Canada, it’s inevitable that I feel a little homesick and lonely at times. I recently went to watch One Battle After Another on my own after a shit day but only felt shitter when I couldn’t muster up the courage to talk to a randomer after the screening. It also sucks that I usually go see movies with my girlfriend and, as I dodged couples taking selfies to Nettspend, I couldn’t help but start missing her again.

Next up after Rennessy was ksuuvi, who stepped on stage with a cane that did not hinder his performance one bit. “I hurt my leg skating!” he called out, hopping across the stage. Ksuuvi alternated between using the cane as a Charlie Chaplin prop and shooting it into the crowd like a gun. I was half-expecting him to do a Willy Wonka fake-out in his entrance.

“Ahhh, I pulled my hammy!” he yelled after he did a lap of the barricade and got back on stage. I can’t say I’m too familiar with ksuuvi’s music (I quickly listened to his most recent, and very good, album before the concert), but he is such a charismatic person that I could easily go along with what he was rapping. As the bass shook my legs and DJ Rennessy shouted “PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP!”, I chanted the only lyrics I knew (“Lookin’ like a walking lick!” off of step outside).

During the break between ksuuvi and xavier, the lights dimmed completely and an eerie blackgaze score started playing. It was an extended mix of uncomfy made for the tour and it went on for a solid five minutes. The chilling ambience caught everyone in the audience off guard. Many people were holding up their phones in anticipation of xavier coming onstage, just to give up when the song went on too long. I’ll admit that I got caught up in this, and I felt pretty self-aware after a few minutes of holding my phone up like a plank and tucked it back into my pocket.

Once xavier popped out onto the stage, the crowd went nuts. Walking the stage as hotel room played, he captured an air of nonchalance as everyone around him got rowdy. He did a lap of the barricades to give high fives and when he came to our side, the crowd surged. I was squeezed against the person in front of me and the barricade tipped just a little. I lost my footing in the crowd and was pushed back from my prime position. Perhaps wisely, he left our side alone for most of the show.

I will never prescribe to the notion that xaviersobased is moshing music, let alone rage. I’m perfectly happy to nod along and occasionally throw a hand up in the air like the senior citizen I am.

Xavier kicked off in style, dressed in a comfy sweater and baggy pants whilst serenading the front of the stage (which was decorated with a few traffic cones and a park bench). He performed with a cool demeanour as he had the audience in the palm of his hand. The set went semi-chronologically, with crisp dubs and classist going first before getting to increasingly newer songs. Every fifteen minutes in the set he would take off a layer; first his sweater, then his long-sleeve until he was topless and hyping up the crowd, jumping up and slapping the speakers overhead. It was as if with each layer he was releasing more energy, and this energy was picked up on by the crowd. Ksuuvi even returned to jump up and down on the park bench.

Xavier’s songs are just as disorientating, if not more so, live. When the bass rumbles and he croons in autune, it’s hard to make out just what song he’s playing at first. A song like ghost town takes on a new life as he intermittently harmonizes over the backing track and wanders past hands reaching out for him.

And forget what I said about xavier’s songs not being mosh-worthy. When he pulled out double whammy the crowd hit its peak. “I WANNA SEE EVERYONE PUTTING 1C IN THE AIR RIGHT NOW!” boomed DJ Rennessey. Once more, he risked it all and started coming over to the barricade on my side. This time, it fully collapsed as the swarm in front of me fell over. Xavier was able to leave unscathed from the wreckage and carry on performing like nothing happened.

One guy next to me had his friend on FaceTime and he was dancing to the music over the phone. Another was showing his friend how to do the 1c hand sign and then putting it up together. I never did end up talking to anyone at the concert. I could have talked to the few people I recognized (some members of SHADOW WIZARD MONEY GANG, fillette0318, even the guy that does recreations of beats on TikTok was there), I could have talked to some of the people in the smoking area after the show and I definitely should have talked to the guy next to me who was waiting for the same bus as me to get home.

On this feeling 2, ksuuvi raps “Sometimes I get in my head (...) Sometimes I can’t get rid of this feeling”. I get cold feet pretty easily. If you’re one of the people I talked to at the Catacombs show earlier this year, chances are it’s because my girlfriend pushed me to talk to you guys. I have a friend who’s also an exchange student and is practicing “rejection therapy”, which has gotten her everything from new friends to free drinks from drunk guys (she’s lesbian). Maybe I should be taking a page out of her book.

Once the concert ended, xavier left the stage and DJ Rennnessy played a Latin dance track to keep the energy going. In lieu of moshing, there were kids making dance circles and shining their phones at each other, hyping each other up and going nutty. Suddenly, ksuuvi and xavier returned to join in on the fun, salsa dancing and getting funky to the beat. Maybe you’ve seen clips of it online already. “I thought your leg was broken my bro, where’s the cane?!” a bemused DJ Rennessey called out as ksuuvi started hitting moves like a Dominican Michael Flatley.

Pretty soon you stop seeing the trio on stage as performers and more like the friends that they are. All three welcomed the audience to hang out and be one of the guys, and their goofy spirit exuded off the stage. Once it was all done, warmed by the friendship that shone from the stage, I left the venue and went back into the cold.

-Leo

That next time would come in 1995, where the margin between federalists and separatists grew thinner. In a referendum that would attract 93.5% of the population, the prospect of an independent Quebec failed once more, this time in a tight contest that came down to only 54,000 votes.

Thirty years on, the energetic force of the separatist movement has calmed and a sense of status quo has kicked in. “I’m going to be frank with you, the movement was really dead and it was really hard to talk about independence,” says Alex Valiquette, head of communications for the non-partisan group OUI Quebec. “I think the last referendum we had was such a trauma to Quebec society that we lost a lot of confidence.”

While the calls for an independent Quebec have been relatively dormant for the last few years, a sudden rise of Gen-Z interest has sparked conversation again. A recent study showed 56% of 18-34 year olds in favour, in comparison to 44% of 35-54 year olds and 37% of 55 and older. OUI Quebec has been at the forefront of hyping up this young cohort through a social media-savvy mindset and by organising rallies that attract Gen Zers who may not have attended a march before. Their website even offers an AI chatbot to educate those who may have questions about an independent Quebec. “What’s really cool with the independence movement is that the rise is in the youth, and it’s a youth that never lived the referendums,” Valiquette explains. “They’ve never lived the humiliation that comes with voting against your own existence as a people, which is, I think, really sad.”

As much as a free Quebec offers new economic and democratic opportunity, much of its allure is cultural, and the people who are spearheading the cultural renaissance are artists. “I think in all the peaks that we’ve had of independentism in Quebec culture has played a big role”, Valiquette explains further, “And I think a lot of people need to be convinced, of course, rationally that, yes, it makes sense and what’s going to happen and why to become independent. But I think the job of the artists and what’s so interesting about the artists, especially in the youth, independence is about the heart too. It’s about belonging to a culture. It’s about being proud, knowing who you are as a collective and as an individual as well. And that artists are retaking, re-politicising their art, but in the most inclusive, beautiful, affirmed Québécois way, I think is extremely powerful and even more powerful than any rational thing.”

UGQC is a collective of several up-and-coming Quebec rappers and their recent mixtape waves the Quebec flag loud and proud. With such a large number of members (twenty-seven rappers and producers are involved in the tape), the variety in styles is sporadic in the best way possible. From smooth plugg songs to trumpet-heavy Glogang throwbacks, the mish-mash of styles may seem random, but what keeps it all together is the collaborative spirit throughout. Infused with francophone identity at every corner, the tape showcases what can happen when the youth mix internet-ready rap with an authentic sense of belonging. “The need to share our culture in Quebec, and in the music, has always been there”, D3SI from UGQC tells me.

UGQC began as a humble underground promo page before evolving and becoming a Discord server for like-minded artists, all desperate to get their music out to the world. The Discord server ended up being a lifeline for those in Quebec who don’t live in the main hub of Montreal. “I think it’s really beautiful that this connection, while we’re all in different places, is still very strong anyway”, D3SI tells me. D3SI has been such a part of the collective that, by being a moderator on the Discord and setting up the Google Drive folders for artists, they’ve been given the title “UGQC CEO”. (“I don’t really like to say it, to brag it, you know. But listen, people are saying that, so why not?”)

D3SI is quick to point out that this wave of pro-Quebec rap is nothing new and exists within a larger canon of Canadian rap. They mention Sir Pathétik and his song Pour Mon Pays, an anthem that wears Quebec pride on its sleeve. Outside of rap, D3SI mentions Beau Dommage and Harmonium, two rock bands from the ‘70s, as acts that spread Quebec culture through music. UGQC is part of a long lineage and a mixtape that begins with a Trapaholics-esque intro boasting “la créme de la créme de l’underground Quebecois” contributes just as much to the zeitgeist in its own hyperonline way.

Perhaps the most well known artist in the scene is kinji00, who has gone viral several times for his unabashedly pro-Quebec songs. Alongside his producer and brother lb66, he’s captured the imagination of Gen Z with catchy lyrics, humour and pure swag.

Translating this viral success to the real world hasn’t posed much of a challenge and collaborations with the likes of OUI Quebec have provided him a platform to perform live. When I interviewed him, he admitted to being surprised to see his streams materialise into real people, chanting his lyrics and going nuts. It’s to be expected when he has a knack for memorable lyrics and earworm hooks, such as when he spits “fake hoe, she’s a federalist” on Zombie or “My favourite flower, it’s the fleur-de-lys” on Fleur de Lys. It’s a very patriotic sound and it feels like it’s perfectly geared for crowds to get hyped to, something kinji00 is very aware of. “It comes naturally,” he tells me. “Like when we hear the song after, we know everyone can scream that part and it’s really catchy. So it’s not something we plan in advance.”

Both kinji00 and lb66 echo Valiquette’s idea that culture is a driving force to establish pro-Quebec sentiment. “When I rap, I try to promote Quebec”, kinji00 says. “Our role as musicians is to put the culture on, and we leave it to the politicians to talk about the economics and the rest of that stuff”. But perhaps leaving it up to the politicians isn’t the best idea.

It would be remiss of me if I did not point out the racism that is sadly prevalent in Quebec politics. In 1968, during the earliest years of the modern pro-Quebec movement, activist Pierre Valliéres wrote the influential manifesto White N*****s of America, comparing the Quebecois struggle with the plight faced by black people, writing “A n*****’s life is not a life. And all the Quebecois were (and are) n*****s.” When I asked OUI Quebec’s AI chatbot about this, it told me to treat the phrase with “nuance” and understand its “historical context.”

In recent times, politicians haven’t fared much better. Anti-immigrant rhetoric has seeped into party politics. In 2019, Bill 21 passed, a secular law that banned teachers, police officers and other people in authority from wearing religious symbols. Despite accusations that this bill directly targets the Muslim population, Premier Ministre Francois Legault hailed it as a “beautiful victory for the Quebec nation.” As I write this, the Legault government is passing another bill that would ban prayer rooms and public praying.

This animosity extends to Native American people too. In the referendum of 1995, indigenous people took issue with what was a blatant infringement of their right to self-determination and overwhelmingly voted against an independent Quebec (96 percent). Upon defeat in the 1995 election, Jacques Parizeau, Premier at the time, blamed the loss on “money and ethnic votes.” In 2021, when Akitamekw woman Joyce Echaquan livestreamed her eventual death in a hospital as doctors ignored her, Premier Legault denied accusations of systemic racism.

Building a platform on a movement marred by racism seems like a challenge. Kinji00 and lb66 were both born in Portugal and have consistently vocalised their support for a more inclusive Quebec. On the plugg track Equipe, kinji00 raps “Quebec in the heart, we don’t give a fuck where you were born,” and on Slang he chants “In my Quebec there’s diversity.” When I asked him what his ideal Quebec would look like, he gleams and says “Everyone will be looking fly…They’ll all be fucking expressing themselves how they want.”

With more and more mainstream attention, there is a danger that politicians will co-opt his swag for Gen Z clout. Rocking a flashy fleur-de-lys grill, kinji00 recently appeared on the talk show Tout Le Monde En Parle, a staple of Quebec TV since 2004. The generational gap becomes quite apparent (it is admittedly awkward to see kinji00 trying to flex as his music plays in a sterile TV studio), and reflecting on the appearance lb66 says “I don’t think people really understand what this scene is.”

“I think what’s funny about the passage of kinji in big media is that the contrast is so strong, like big media in Quebec trying to understand youth and they’re all being surprised that independentism is going up,” Valiquette notes. “And I think that young people have been a bit neglected in the culture. We’ve always accused young people of not consuming Quebecois culture when they really were consuming Quebecois culture, but not in the traditional places.”

So how have young people been consuming Quebecois culture? One thing that sticks out is the twisting of the language as the youth criss-cross between French and English. “I think there was this kind of syndrome in Quebec that everyone thought you had to rap in English to make it,” lb66 explains. “Like, I have a bunch of friends, they don’t even speak English well, and they’re just, like, rapping in English, and now people believe, like, okay, I can actually do this in French.” (I’ve been translating lyrics into English throughout this article for clarity but it’s important to note that they are all sung in a mix of French and English.)

“In Montreal, the slang that we speak, we often borrow some English words, but also in Creole, in Arab; words [adopted] since the immigration here,” Valiquette also points out. Again, diversity has been fostered by the youth and shows a new path towards Quebec pride.

Quebec rappers have and will keep consuming Quebecois culture in their own wry and witty way. Whether it’s fillette0318 using the metro’s alarm in a song (dou dou douuuu!), Z.F.R and $can referencing the Quebec supermarket Maxi on their collab EP or Monsi rapping in peak slang “oh my god, j’suis geek au tabernak”, the new generation has been pulling cultural references from anything they can get their hands on.

“We’re just making the music that we want to hear, we’re just making the music that we can’t, like, find,” kinji00 says. As the youth build their own sound from the ground up, D3SI thinks that the underground will be pivotal. “I really see the potential that the new wave of Quebec could go on and be still relatable after many years. And as of UGQC, we’re still looking to make new sounds every day”. As the youth find their voice in a culture that has misunderstood them for too long, perhaps Réne Levesque’s “next time” is already here.

-Leo

Photo credit - 4RNO (@4rn0.o)

FUCK YOU BITCH I WANNA B ALONE - bleood

I found this song from a tweet that said “we easily in the worst era of underground music right now”, so obviously I was intrigued. bleood makes rage music, a term that feels incredibly outdated but it’s the only thing I have. Rage rap has become so oversaturated in the underground that I find it hard to find interest in anyone that uses rage beats in 2025. There’s a spectrum to rage and my favourite artists use both sides to the fullest effect— on one side, we have a more melodic style (Ken Carson, prettifun, Osamason) and on the very end is pure noise (2Slimey, who’s probably my favourite out of the whole scene (yes, really)). There’s a deep chasm between the two ends and it’s here the majority of bad rage rap falls into. I wasn’t a fan of che’s recent album (despite the critical acclaim) as I saw it as derivative and stuck in the chasm. Not melodic enough to be catchy, yet too structured and safe to be at the noisy, devil-may-care end of the scale. I don’t think there are many that can survive in the gulf.

Theory class over. I like this song by bleood. It leans more to the 2Slimey side of things and the jumpscare of the first few seconds is worth the price of admission. Five years on, the influence of Whole Lotta Red looms over anything remotely rage, and bleood does no favours by emulating many Carti-isms. I would say that his constant squawks and exclamations are nicely contrasted by the robotic repetition of “rascal, rascal, rascal”. As earwormy as it is abrasive, I think I’m ok if this is the last good rage song before the pendulum swings the other way and we’re doing field-recording ambient rap to fall asleep to.

stop talking to AI talk to God - svn4vr

On the topic of the new generation still being indebted to Carti, svn4vr is able to use a lot of Carti-esque adlibs and groans but still be able to capture his own identity and feelings of faith. Over a noodling guitar, his singing is more akin to pleas for mundanity in a world gone mad. He’s fantastic at coming up with poignant harmonies, layering voice upon voice like a one-man choir. The constant ebbing and flowing of the production really helps to stir up emotion and the intermittent acapella and drums that sound like someone’s tap-dancing add up to a very human sound. The lyrics are honest and never fall into the trap of being preachy because of some genuinely beautiful lines. Lines that reflect small, personal memories (“we was having fun, playing Mario Kart on the weekend, yeah”) and grander political events (“Talk ‘bout peace treaties, why we ain’t see peace yet?”) are captured in heartrending detail. Give this one a shot if you too were disappointed by Dave’s recent, shallow album and see how kids are the ones with the most to say.

Ruh Roh - Rory Sweeney (feat. Ushmush and Roo Honeychildd)

Rory Sweeney continues his oddball streak with his latest album, Old Earth, a soundtrack that bounces from mystical ambient to warehouse-ready IDM to Curisy and Ahmed, With Love doing RXK Nephew-style rapping over a medieval type-beat. Across this beautifully genreless album is still a focus on the unique experience of Irishness, be it through spiritual connection with our land or just talking shite. On Ruh Roh, the balance between Scooby Doo references and meditative reflections pretty much sum up Sweeney’s mission (do a deep dive on Stone Tape Theory too to get the full experience). Sweeney’s beat is skittish and explosive when it needs to be and Ushmush is great on this, cryptically rapping in Irish and either coming off as the weird guy at the afters (“Shaggy i do sheomra suí”) and a new-age shaman (“Codail sámh ar an tuí”). As well as an off-the-wall song, Diarmuid Farell kills it with the visualiser. Maith thú!

Reminder - ian

I’ve always had a soft spot for ian. Even as he was parading as the suburban hearthrob-next-door, coming to gentrify Gucci Mane bangers and send Tyler, The Creator into a downward spiral, I couldn’t help but get caught up in all the hype. I knew ian before he was big ( I am aware that’s something only music snobs say), back when he had about 2,000 instagram followers on an account called “cat_daddy15” (now his spam).This is back when he was making some of the best forward-thinking music by collaborating with some true pioneers in the ambient-trap scene like cutspace and iokera.

I remember the run he was hitting when he was promoting figure it out and grand slam. There’s nothing like the excitement of seeing the person you’ve been following for a while finally blow up and get the love they deserve. Or so I thought.

ian’s newest mixtape, 2005, is awful. I know I’m not saying anything revolutionary here but I need this off my chest. I told myself I would check it out just in case it was anywhere near tolerable but sadly it is straight doo-doo. For whatever reason, ian attempts a Kanye MBDTF-era pastiche (without the edge) by whining about loyalty or something and rapping on overblown beats to try and get an ounce of sappy sentimentality out of you. Did you know he struggled to get here? And sometimes he can’t trust people? And do you like his latest blaccent?

All this wishy-washy hyped-up emotion just makes me wish he took a step back. Reminder is, ironically, a reminder of when ian was hungry and his music was steeped in self-reflective pathos. It’s perhaps my favourite song from him. On an ephemeral beat from the late iokera, ian timidly raps “Mama told me that she’s proud, I still don’t think I’ll be enough”, a haunting line that makes you wonder just what ian’s mama thinks of his recent middling antics.

SIXTH FLOOR - FEMTOGO, Ptite Soeur, neophron

I’ve been struggling to figure out how to approach this song, and the album as a whole. For the uninitiated, FEMTOGO and Ptite Soeur are two French rappers who, alongside producer neophron, have made the most important underground rap album of the year. It’s a brutally honest album channelling the hardships they’ve faced, from transphobia, alcoholism, grooming, child prostitution, homophobia and more. To be honest, I have no words that I can use to even attempt to analyse all of this, and I don’t think anyone does (the closest thing is this analysis from a literal philosopher.) I also don’t want to just translate what’s being said here either, since there is so much more depth given in the performance.

This song, in perhaps the climax of the album, opens the gates with a bitter Ptite Soeur verse, with snarling lines like “It’s us, bastard, dare you to look at us, try it”. neophron’s production is aptly hard-hitting, a queasy quasi-techno that’s similar to a lot of the sound coming out of the underground in France right now (check out Irko and Meel B for more). It begins to really amp up the tension once FEMTOGO starts hitting the peak of his verse and neophron’s beat dulls out while FEMTOGO exorcises his demons in vivid, vivid detail. Documenting his history of sexual abuse and his time as a sex worker with a vengeful cadence, the beat starts pulsing once more to a head-throbbing degree. Again, I feel like just translating the lyrics is a real disservice and turns the whole thing into a spectacle on my part, but once you’ve listened to the song check out the lyrics here. As painful as it is beautiful and one of the best albums of the year.

And that’s it for this month! Let me know if I’ve put you on to something new and I’ll be back with an article for the blog very, very soon.

-Leo

#chinesekorean—kimj (feat. jackzebra + SEBii)

Dubstep has been getting its flowers recently. From the emotional croons of 2hollis, the pristine gloss of Syzy, whatever the hell leroy a.k.a Jane Remover has got going on and even to the main man himself, Skrillex, who released an excellent album earlier this year, it all seems that humanity yearns to go back to hitting clips on Counter-Strike and chugging unholy amounts of Mountain Dew. A genre that was once seen as kitsch has turned into high-art, and now it feels like there’s a touch of Warhol or Duchamp in the wubs-n-dubs. Kimj is riding the wave with a bombastic sound so indebted to Skrillex it almost seems passé. But it isn’t 2010 anymore! Kimj recruits enigmatic the Chinese star of the underground jackzebra to colour the song with muddy, mumbly moans. Maybe it’s because he raps in Chinese but I always feel like listening to jackzebra is a lesson in unpredictability, as he groggily raps like at any time his flow will stumble or collapse. The song below is the first song I ever heard from him and it still blows my mind how I can never foresee how he twists his guttural voice whilst also keeping the flow.

The choice to include SEBii on this song is kind of baffling, particularly when the only time I’ve come across him since the peak hyperpop days are ragebait covers on Twitter (at least I hope it’s ragebait). Luckily, he is a helpful addition to the track as his falsetto gives off a neon zing! as Kimj’s beats stomps on in pure bass bliss. Long live dubstep.

Stained Glass Windshield / Rainbow Road—Trainwreck

I’ve had the pleasure of attending several Trainwreck gigs and I can confidently say that they are the best group coming out of the Cork scene. Going to a show of theirs is fully surrendering yourself to the oddball antics that come with the music. One time I went and their keyboardist, Jess, wasn’t there and the frontman, Lawrence, brandished a letter which explained that she had been seized by Interpol. Diving into their music, they carry a strong influence from the bonkers storytelling of Viagra Boys or Dismemberment Plan (admittedly, I’ve only ever listened to The Ice of Boston, but it’s so on point that I can’t think of any other reference as apt as that song). This song is about a man with a stained glass windshield. We listen as he rants about being an “astro-protection addict”, drinking a bottle of water in a brown paper bag just to “fuck with the opps, man” and “colour-maxxing, man”. It’s a hyper-online feverdom (with a cheeky Weezer Guitar Lick (Yes That One) included just in case you didn’t feel fried enough) that pitches apocalyptic paranoia as pretty fun, actually, and the surreal downward spiral of our main character is exacerbated hellishly by a relentless guitar rhythm. Post-punk post-modern shitposting, tongue in cheek yet not too irony-pilled to be succumbed by Dimes Square nihilism. Pretty cool, man.

Radioactive Dreams— Chat Pile, Hayden Pedigo

Astute readers of i’ll do it tomorrow will recognise Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo as two previous guests on the esteemed Stuff of the Month. They both function in the general term of Americana; Chat Pile is more brutal, depicting the rotten core behind America’s homeless crisis or just riffing on a weed-induced nightmare featuring McDonald’s mascot Grimace, whilst Pedigo’s work feels like nostalgia-tinted walks through grassland on the Bible Belt. Any type of collaboration would have been unexpected but somewhere in this broad definition, there’s still room for these two artists to just make sense. Pedigo’s twinkling guitar across Chat Pile’s droning, almost shoegaze-y noise borders on Midwest emo (dare I say something along the lines of Weatherday and Asian Glow?) whilst frontman Raygun Busch mumbles his lines, barely able to roar his throat out like he does on other songs. It’s Chat Pile’s chillest song and Pedigo’s most energetic, but the milieu they meet in is perfectly in tune with each other’s strengths. I can’t wait for the collab album they have coming out (releasing on Halloween no less!)

Standard— Sidney Phillips

It has only been four days in Montreal and I’ve already made friends, one of them on my very first full day. Before a walk organised by the college for students not from the area, I wore my Magdalena Bay merch just to see if anyone would be interested in it and want to start a conversation with me. Sure enough, a friendly face named Taylor was lured into my trap and we got talking about music (I should also note that I managed to start conversations with several other people about my shirt, all of which were with lesbians and nonbinary people, who I joined on a night out as the Token Straight Guy). They mentioned how they’ve been listening to Marjorie W.C. Sinclair (a blindspot of mine as I am often intimidated by his nude anime girl album covers) and I recommended the Irish underground, sluice valve in particular. After a great walk around Montreal and buying cool shit in Chinatown, we went home and that evening they texted to let me know that they enjoyed sluice valve and they recommended stealthyn00b, along with the Australian underground, to me.

stealthyn00b primarily makes music now under the name Sidney Phillips and it’s very good. I really like the Australian drawl on the self-deprecating Bury Me In My Tommy Jeans and I am quite partial to her cover of Bladee’s Mean Girls, aptly named mean cunts, but it’s Standard that has really gripped me. She shouts out her friends and says she wants to see them flourish in a music video where she’s drinking with her friends and playing Red Dead Redemption. The song isn’t my favourite in her discography, but the genuine friendship shines through more than anything. Hey, it’s like my experience making friends in Montreal mirrors the themes showcased by this young Australian!

And that’s all for August! I’ll be back soon with more cool music I find once I settle into the beautiful city of Montreal, but for now, go ahead and binge some Skrillex.

-Leo

What first got you guys interested in music and when did you start making music together?

survival: What first got me into music was me and my boys, Desires and Luke–we’ve been best friends for all of secondary school and still to this day–we were all making beats off our phones. Then Desires switched to producing on his laptop about two years later, and sometimes I’d go over and make beats. One day, I just went over to his house and we made a fire-ass beat and I thought “Yeah, I need to lock in, I need a laptop, I need to start doing this shit”, so I bought a fuck-ass old laptop off my friend Drei for 200 quid. I’d never had a computer before so I basically had to learn how to use a computer, FL Studio, all at the same time. Ruka, full credit to him, pretty much taught me how to use a computer, him and 2sidhe, a good friend. Ruka taught me how to use FL, and we used to be on call every single day on Discord making music. We would make the coolest tracks, like I remember when we made an eight minute track influenced by apocalypse and war. I’ve always loved music so much, there was music in the family, like the piano. So that’s how I got started making music, just because I was always listening to these tracks and always wondered how they were made. I’ve always had that musical ear but it took me a while to be able to teach myself properly and throw myself in there to learn the mechanics of music.

And how did you guys meet up together and say let’s make music together?

s: Me and Ruka, we were in school together. He was the year below me, so I was in the year with Desires, and I remember one day he said “yo, there’s a guy in the year below us that also likes cars”, ‘cause we’re very influenced by cars. We love cars…

I was literally about to ask you that! I’ll ask you about that a little bit later.

s: So, we talked for like 30 minutes or something in the hallway, and then I just knew he was a nice guy and he was pretty cool, but we didn’t properly form a relationship ‘til maybe… What was it, maybe a year or two later? Maybe three? I was probably in fourth year and he was in third year when we, me and [my friend] Luke, started hanging out outside with him. I’ve always just known him as a funny guy, he’s fucking hilarious and after a while, we started hanging out properly. As I was telling you before, we spent a lot more time hanging out on Discord, like just on call, rather than being… Actually that’s not true, we spent a lot more time together in person [as of recently], but our proper friendship started from being on calls and making music together. We’ve been pretty much best friends ever since we started doing that.

This next question is more specifically towards Ruka. I’m getting this impression through looking at your SoundCloud that you seemed to be a producer for a very long time and then you got into rapping your own stuff. When was the point when you thought “maybe I can rap” and took the plunge?

Ruka: Yeah, I’ve been in the game as a producer way longer than I really have started making vocal tracks. I started making beats about 2020 and that was when I was really influenced by old plugg and ICYTWAT beats, that was like the big inspo for me then. What got me into making beats was literally because of Desires, ‘cause he has his producer channel [prod. evo] and I just thought “Holy shit, this guy, he’s in my school and we like a lot of the same things and he’s making beats”. I was like “this is really fucking cool, I wanna try and do that”, so I just tried making beats myself and then I started off making old plugg beats and then it was ICYTWAT beats and then it was Pierre Bourne beats and everything. Maybe like three years ago, I switched to fully making jerk, and I got really good at it and I was getting a bit of traction as a jerk producer but the more I started doing that, the more I got burnt out and I said “fuck this, I don’t wanna make jerk music anymore and just be a producer, I think I’m actually better than that”. So I dropped every success that I had as a jerk producer and completely changed my name, changed everything about me and I just didn’t tell anyone, I had a fresh start. I started to hop on my own beats and it kind of evolved there and I guess I kind of have a unique sound anyways, you’ll know it’s a Ruka beat when it plays. But I took the shift into wanting to be an artist and producer seriously only about 6 months ago when I dropped LipKiss. That was my comeback song.

I stopped making shitty vocal songs for like two years because I didn’t find my sound. I was hopping on, really weird club and having fun with it…

s: It was fire!

R: It was fire, but it was kind of internet music. I wanted to be more serious than just internet music, so I literally stopped making songs for two years, then six months ago I made the beat for LipKiss and then I wrote the song and then it just evolved from there. I was listening to Cult Member, and there’s a song called Steroid Dealer, and I don’t even know what edged me on to sample it, but I was like “Ok, this is awesome, let me sample this”. So I sampled that and I turned it into my own unique thing and made LipKiss.

s: Basically, at that point in time when Ruka wanted to make that proper switch… him and me, probably about a year ago, at the same time we were like “fuck this jerk shit”. That was when I was phatphuq. I don’t try to cut that shit out of my life but also the whole phatphuq thing was just me learning how to make music. For about six months, me and Ruka fully locked in, trying to basically relearn how to be producers, because we were just making typebeats and we had said that we wanna make our own shit. So we locked in, making beats all the time for about six months and when the sound was right, I came out with a few solo tracks before him. I had got some new shit for Christmas that year, I got speakers, an interface and a proper mic and I’d also been learning mixing. I was learning how to get the vocals clean and before I got my new equipment we would just have a preset and put it on the beat, make it sound really compressed with Xbox headphones and that was it. I had been learning mixing for ages, and I said to Ruka “This beat is the one”. Ruka did his thing. It’s a fucking great first song to have come out with.

R: Yeah, I have really bad insomnia, like my fucking sleep cycle is just out the window and it’s killing me every day not getting the proper sleep in. The good sacrifice is that I make some of my best stuff at four a.m. every single day. Like sometimes I’ll just stay up until four a.m. in the morning finishing a beat or writing a demo song ready to be recorded when I wake up and I’m functioning. So that’s the sacrifice of just having no sleep.

You actually answered my next question which was going to be about phatphuq and when, Ruka, you were 6mochi. I was going to ask you what led to your rebranding, what was the actual change in style but also on a more personal level, what evolved?

R: I felt like I had no identity when I was making typebeats as 6mochi. The beats were cool and I had my fair share of fun with it but I just really realised that this isn’t me. I’m doing what a bunch of other people are doing and I’m not really unique with it. So I got really fed up with it and I had an identity crisis, like who am I really? Am I really just gonna be a typebeat producer? And I just had that random switch where I was like “Nah, I could definitely be way bigger than the typebeat producers” so I sacrificed everything and rebranded as Ruka and never been more locked in since and now I feel like every song and beat that I made maybe has some meaning to it. Especially with every song that I drop, you get to find out more about my personal life, because there’s just no cap in the lyrics, everything has its meaning. Yeah, I might say a few funny lyrics, like “whippin’ in a Passat” or something like that. Like that’s just for fun, I don’t even have my drivers license yet. When I say cap rap I mean “Yeah, I have 5 million euros and I have so many guns and I’m doing drugs”, all that stuff. Everything is just real life.

Touching on the lyricism, both of ye always have motivational things to say about being yourself and life and taking full advantage of it, and I wanted to get a full picture of what the Only Human philosophy is?

s: I remember we were out in my hometown one day and I said to Ruka that we need to make us, we need to make a collective that’s just us, because we’re so, like, bouncing off each other, that we just need to push this. Only Human, I just came up with it. There’s not much of a story behind Only Human, other than it being a proper statement that at the end of the day nothing really matters that much. We’re only human. I wanted it to be something that actually meant something to us, ‘cause we were going through a stage where we both had identity crises and we wanted to be fully ourselves and we wanted to spread positive… well, there’s no positive without negative… but we wanted to well, I don’t know. I feel like I’m rambling a bit but Only Human is just exactly what it means, we’re only human and we look at it from a perspective as life can be rabbed, life can be great, life can throw you so many curveballs, shit can go down. You’ve got all this emotion and feeling you grow up with and you just don’t know how to deal with it really, and I think just having our collective name as a name to really fall back on, to be like “at the end of the day, we’re only human”. At one point, I felt that we should change it from Only Human, but I can’t remember the reasoning behind that, do you?

R: I haven’t a clue. Maybe you felt that it was too cheesy or something.

s: Yeah, I felt that the name was too cheesy and I was just having doubts about it.

R: It can be cheesy but at the same time we knew people were going to think it’s hard and it just made sense. Trust the process.

s: It really resonates with who we are as people and what our music is as well and trying to be real. Like everything we say in a song is real, or it’s just fun stuff. We don’t do that cap rap shit. The most we’ll cap is like, as Ruka said, “whippin in the Passat, Gardaí coming after us” which instances like that have happened, but we’ve had to switch the words a little bit!

Well, just on that topic of Only Human being “corny”, when I listen to your music and I hear these messages of having one life, making the best out of it, I feel like… Motivational speaking especially online has just been so watered down, you have podcasts, personal trainers, all these things telling you how to live your life. And I think, hearing it from you, the way it comes off as real is through lived experience. Only Human came to be because you were trying to create your own identity. It doesn’t come off as corny when it’s an actual human thing.

s: Yeah, the name is just motivation at the end of the day. Like it’s motivation to feel secure in yourself and to be yourself and that you don’t have to be like someone. Anyone can copy anyone, I don’t have a problem with anyone on this Earth being who they want to be. If they want to be themselves, if they want to do something because they see other people do it and it’s cool, I don’t give a fuck. As long as you’re genuinely happy and you’re happy with who you are at that point in time, then that’s all that matters. Because everyone’s going to change at the end of the day, and everyone’s going to be on some different shit later on, so all that matters is to stay in the present and be the best you can be in that present.

To talk a little bit about production, how did you nail down your style? This kind of… I don’t want to put a genre onto it but hazy, cloud rap…

s: I’d say cloud rap, indie sleaze.

R: Yeah, pretty experimental rap… ‘cause I like to blend in a lot of genres and stuff that just shouldn’t work, somehow I’ve made it work.

s: We take a song that has a particular vibe and we completely flip it. Like there have been beats that I’ve made that haven’t seen the light of day because it’s such an obscure sample and the beat that I made from it is cool, but you’re not able to make a song out of it or anything. I don’t even think that we’ve established a sound. I know other people think that we’ve established a sound, like there is shit we’ve made together that you couldn’t put in the same group as others, but for me, I think that everything I drop, every next thing I drop is something different.

R: I like to follow a formula. My recent beats and songs, once you’ve listened to anything that I have up, you can kind of find a particular drum style and stuff, but that whole thing changes with how I flip the sample. And I also like to throw in stuff from other genres, like breakcore. I like to do these hard-hitting drums with weird percs and then I just go ham on the sample. The hard-hitting drums are actually inspired by how survival used to make his beats back in the day, and I just took that and ran with it. The drums you hear now wouldn’t have been possible if survival didn’t make the beats he made back in the day.

s: Me and Ruka both know that when I started making music, the beats that I would shit out, probably one in ten beats were actually good. The thing that we both know is that I made some weird stuff. Not bad-weird, but just really weird shit that you can’t even rap on. The drums, I would never follow any formula. I would always place drums in weird places and I would always use weird sounds for whatever drums because I didn’t have anything to follow, I didn’t have that direction, so I would always hop on and have no idea what I’m making. I just let myself out in the music and made some weird shit.

You’ve built up this distinctive sound, but what is it like to then produce for other people in that collaborative space, like S1Ninja and ksuuvi?

R: To be honest, anything that you find that’s produced by me, that’s somewhat old because I made a typebeat specifically for them. It wasn’t really me being original. That S1NINJA song that dropped recently, that’s a really, really old song, from like 2023, so that’s been in the vault for a while and I think S1 has a really cool and creative style of music, talented guy, and I just decided why not make an S1 typebeat? I sent it over to him and he made the song and it sat in the vault for years and now it’s out.

s: If I could speak on that, whoever you see me produce for is really stuff I made when I was phatphuq. I’ve prod for a good few people back in the day but really I would just be in the Discord Study Group calls. Study Group is basically a collective featuring a lot of the 1c members, shoutout to them. I don’t have a very lasting, long connection with them but it was there at the time. That first one with ksuuvi was produced by me and Desires at his house, that’s probably a year old. When Desires had only been making beats, he had established himself, like he’s produced for tenkay, ksuuvi, rodneyy, a good few people from New York and he had connections. He was in the early 1c [discord calls] chopping it up with them. He tapped out of that to do his own shit, but that beat we made for ksuuvi, we just knew.

When I hop on my computer sometimes I’ll be like “Ok, I want to make a beat that I can hop on or me and Ruka can hop on”. I’m yet to produce for me and Ruka, I’m yet to produce for even Ruka, just ‘cause we haven’t formulated that shit but that will happen soon. There’s a track that we’re working on right now that’s produced by me and him, and that was just made the other day, but as far as the creative process goes for producing for other people besides me and Ruka, I just get on my computer and make what I make, whether it’s jerk shit, it’s trap shit, it’s anything. If it’s hard and I can hear someone on it, I’ll send it to them.

You’ve performed several times. Do you know how many times ye have performed? I don’t have a number.

s: My first performance was at the Euroworld show [in 2023]. Those boys put me on, shoutout to them. Then me and Ruka did a set, Euroworld did another show maybe after about a year, and we were still in our “starting to produce” shit and we were making a lot of witchhouse shit and they put us on a show for that as Only Human.

R: I was really, really huge into witchhouse at the time and if you know, you know–it’s privated now– but I did an EP called Clinton Road, a witchhouse EP. We did a back-to-back witchhouse, cloud rap dj set at that show and after that we just said “Ok, this witchhouse stuff is cool, but we can evolve this further and make it more us and unique”. The next show was at Room 404 in Manchester.

s: I wanted to do a show overseas ‘cause at that point in my career, I thought that the Irish underground was nothing. I thought that if we put on a show over here, it’s not going to do much for us. So we wanted to do a show out in the UK so I hit up ivyend and surge [who run the event Room 404 in Manchester], we exchanged ideas and it was locked in. Me and Ruka, ivy, surge and Jack Peter Kettley put some money in to get the show going and I saw cranes was doing a show in London around the same time so I asked cranes if they would like to do a show in Manchester the day after the London show. It was actually a crazy legendary show, man. It was me, Ruka, ivy, Roop, some other Dogworld boys, phreshboyswag, Feng, cranes, kuru, snoa and Jack Peter Kettley. Me and Ruka also brought Desires out for our set. There were one or two djs but I can’t remember their names. If you know them, they’re fire, and it was a legendary show to be a part of. We just wanted to do a show overseas and we made it happen. People think that there’s a lot of crazy shit that goes into this, but it’s really not much more than just wanting to get shit done and knowing people.

That’s very interesting how you say you had to go to Manchester because you thought that the underground wasn’t doing much in Ireland. I guess you guys have kick started it on your own as well, but I feel like the Irish underground right now is very D.I.Y, very community focused…

s: It is, it’s really cool to see. After that show happened, I was happy with that show but also, when we were over in Manchester, people didn’t turn up for us as much as we wanted. We were first up, so people just came in and we just performed. There was probably about 70-80 people there. We were performing, jumping, giving lots of energy, but they didn’t give too much back. But, y’know, when I walked out of that show I was like, “We went up and did that shit”. Our boys who were out there being supportive – Desires, our boy Luke, Sheego, Lexxp, Elis, Jacob, Makruei [my girlfriend], 2sidhe and Ash. We all got a BnB. It was a really fun trip.

Quick sidenote: my girlfriend [Makruei], she’s learning how to make music right now and she’s making some crazy shit. When she drops something, she’s going to be one to watch out for. That’s not even on some shit where it’s like “it’s my girlfriend, it’s fire”, it’s on some shit where I’ve been telling her to make music ‘cause she’s able to sing and she’s had that musical ear since a kid. When she finally drops, it’s going to be a fucking banger.

Anyway, that’s basically how the show was set up, through the boys having connections. Cranes put on their story that they were coming to Ireland, “anyone in Dublin hmu”. Cranes had come up to Dublin and we met up with cranes and we just chopped it up pretty much. So that’s how cranes got there and cranes brought kuru and all the other boys organised everything else. Bottom line, we just wanted to put some shit on and we made it happen. We knew we wanted some cool people there, it wasn’t really about making money, it wasn’t really about bringing a crazy amount in numbers, it was about putting some cool shit on to look back on.

Recently, in the last few months, it appears as if the Irish scene has really, really gone to a different level, and I was wondering where you think the Irish underground will go from here?

s: It’s going to go up. There’s a lot of people making a lot of cool shit. Obviously deathtoricky blew up when he posted smoke shit. I had known him for a good while before. Funnily enough, we had met at a session before, but I knew his friend Leo and some other people from Celbridge, so that’s why I was there. When ricky dropped smoke shit I was like “That’s it. This is where the recognition is going to come from”. He put that shit on and he did it well. Buckshot, he’s another artist that has blown up in the scene. There’s always been people that have listened to underground music in Ireland but it wasn’t known because people weren’t pushing it in the media or whatever. So the Irish underground I think it’s going to go crazy up. I don’t even want to toot my own horn but me and Ruka have got big plans. We’re working hard behind the scenes. I try to drop every two weeks, we’re working very hard. About four months ago, before that Manchester show, we were like “We don’t want to just be SoundCloud rappers, we want to take this somewhere”, so we are really working hard to make that shit happen.

We mentioned it at the start of the interview that you first got talking to Ruka about cars and I hear it all the time in your songs, so I’m just wondering where did that interest in cars start? What do cars mean to you?

s: Love ‘em, Ever since I was young, I loved vehicles.

R: I grew up with cars. Like, surrounded by cars since I was young, especially when I lived out in Asia , car culture and bike culture was just a really, really big thing. Everyone had a modified something and I was always drawn to Fast and Furious, Nascar, all that shit, and it’s just never left. I still fanboy over cars to this day and I’ll never stop glazing automobile stuff. I can’t even describe it, like if you’re a car guy you know that feeling.

s: I loved vehicles, I had been playing with trains as a kid. I still keep my old train set just for memories in my wardrobe, like the whole track. I love trains, I just love all vehicles. I used to watch videos of just trains, I’d watch videos of steam trains and muscle cars versus each other, drag races and stuff and I loved the movie Cars. Cars is my childhood favourite movie and I always loved Fast and Furious, I always thought it was so cool. Ruka was into Japanese cars before he met Desires. I had already had a good interest in cars, my favourite car at the time was a Dodge Viper ‘cause I just loved the sound and the build of it, and then Desires put me onto Japanese cars and I started really, really taking an interest in them. In the past year and a half, I’ve been branching out to different car cultures. Ruka put me onto the Indonesian car culture. There are also cultures in Indonesia like crazy big trucks, I’ve always loved trucks as well. Some autistic shit but it’s real. I’ve always had toy trucks, toy cars… I’ll show you right now…

[survival walks across his room and shows me several toy cars, all in a row, on a shelf]

s: This is all on my dresser, I’ve got cars all lined up here, some of my favourites. I think I gave my girlfriend a Nissan Skyline R34 that I had. They’re interesting cars and it started as a kid, I just loved it so much.

R: Hot wheels, man.

s: Hot wheels! I have hella Hot Wheels under my bed, and I know Ruka does too. So many, like a big-ass boxful. We’re always sending each other pictures of cars or videos, whether it’s a truck or a bus. Desires, about a year ago, he put us on to the Brazilian style of cars, so there’s just so many different cultures, we actually enjoy indulging in the cultures and that’s our niche that we came together on, something other than music. So you’ll hear us in our songs talking about some Japanese cars…

R: I literally have a song called scan. If you know, you know, come on now. And as survival said in his song Show Me, “Whip touch the ground, truck lifted”. It’s everywhere, you’re not gonna stop hearing car references in our music, it’s always going to be a reoccurring theme.

s: That’s a real bar as well because I was driving a Toyota Hilux for over a year, which has recently just been sold–RIP to my baby!--but that was my dad’s car. We went to the UK, to Stratford to pick up the truck, ‘cause my dad wanted a truck for his business. I was a handyman with my Dad for two years, so he had a Volkswagen Caddy van, 2L diesel, jaysus it was fucking reeky! He wanted to get something bigger and it was always his dream vehicle, so we got the truck. The truck is hella high off the ground, hella big, and the “whip touch the ground” comes from those cars that touch the ground, and it’s kind of a manifestation of being able to have a car like that in the future and we want them to be low. So that’s just a reference of interest and also a real bar.

That’s very nice that you found that way to connect with each other.

s: We connected properly with each other through humour because we lived in the same school, we could talk about similar experiences in school, cars and music, so we were always just interested and talking about the same things. We’ve just been in each other’s lives for so long, we’ve really grown up as best friends. All the boys we’re best friends with now, I pretty much met in secondary school. I used to skate, so I’d have my other best friends who would skate. My original best friend actually moved to America but I’d be hanging around with my skater friends and then I broke my leg. When I broke my leg, I was in first year and that’s when I started hanging out properly with Luke and Desires ‘cause obviously the skaters were skating and I was going to school with Desires and Luke. We’ve always been interested in the same shit so a collective together was going to be inevitable, that we’re going to make it together, it was inevitable that we would be good friends and I’m glad it came to a point that we became best friends. And that’s just real shit. Us, and our life. We just try to make music about our lives.

I think I’ll end the interview on that note. I think that’s a beautiful way to end it.

s: If I could say one thing more about the Irish underground, it’s that so many people are doing so many cool things right now. Big shoutout to Omen for putting on Catacombs, big shoutout to vexxodus and Snuzi for putting on Volume. There’s been a lot of people that we’ve been around throughout our career and they’re all so fire and doing their own thing. It’s so sick to see that when we were making music, us, trying to create a sound, we just hit the right time. It’s the right time for the Irish underground to blow up. It’s been shown love worldwide, you see posts and interviews and shit. We’re going up. Everyone is going up. We’re working hard and it’s going to happen. This interview will be legendary one day.

Without further ado, here’s a selection of my favourite music from June. Let me know if I put you on to anything new and, as always, the Spotify playlist is at the end of the article.

100% PRODUCTION TECHNO/DONK/HARDCORE SET - DJ Bax

The world of DJ sets online has been swamped by audiences of Fred Again wannabes throwing off-beat finger guns and it-girls wearing crop tops that say “CUNT” or something at a Boiler Room set or another Israeli-funded fest of choice. There are definitely exceptions to this rule (NTS, The Lot Radio and Elevator Music are still doing top-notch, community focused DJ sets), but it’s easy to forget that DJ sets are meant to be fun. I stumbled across DJ Bax’s set in the midst of the YouTube algorithm and it is beautiful. Just one DJ playing for a handful of friends in a basement with a shoddy green screen in the back—so shoddy that the Peroni bottles the friends sip on often morph into it— and a deluge of face-melting donk tracks. DJ Bax serves up donk remix after donk remix that will make your neck snap from doing too many double takes. Scream & Shout by will.i.am? Young Thug’s Lifestyle? A mashup of Chic’s Le Freak with Eminem’s Shake That? The Minecraft parody of Usher’s DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love?????????? Yes, it’s all very easy to find this gimmicky, but it succeeds just through the sheer fun of it all. It’s a hangout with friends, passing vapes around and drinking beers while DJ Bax, in perhaps the peak of the set, takes off his shirt to reveal Ed Sheeran merch while playing a Lil Jon and Lego House mashup-to-end-all-mashups. Insanity.

Machine - lucequartz

Before I start talking about this song, please just listen to it. It’s barely two minutes. I’ll wait here, you won’t miss anything.

Odd, isn’t it? I’ve been struggling to come up with the best way to even describe this song because I have zero point of reference for it. I guess it, um, kind of sounds like, uuuuuuuhhhhh…… I mean there was that one JLovely song I featured a while back which suits the minimal vibe? Sorta? But that one didn’t include the lyrics “So many notches in my shins that a blind bitch could read them and tell me all my sins”, so, uhh, I guess we’re back to square one. Okay, let’s try again. The top comment on the reel that first introduced me to him said “How Bladee sounds when you try putting your friends on”, but even that seems reductionist. Maybe a bit of meat computer? I don’t know, and that’s what I love about this song. Its serene melancholia completely resets your entire brain. It’s both extremely brainrotted, with effects galore, and completely set apart from everything happening on the internet right now.

PB&J - fillette0318

autoportrait - fillette0318 (feat. ivvys)

Next year, I’ll be studying abroad, in Montreal, Quebec. I’ve being getting a little sense of dread recently knowing that I will be 5,767 kilometres away from Ireland and the rising underground scene. I don’t want to lose touch with the great music happening at this very instant. Instead, I’ve been filling that hole in my soul by checking out the underground in Quebec. I’ve heard a song from fillette0318 before but this double-whammy of songs, both released this month, have cemented her as an i’ll do it tomorrow favourite. fillette0318 is a Quebecoise graphic designer that moonlights as a SoundCloud rapper. It has the goofy charm of early hyperpop mixed with good-old reliable Gucci Mane typebeats. The benefit of being Quebecoise is that you can glide through English and French with ease (“Ils me disent j’ai un swag stupid crazy”) and she hits you with glitchy, robotic vocals (like how she says “chronically online j’suis partout sur internet” or “chaque fois que je rap je parle de nourriture-ure-ure”) that appease my digitally-eroded brain nerves. She’s joined by ivvys on autoportrait (who himself has a crazy song that came out recently that earned a Pitchfork Best New Music) with a verse that feels completely out of place in the best way possible too.

Trust Nobody - Fatt Macc (feat. Choppababy)

“N**** lookin’ like a lick, he sweet as hell, Mom can we keep him?”

Mr Maker - 6survival

6survival is a man of duplicity. He’ll just as easily rap about having Barry Keoghan swag and being steezy as he is to tell the listener to invest in themselves and remind them that they only have one life to live to the fullest. The same happens here on Mr Maker, both celebratory as it is sober. One line he’s boasting two phones, the next he confesses “Text her on the iPhone that I miss her”. What was it A$AP Rocky said? “I got three phones—business, conversation and relation”, except 6survival turns it into a half-hearted brag. Speaking of A$AP Rocky, 6survival’s production is another reason he stands out, opting for a vintage cloud rap palette akin to Rocky’s early work and Clams Casino that compliments his introspective musings. It’s hard to get a good read of 6survival (he says it himself best—”they ain’t know me, they don’t really know”) and the end result is a lucid portrait of a human stuck somewhere in the middle. But while I’m still trying to figure him out, 6survival has a phone call to make—”I’m freaking out, asking her if we can have a chat”.

Smoked - Hayden Pedigo

This month I travelled on the train up to Carlow and back. I’m not a train connoisseur, and I’ve only been on the train once before as a child going to Kerry with friends. On your own, it’s a trip where your only companion is whatever is zipping past you through the window and you’re deposed at grey stations waiting for a change of train with nothing but you’re headphones and people who look just as miserable as you. The emptiness is lonesome and weary. While on my travels, I listened to the latest album from Hayden Pedigo, I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away. Pedigo’s music is a slice of ambient Americana, as plucked strings ebb and flow gently and create spiral rhythms to hold on to. It’s a perfect album to listen to when on the train as it has its own feeling of emptiness to it too. Pedigo lets chords drift off into nothing, allows gaps in notes to stretch and uses ever-so-gentle reverb, piano and strings to cast a light cloud over the music. This is my favourite song on the album, a meditative and sincere piece that gently unfolds over the space of five minutes, ample time to forget you’re waiting in the rain at Kildare station.

Agenda - snoa

Emotionally potent, loud, brash, tender, impactful, blissful, harsh, honest, crucial, crushing, strained, taut, bombastic, evocative, indecipherable, urgent, sprawling, claustrophobic, freeing, euphoric.

That’s all for this month! Let me know if I’ve put you on to anything new and I’ll see you guys soon.

-Leo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How long have you been interested in the scene? And when did you start getting involved and make this account?

jj.finns: I started listening to Lancey Foux in 2020 and then around the start of 2022 I discovered Fimiguerrero and Len through Lancey’s music since people associated them together. Then around 2022/start of 2023 I was basically obsessed with their music but I noticed that nobody was really posting about them or pushing their music as much as they should so I started posting about them myself.

With your account, how do you see your own role in the UK underground?

jj.finns: I see my role as documenting what is happening in the UK underground, especially the parts that not many others are documenting and helping artists reach a bigger audience that they couldn’t reach on their own. When I started it felt like I was the only one posting about the artists that are now the biggest in the scene and I hope that can happen with the smaller artists I’m posting about now.

When you mention how it felt like you were the only one posting about the artists that are now the biggest, do you hope to have an influence in the success of an artist with your platform?

jj.finns: Yes hopefully. I think that is the most rewarding part about this; when I post about an artist when they are small and then they gain popularity and credit me as part of the reason.

The entire scene seems to be in large part spawning from the internet. Coming from someone like you who’s mainly online, what do you think is the effect?

jj.finns: I don’t even know if I would call it an effect. I think the basis of the entire scene is the internet. Without the internet, this scene wouldn’t exist for the most part. Everything down to the influences, the community and more were all formed from the internet.

Looking at the emerging talent of Irish rap, do you think the success of the UK underground is replicable?

jj.finns: I definitely think that it is replicable. We are already seeing it in deathtoricky who is leading the wave right now. I think that will inspire more Irish artists to make music in a similar wave. Right now there aren’t enough exciting artists in my opinion, especially not those that make music that appeals to young people interested in underground artists from the UK and US.

How do you think the UK underground will age? It feels like we’re out a point where it can go anywhere.

jj.finns: I think this is just the start of the growth. We are seeing artists go to the top of the scene within months. This never happened before and it is a good sign that the audience and interest for the scene as a whole has grown a significant amount.

How do you find all the artists you recommend? You cover so many artists that it’s hard to figure out where you even begin.

jj.finns: It’s a mixture of ways. I naturally find artists on TikTok, Instagram etc. I get recommended artists by friends and people around me and also there are artists that have messaged me asking to check out their music and if I like it enough I will post about it. It's basically just being chronically online lol.

Is there anything in the underground holding it back? If it were to be fully mainstream, would anything have to change?

jj.finns: I don't think there is anything holding it back other than we just need more people taking the time to be creative and be themselves through their music. Other than that I think the scene has the potential to become fully mainstream but it will just take some time.

Do you think that being “mainstream” would even be the goal for a scene like this? As you said, the entire basis of the scene is the internet and sometimes I wonder if it would be at its best as a niche scene, free from conformist rap music.

jj.finns: It’s hard to say since there’s no exact way of knowing what counts as “Mainstream”. There will always be people that like to gatekeep and find music being niche a selling point to them. There isn’t really a good way to distinguish what is underground and what is mainstream though.

I’m also thinking about the recent Catacombs gig of underground rap in Ireland where they talked about helping cement the scene properly, so maybe this push and pull [between the mainstream and the underground] is a good thing.

jj.finns: Yeah, things like Catacombs are very important in helping the Irish underground grow and even just letting people know that it exists. I’m not even old enough to go to it though lol.

Before we wrap up this interview, what are some of the underrated artists people should be checking out?

jj.finns: Everyone should check out deathtoricky, sixzino, N4T, zeearcane, boogie, dottz, chriss144 and bib sama. I have an album coming soon featuring some of those names.

Have you been making your own music or is this tape of you hosting new artists, something like that Lyrical Lemonade one or the STRAPPED one from a few years back?

jj.finns: Yes, similar to the Lyrical Lemonade and STRAPPED tapes. Some of my favourite artists on an album curated by me released by me.

And is that what you’d like to pursue in the future? And is there more that you see yourself doing with your position in the underground?

jj.finns: That’s what I’m doing for now anyway. I feel like this will open me up to more opportunities. As for the future, I have many things like artist management and event organisation that have been recommended to me but I feel like it’s hard for me right now because of where I am.

Lastly, what impact do you wish to leave on the underground?

jj.finns: I want people to think of me when they think of how an artist got popular in the future.

cologne - deathtoricky

If you were in any way tapped into the Irish music scene this month, deathtoricky has been an inevitable feature of your algorithm. motive has around 30k likes on the TikTok snippet, a jjfinns twitter repost (who may or may not be a deathtoricky alt account) and now he has a headline gig set up at Whelans. It feels odd to have someone already be labelled as The One in an underground scene that is still only in its infancy, but there have been several people ready to champion him as Ireland’s next big thing all over my TikTok feed. One guy popping up in my algorithm said that he had talked to other artists, musicians and “tastemakers” (if there is anyone out there that is seriously calling themselves a tastemaker, please find a real job) about how great deathtoricky is and that for a really long time “young white Irish boys were not cool when making underground hip-hop” (…okay?). I’m sure he’s a good guy, but all this discussion feels just a tad much off of one song.

I was worried that the needless hype would slightly taint my impression of deathtoricky. I had heard of him before from snippets of his song smoke shit that had appeared a few times on my feed and inspired nothing in me, but his more recent output has me intrigued.

motives is really what has grabbed peoples attention, a perfectly fine song that suits the greater UK underground style (I know aligning Irish music under the same banner as English music is problematic, I’m just using this as a shorthand for a very specific sound coming from the underground scene on this side of the Atlantic. Trust me, it pains me to see other Irish artists using #ukunderground on their snippets to gain momentum). To be honest, I find a lot of his sound a bit too polished for my liking, which turns the would-be barn-burners motive and breathing right somewhat tepid and wrapped up in self-seriousness. However, on songs such as cologne and me too, the sleek production elevates his performance. Both use chopped up vocal samples and the aforementioned polish that I thought held him back is used to beautiful effect across these two tracks. On cologne, deathtoricky is flirtatious (“What you doing on your own?/I can tell you like the smell of my cologne”), antagonistic (“Fat bald head lookin’ like a Tic Tac”) and playful, like when he uses a David Shawty-esque glitch effect to extend his vocals. His flow and harmonies pop a lot more in this song and it’s oodles more personality than the songs everyone else is heralding as The Future of Irish Rap. I hope he keeps going in this style which can really bring out the best of him.

Edit: After tuning in for a Instagram live in which he played unreleased music, I can safely say that whenever he drops Bisto and his collaboration with 6survival and Ruka, I’ll be booking my tickets for the deathtoricky hype train.

so anxious - diskoteque

Yet another song spat out to me by the TikTok algorithm, but luckily this one needs a lot less discussion than deathtoricky’s. diskoteque is a young, Swedish boy with luscious blond hair, and the comments are all having a fun time calling him Nettsven and Ken Carlsson. It’s pretty fun to come up with your own — so far I have 2Haaland, Osamasven and Johannson Remover. Back to the song though. diskoteque uses a rolling, bitcrushed bass, reminiscent of early Yeat songs like Turban or Nvr Again (ah, the good old days), and a tacky vocal effect that makes his voice sound metallic. It really shouldn’t work, but it does.

PAY! - Theodora (feat. Guy2Bezbar)

I haven’t really gotten a chance to discuss Theodora, yet I’ve been addicted to her since I listened to her album BAD BOY LOVESTORY last year. Every now and then, I have a sudden awareness that I am half-French and I go on a binge of recent French rap (Lovarran, Ptite Soeur and Zoomy are all worth checking out for anyone interested). Theodora’s music is a mix afrobeats, rap and the glossy, neon sheen of bubblegum pop. And it really pops! Once you hear her breakout hit KONGOLESE SOUS BBL, it’s hard to get it out of your head. She’s already a bonafide star in France, but I thought I’d mention her on the blog since, despite how “interconnected” we’d like to imagine ourselves with other countries on the interenet, she hasn’t really sparked much attention anywhere else. This song, which features fellow star of the French afrobeats scene Guy2Bezbar, kind of reminds me of Bree Runway’s ATM, both in themes and pure cheekiness. There’s still plenty of fun to be had in getting your man to pay for everything, and Theodora knows just how to woo it out of him. Theodora’s voice is flirtatious, switching from a pristinely sung chorus to a more hushed verse, while Guy2Bezbar’s crooning acts as a nice push and pull. A song so good it can survive a vapid hook of doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo.

Run It Back - Desires

I thought I was finished with this list until I heard this latest song from Desires, but honestly it feels pretty appropriate for him to blaze in with a last-minute buzz beater. Desires is Ireland’s most fashionable man, proven by an Instagram page laden with fit pics that put my H&M hoodie and jeans combos to shame. I think Desires is one of the best prospects coming out of Ireland (I would even go as far as to say that True Religion is a top three song to come out of the underground scene) and his talent oozes here, especially on his flow. Desires has a pocketful of flows hidden in his Trueys that he can rifle through effortlessly. He has a good knowledge of timing, knowing when to switch up the harmony a little or when to add a reggaeton drum pattern switch-up halfway through the song. It samples Rihanna’s Rude Boy, a suitably synthy and glitzy production that Desires can sink his teeth into (he self-produced this song too). 2010’s era pop songs have the underground in a chokehold right now (motives samples Hello by Martin Solveig and I discussed last month beddyminaj’s sampling of M.I.A’s Paper Planes) and I think this is the most accomplished of the bunch, but I think I’m all nostalgia-baited out for now.

Dislocated - billy woods

As always, when you want to see the best rap can offer, woods remains the undisputed champion. woods truly captures what it is to live through the horrors occurring every second, yet always at a distance—the distance between your eyes and your phone screen, documenting firsthand tragedy in the safety of your living room. “Today I watched a man die in a hole from the comfort of my home” he deadpans. A lot of the pain carried in this album is ignored—billy covers his ears when he hears his mother cry, contemplates what it costs to “hide behind eyelids” and sums up years of trauma with the crushing line “If these walls could talk, they might not, after all, we don’t”. All this culminates on the album closer, Dislocated, an apt title for the shying away of man’s worst atrocities wood’s speaks of. Over taut violins and drums, woods questions what will happen when we are at the other end of the phone screen, trapped by the distance constructed by the apathy of modern society. “Face pixelated, face pressed to the pavement/Knee on my spine, the crowd undulated/Phones raised, in there, I’m faceless”. It’s heartwrenching, an incredible closer to an already incredible album, and one that will stick in my memory for years to come. Yet again, billy woods showcases himself as an essential artist when comprehending the cruelty of the 21st century.

Sorry for ending this blog on a sour note. Luckily, you can check out my playlist which has all the above and every other song covered on previous Stuff of the Month recaps which will hopefully lift your mood again. That’s all for now and I’ll see you again soon 🫡

-Leo

star - 2hollis

Going into the 2hollis album, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve been with him since his White Tiger days and even now I don’t know what it is he’s fully capable of. In the run up to this album, the albatross on his neck was how he’d go even harder than ever. It’s a pretty impossible task at this point, and even I was somewhat dismayed when nothing hit quite as hard as his leaked song with Ken Carson, “Van Cleef”, or even Skrillex’s newest album, which shares some common strains with 2Hollis. But diving back into this album, I can appreciate it now for its pop ambitions, its manic yet sleek production and its renewed lyrical focus.

2hollis’s lyricism on here projects the idea of someone who has gained much more confidence. It’s a far cry from his last album boy, perhaps his most emotionally anguished work, which had him perform as a bashful lover on songs like crush and you once said my name for the first time. The tonal whiplash between these tender moments and his newfound braggadocio can be a bit awkward. Maybe I don’t think of 2hollis, the ethereal fairy that he is, as someone who has sex, but he lets us know when he raps “Shorty on the table, spread eagle, tryna do something for me” and he lets the beat fade to tell you he has “real real sex”. His ego is a bit off putting. I have to confess something: I do not like who 2hollis is on this album. But that’s part of what makes the album great. It’s hard to take comfort when listening to girl when 2hollis croons “You’re my girl, you’re my girl, come here” when the beat is looming over you, mixing silky ambient with hard-hitting bass. You need 2hollis to insecurely ask “Are they lookin’ at me?/Tell me, are they lookin’ at me?” on tell me for the inevitable drop to truly hit, as 2hollis’ voice, and ego, shatter into a million pieces within the cavernous bass. 2hollis balances his douchebag persona well with production that always undercuts his sleazy intentions of fame. I’m not sure if it’s my favourite album of this month (eldest child, which is an acoustic slog that drops all the dynamic production, is a clunker), but it’s the one I’ve been thinking about the most.

sentence - beddyminaj feat. Lil Skag

I’ve finally caught on to beddyminaj, an up and coming Corkonian who made an appearance at the Catacombs gig I covered, and what a month it’s been for him. Beginning on the tail-end of March, he dropped money talk, where he confidently flows over a borderline sacrilegious flip of MF DOOM’s Accordion. Then he collabed twice with another young face on the scene, C2. workmans is a jolt of energy of a track, with C2 ending a string of bars with “bro”, like an exclamation point that adds a punch to every sentence. On Green Light, over a hazy jerk beat, beddyminaj’s flow yet again steals the show as he scoffs “I heard that you still wear Abercrombie”. Add the single above and an EP which includes a bass-heavy M.I.A flip (with “She dress like me, she talk like me, that must be why I hate her” as the hook), and you’ve got a pretty stellar month. I’ve chosen this one as I feel like it pretty much encapsulates what beddyminaj is all about; a hyperactive beat, a flow with the pace of a galloping horse, and smart bars that seem to come easy to him.

As a bonus, it has Lil Skag as a feature, who’s had quite a month himself (he also features on another song on beddyminaj’s EP). I’ll be upfront, I haven’t always been a fan of Lil Skag. His humour seems at times a little overdone, low-hanging fruit which relies too heavily on Irish references to prop up his rhymes. It’s chicken roll/Paul Mescal GAA shorts/The Two Jonnies/etc humour for people who think they’re above that type of shite. He’s like Babytron, but instead of witty humour with obscure basketball references, you get “Used to fuck around with a girl from Kerry/She played with me Gooch, no Cooper” and “I just bust me nut/I didn’t last long, I feel like Liz Truss”. However, all my concerns were silenced on his new collab with Lil **** (ideally pronounced with an actual censor beep effect) on BEBO BBY V2. It’s a little too close to fakemink/EsdeeKid/Rico Ace’s LV Sandals for my liking (even down to Lil Skag mimicking the hook with “Louie V binbag/Blonde thing, Louie V chinwag” and later on with “Got a Louie V ballsack”), but the beat selection really suits him and he swaps the eye-rollers for some smirk-inducing lines. But back to sentence. He bounces well off beddyminaj, bringing his weaselly vibes along with bars like “She finish my sentence/I finish her sandwich” and “See you got booked for a festival this year/ Uh-uh, that should’ve been me”. I’m gutted that I couldn’t be there for their gig last night, but I’ll make it a mission to see both of them soon.

lil2posh - hedi slimane feat. tyronetherapper + goreunc

Go into this one blind.

this is the lifestyle - 2Sdxrt3all prod. Whyceg

Real i’ll do it tomorrow-heads will know that I have a soft spot for 2Sdxrt3all. I’ve been a firm supporter for a while now (his album FUCK SCHOOL appeared on my Best of 2023 list and Apple Gelato featured on Stuff of the Month #5 ) and the streak continues here. Longtime collaborator Whyceg (who himself dropped a decent album this month) uses the oddest of odd samples as the drive for this beat - Everything in it’s Right Place by Radiohead. Yes, yes, it’s easy to see this as a gimmick, but if there’s anyone who can suit this, it’s 2Sdxrt3all. His music often involves a sense of paranoia, one that’s not always hyperactive and manic, but more subdued and bitter; the feeling of your past creeping up on you and you don’t know who to trust anymore. Listen to when Thom Yorke’s vocals rise and Whyceg’s bass hits, clouding your headphones in a worrying haze, and 2Sdxrt3all grinds out “The ones I love grabbed the shovel, threw dirt on my name” and tell me it doesn’t put a chill down your spine. As a bonus, this song isn’t made by Zionists.

This The Way To Amarillo - Tony Christie

One year ago yesterday, I started i’ll do it tomorrow. I wanted to do something that I would be proud of, and this is it. If you told me that there would be people out there that would be reading my words, I wouldn’t have believed you. What started as a way to getting my thoughts out into the void of the algorithm has offered me the opportunity to talk to some of my favourite artists and report on the local scenes of Ireland and around the world. I am eternally grateful. I started this blog on my birthday, so I thought it would be appropriate to see what exactly was the Number One song in Ireland on the 3rd of May, 2005. This song originally came out in 1971 but was reissued in 2005 for Comic Relief with a video featuring Peter Kay and a Jimmy Saville cameo. Hopefully my blog ages better than this. Sha la la la la la la…

That’s all for this month. Here’s to another year🥂

-Leo

There are six acts performing (one of which is a group of three) and I’ve heard of a handful already (beddyminaj and Desires for example), but even better, there’s plenty I haven’t heard of that I can sink my teeth into. But something caught my eye about this whole thing. A show featuring underground rap? Sure. Hyper-pop? Dubious in 2025, but ok. Witch house? Huh?

Maybe I have been living under a rock, but this new wave of witch house has just passed me by, but once you open up your ears you’ll notice it everywhere. Witch House is a genre tied with the indietronica scene of the early 2010s, spawning from the drum patterns of Memphis rap, heavy synths and basslines alongside an aesthetic that draws from occultism and spooky stuff in general. SPLITTER, Omen, Yung Tor, Sleep 16 and Rot Heavn are all playing Witch House at this show - a considerable amount for a small country like Ireland. The sound has evolved so much in the last few years that the original style laid down by the likes of Salem and Crystal Castles seems old-fashioned. I’m using a broad term, one which can capture a sense of this generation’s experimentation with rap, metal and more. Speaking to some of the artists involved in the scene, they told me they preferred to be categorised as “inspired by” Witch House rather than being pigeonholed into one genre. But what is it that’s driving this rejuvenation of Witch House in Ireland? Why here? Why now?

I’ll admit it, the question “why now” is a bit disingenuous. These artists have been making music for years and anything other than Witch House wouldn’t represent who they truly are. “I think the first time I got called an emo I was like ten,” SPLITTER told me. SPLITTER’s music is pure horrorcore paranoia. Claustrophobic beats fill up the headphones as he raves about “seeing shadow people out the corner of my eye” and how he’s Googling how to wash blood off his boots. Being surrounded by cousins and aunts that were into horror movies and metal music set him on the path towards the music he creates today - “I feel like whatever art form I would’ve went onto, it would’ve had a darker side. If it wasn’t making the music I do, it could’ve been writing horror fiction or doing artwork for death metal bands”, he explains.

Sleep 16 recalls how he first met Yung Tor and Rot Heavn - “They were already a group together and one day I seen a tall ass mf wearing Trues and rocks where I work and I became friends with Tor from there and started working on stuff with them”. It’s a tale that borders on mythology, and his description of Yung Tor makes him sound like a cryptid that’s emerged from an enchanted forest (perhaps fitting for a such a supernatural genre). He’d always been trying to be in a group - “I tried making my friends get in on it [but] they never did” - and through Witch House, he was able to find his tribe. When I asked him what was it like to be able to meet people who liked this style of music, he replied “It was pretty crazy cause we really from the middle of nowhere, and without sounding unbelievably pretentious it was sick meeting people with interesting taste”. Now, with his newfound compadres, they can make all the synthy, bassed-out raps and sly Gucci Mane flips together as Abhartach.

Consuming this scene from a phone isn’t the best way to engage with it. I’ll admit, when I was first thinking about this rise of Witch House I was worried it would be caught up in zeitgeist and be sucked away by algorithms and the dark alleys of technology. Hearing these stories is what puts a face to the Soundcloud accounts and stamps the scene into the Irish music sphere and ultimately nurtures its longevity. When I was talking to Omen, the lead man organising the event, he brought up phonk music, something that had been popular for a while on sleek TikTok edits and eventually fell off. He thinks that a real, physical presence is what’s needed to truly cement the underground. That way, he says, people don’t need to look at the UK or American scene to innovate and progress, as all the stars will be right here. With a show like this, Witch House won’t need to go down the phonk path of pandering to online sensibilities and can keep evolving and engaging audiences through time. (Coincidentally, Kieran-Press Reynolds wrote a fascinating article last month about the bastardization of phonk, one which hopefully doesn’t become prescient). SPLITTER echoes Omen’s hope for bringing the underground out from the internet, saying “In-person networking is very important too!” Ahead of the show, the audience’s reception of a primarily online phenomenon doesn’t scare him. “It’ll be a great buzz to perform live to likeminded people who are really into what you do. No track repost or comment on social media can compare for that.” For Sleep 16, he’s “nervous as fuck” and has a “big fear playing to a dead ass crowd.”

Aesthetically, Irish Witch House takes a lot of its inspiration from Celtic imagery, abandoned churches and foreboding forests. This darker aspect to Ireland is exactly what Sleep 16 is trying to tap into. “It’s way more representative of the Ireland we live in, especially out here in the stix” (the “stix” being Carlow). “I’ve got churches and Celtic crosses tattooed on me and everything, it’s something that definitely resonates with me”, he says. “The old pagan Ireland is so under appreciated.” “I think in the last few years there’s been a big increase in young people taking interest in Irish history, folklore, music and the language, which is really nice to see”, SPLITTER notes. “Personally I’m very proud of being Irish, it’s not a perfect country [and] there’s no such thing, but it’s home.”

Omen finds inspiration for his work by taking hikes. He constructs his songs visually before he works, often making a moodboard and soaking in the environment of Wicklow. His work tends be conceptual, creating an internal world within just three minutes. “Everything is political” he tells me, and he aims to reflect that in his work. While listening to American Tradition by Nicole Dollanganger, he was struck by the thought of, in tumultuous times like these with the rise of the far-right, what would a new American tradition look like? Kicking off the song with the hum of a pickup truck along with the drone of Dollangager’s guitar as a sample, it evokes the landscape of the American west, desolate and estranged, finishing it all off with a quote from Gummo - “Life is beautiful. Really, it is. Full of beauty and illusions.” Inherently, being Irish lends to a different awareness of the world around you. “Irish identity and Irish culture have faced challenges and oppression throughout history”, SPLITTER reflects. “I feel like our identity is strong enough that it’ll bleed into anything we do no matter what, unless actively trying to avoid it.”

One of the main goals of Catacombs is to highlight talent outside of Dublin. The cultural wharf between Dublin and the rest of Ireland feels vast nowadays, and it’s no wonder that many Witch House artists have started taking inspiration from their rural upbringings instead of trying to appeal to Dublin audiences. Omen tells me he’s trying to create an alternative to the traditional path of Irish musicians, as it has become far too common that an artist makes a name for themselves in Dublin before setting sail to London. He wants a blossoming ecosystem for underground rap, where artists can thrive without having to worry about where they come from. Artists from Cork, Waterford and further afield are taking part and if you were to take a quick peek at their Instagram stories ahead of the show, you would see each artist chronicle their journey to the capital by train.

I’m watching clips from the show the day after, recorded as the crowd jumps around and smoke machines go off, and I can tell it was a groundbreaking night for Irish music. For many, it was their first time performing, but they seemed to have taken it in their stride. Omen closed the night with a DJ set that featured 2hollis, Snow Strippers and a cheeky DJ Ess x Babytron mix. Speaking about the night, he was happy with how it went. “Great crowd and the performances were good too, I’ll definitely be putting on another one”, he summarises. He hopes to take Catacombs all over Ireland and his most extreme of dreams would be to one day have a tent at Electric Picnic that would host the best of the underground. But even with one show, a statement has been made. Irish underground is here, and Witch House has come out to bask in the moonlight.

-Leo

(Soundcloud playlist featuring the best of Irish Witch House)

As I was creating my list of songs I enjoyed this past month, I noticed something unusual. Nearly all of my favourite songs and projects from this month were ambient. I run an ambient show on my college radio so I think it’s about time I merge my radio show with my blog. So, for one night only, here’s the best ambient of March!

(P.S. had this list been not limited to ambient, I would have included Mel V’s excellent album Chaponomical, which I think is so good it needs a shoutout just for itself)

Whatever The Weather II- Whatever The Weather

Loraine James returns triumphantly under the moniker Whatever The Weather for a loose yet coherent album, spanning IDM, field-recording and lush ambience. I find ambient to be a hard genre to describe, so allow me to make a metaphor that may be a bit of a stretch. I see this album as being like a nice cider. Stay with me here. I’ve been thinking a lot about cider recently as the weather gets nicer and the days stretch on. Cider is a perfect summer drink, unfairly tarnished by the reputation that it’s a teenager’s first cheap drink they had in a field somewhere. I’ve gotten back into ciders ever since I tried some French ones from a little, rustic shop not even five minutes from the port I touch down on whenever I go to visit my grandparents. All the shop sells are sacks and sacks of onions and crates of apple juice and cider, like it was Bean’s laboratory from Fantastic Mr. Fox. The cider there is better than the sweet ciders of home, which feel like the can cause a cavity just by sipping them.

With synth pads, recordings of chatter and an overall more social buzz, this album feels comparatively warmer than her last album. It even dips in to some oddball IDM on songs like 15°C and 20°C, which aren’t exactly festival-ready bangers, but definitely hint towards a . Even the icy chimes on 5°C feel like a refreshing cooldown against the humid static humming underneath.

It all feels like a beer garden, the conversation keeping you just as warm as the sun. The further I get into summer, the more I’ll listen to this album, with a French cider in hand. And that concludes my trite comparison to cider. The writing gets better from here, promise.

sucker (fast switching)- Slacks bar and grill

Never have I heard an ambient song with a Spongebob sample, and i don’t think I’ll hear one again. I first encountered Slacks bar and grill on r/ambient when he made a post about how he was thinking of quitting making music. I decided to listen to what he was making and was blown away. His self-titled album from 2022 is a personal favourite, weaving drone with electronic glitching to create cacophonies of… something. I’m never quite sure. Anyways, this song begins with Spongebob nostalgia, morphs into holistic new age, then muted black metal distortion underlining nasally yet passionate singing, as if he’s trying not to wake anyone up in the house. It’s a true journey, one that only he can make sense - even if I can’t.

Dai Buki- DJ Python, Jawnino, Organ Tapes

Jawnino is maybe my favourite UK rapper at the minute. Ever since I found his first EP years ago, adorned with his grotesquely blurred out face on the cover, I was hooked on his seemingly disinterested flows and cadence, only hiding an eye for beauty and introspection. Here, he links up with Organ Tapes and DJ Python for an enigmatic tune that never gives itself away. DJ Python puts down a beat that’s halfway between trip-hop and early James Blake, coupled with Jawnino’s deep-voiced flow acting as a type of consistent bass to it all. Organ Tape’s guitar playing is sparse and lifts the song up for a brief breath of air, before Jawnino returns and grounds you in the murkiness of the mysterious haze.

Rookie- Purelink, Loraine James

NEW PURELINK ALBUM COMING!!!!! For the OG i’ll do it tomorrow-heads you may remember that their last album Signs was on my list of favourite albums of 2023, so to hear a new song, particularly one that is this good, has made me a little giddy. Loraine James returns for the second time on this list to provide some vocals which never overpower the still yet evocative instrumental. The magic really pops in the last two minutes, when hovering sounds disappear and reappear through the mist (the only way I can explain what I hear is with “sounds” I’m afraid. It’s not synthy and it isn’t exactly strings, but it’s a certainly an ethereal one, overused as that term is).

Flora- Hiroshi Yoshimura

The reissue of Flora came out this month, just in time now that the weather is finally getting better. Hearing more Hiroshi Yoshimura is bittersweet since he was one of the first artists I listened to when I was getting into ambient. While some of his other albums such as GREEN and Surround convey a sense stillness and introspection to soundtrack the listener’s experience, Flora is a lot more active - it feels like it’s taking you for a walk. This is my favourite song on the album, allowing it’s rhythmic motif to expand to greater heights of sweet synth serenity. Really it’s just a chance for Hiroshi Yoshimura to flex his skills (I am convinced he is the only ambient artist that has aura). I just relistened to it today on the nicest day of April, on the bus travelling across fields of green. Perfect in every way.

And that’s all the music from March! I’ve updated my official i’ll do it tomorrow playlist and you’ll hear from me very soon (promise!).

-Leo

What The Feng- Feng

Originally I was pretty sure that the new Oklou album would be my album of the month, until this came on my radar and blew me away. It’s okay though. Oklou has already placed herself in the i’ll do it tomorrow pantheon with her two songs that have previously appeared in this column (and her newest album is excellent. Check it out!), but for now, we have Feng to discuss.

Feng is another face in the new, young crop of British rap. His style is lo-fi, somewhat electronic and introspective. We live in a strange world at the moment, where kids can rap about drugs and murder. This is not to wag my finger and act like a scared parent, but it is odd how teens, such as 17-year old Nettspend, can talk about getting “geeked” off drugs in the same way 41-year old Future does. The idea of childhood has been completely detached from the music.

Feng is young and he knows it. Each song is a stone being placed to make a road towards his future. The EP kicks off with Kids from the West, a call to the youth over a beat that kind of reminds me of that nostalgic Mura Masa song with A$AP Rocky, Love$ick (but maybe it’s just me). “We don’t care what colour you are/ We’re the same but our faces aren’t” he raps- it’s optimistic to an almost cheesy degree, but at least it’s sincere. And it’s that sincerity that sets him apart. Feng wears his heart on his sleeve and I’m always a sucker for blunt lyricism, like on Left for USA, where he grieves for his friend who, you guessed it, left for the USA. It’s a song that’s equal parts celebratory and mournful, best exemplified in the most simplest yet most revealing lines, “We're always balling, even though we stopped playing football/ Or soccer for you 'cause you left for USA”. Feng is still a teen, caught in the purgatory between childhood and adulthood, and his choice of lyricism is so beautifully succint and transparent that we can feel like he’s a real person.

This month, the music I listened to was a source of solace. I’ve never been depressed by the news more than I have this month. It definitely doesn’t help that my grandparents watch the news religiously, switching from the BBC News once it finishes to the ITV news before watching Coronation Street. If you’re ever in England, try listening to LBC radio without feeling anxious over the constant fearmongering. I felt like I was one of those people who really believed the aliens had landed when Orson Welles read War of the Worlds on the radio all those years ago.

This month, where I was being fed news of genocide in Gaza and Trump and other horrible things, felt long and I often felt like I had no control over anything. Listening to Feng, as hyperbolic as it seems, rejuvenated a sense of youth within me that I felt had been worn down by the constant barrage of information from my phone. It’s a promise for a good time, an opportunity to let go. In YOLO, Feng raps “The best things in life are the things that you don’t know”. This month, I felt like I wanted to know a little less about everything and escape in music.

Crush- AJ Tracey and Jorja Smith

From newcomer Feng to someone who’s been a staple of UK rap for the last few years now. I must admit, I tuned out of whatever AJ Tracey has been doing the last few years (until he popped up for a decent verse on Chow Lee’s newest album) and I remember him back in his Ladbroke Grove days and telling myself to keep an ear out for him, only to not. Well how stupid am I. When I first heard the snippet, my ears perked up and locked in when I heard Jorja Smith’s flow. They rap/sing over a punchy grime beat, which makes me wonder if the UK underground will start looking back at old grime the same way that American underground is looking back at old Chief Keef and Gucci Mane for inspiration. Right now though, UK rap seems to be on in very good hands (and I couldn’t even fit in Jim Legxacy’s father, which came out right as I was finishing this list).

Your Selfish Ways- Locust

Yes, I try to make my blog about cutting-edge, recent music, but sometimes you just have to give up and realize that whatever they put into the water in the 90s just made the music better. This is not a “I was born in the wrong era” plea, but rather a shrug and a sigh. Anyway, this is trip-hop perfection and the live version adds a bit of a grungy sting to it that I never even thought would work, but it does. I also quite like how the Evening Standard reviews the album Morning Light, from which this song comes from: “Buy this record with money”. Music criticism was better in the 90s too.

WOODS- S1Ninja (prod. xaviersobased)

I haven’t had the chance to mention S1Ninja on my blog yet, but he’s one of the rappers within the Irish underground that I listen to the most. I’ve been hooked on his squelching-bass production on songs such as RACKS AND STICKS and ACCENT, and he brings along his staccato flow (from such songs as ROCK YO BODY) to this xaviersobased collab. The beat isn’t quite as bass-heavy as previous songs, but once S1Ninja finds the pocket in this seemingly impenetrable beat, he runs with it. IMMA ROB UR HOUSE ACTING LIKE I AM THE LOCKSMITH- yeah that about sums up my thoughts.

So Much Fun- Reserv

Ah, indie sleaze. It feels like so long ago that we thought the new wave would be a threat to modern music (I am sadly not immune… I wrote an entire blog post about this…). And yet, between the caveats of The Dare and Snow Strippers, there exists Actually Good indie sleaze. Take this song, by Reserv, in which he croons about how he finds alcohol, sex and partying fun, in a classic emo drawl. Where other acts bring their scoffing (post?)irony and their carefree hedonism, Reserv is, well, more reserved, and is more concerned about the beauty within all this raucousness. All this partying isn’t worth it if he doesn’t get to hang out with his dream girl, his Madonna in a MGMT t-shirt. “I have so much fun waiting for your call”, he sings, as an abyss of throbbing synths swallow him up, bitcrushed to the extremes.

TEETHSUCKER (YEA3x)- Rico Nasty

Here at i’ll do it tomorrow, we not only showcase the best songs of the month but also the grimace-inducing, left-on-the-curb pieces of shit (see: Denzel Curry’s Still in the Paint and the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Uh Oh). It pains my heart to say this, but the new Rico Nasty song is not good. I was always a fan of Rico, from her early Smack a Bitch days, to the hyperpop turn on IPHONE and beyond. My favourite verse of hers is still her feature on Injury Reserve’s Jawbreaker, where she tosses her critics to one side with her best flow yet. I’ve had to grin and bear some clunkers, like her Dylan Brady produced OHFR? and the hideous Las Ruinas album, which had production from fucking Marshmello and a thankfully forgotten remix of Fred Again’s Jungle.

Being a Rico Nasty fan was hard, and then a glimmer of hope shined down from the clouds. This month, she revealed that she had another album on the way, dropped her previous team after they wouldn’t let her put out the music she wanted and joined the label Fueled by Ramen, the same one as Twenty-One Pilots, Panic! at the Disco and Fall Out Boy. Yes, this roster is the most sterile of sterile pop-punk, but there is some potential here for Rico to fully dive into her most brash tendencies. And yet, this song sucks. Guitar riffs that sound like they were reheated in a microwave, a chorus that is about as fun as a bed of nails, all coalescing into a song that’s about as edgy as a Disney movie. I can see the main character already, headphones on and playing this song, looking into the camera and saying “yep… this is my life…”.

And that’s it for February! You can find all the above songs and every song from previous posts in my playlist. If I put you on to something new, let me know!

See you soon (sooner than last time anyway)!

-Leo

In Silly We Trust- TisaKorean

Tyler the Creator’s album came out this week and one of the best songs on it (Sticky) sounds like a TisaKorean beat. In fact, it’s nearly too tame to be a TisaKorean beat, proven by this new album of his. Songs like TiGGeR, SiLlY SuRf and even the romantic lOvE LeTtEr (with a great Don Toliver feature) show how TisaKorean can find the pocket in any beat handed to him and run with it. I sent this album to my brother and he replied back with “when the beat fire but tisakorean starts rapping”. He is dumb and stupid. Tisa can go from a hyped up squeal to a growl in an instant, his voice fluctuating like crazy for whatever gets the song even sillier. Also, shoutout to TiaCorine for having probably my favourite feature of the year on MiKeToMlln. She just bounces on the track, cooing and cawing, matching Tisa’s energy (which is very hard to do). Overall, it’s just a tight 20 minutes of some of the most fun rap music around.

All this month I’ve been obsessed with these earwormy hooks, these oddball beats, the personality that runneth over the brim and straight into my veins, making me sillier by the second.

Conglomerate- Lancey Foux, Fimiguerrero, Len

The trifecta aligns as we are delivered a behemoth of an album that will last long into the future of the British rap scene. Each rapper gets a chance to shine, each flexing their muscles over more and more intense and vastly unique beats. I was first worried that I wouldn’t be able to discern any English identity in the songs. My least favourite songs on Fimiguerrero’s last album were songs that I felt strayed too far to the American, Ken Carson-dominated sound (Mandy, Racks Up). So imagine my joy as I hear Len referencing Tempa T on the very first scene

It’s music designed for soccer edits. Music for knee-sliding to. Van Persie diving header. Balotelli’s “WHY ALWAYS ME?” shirt. Payet’s curved free-kick. This album, to put it in the immortal words of Joe Hart, is deceeeeent.

Harvest Sky- oklou ft underscores

I’m annoyed. Yes, this is the second month in a row I’ve included Oklou in my recommendations. But I can’t help it. I have had awful luck where artists I mention release a good if not better song the next month (Chat Pile Funny Man, diegointhedark bleeding grey, YT Prada or Celine to name a few). So I have given up and I present you with this, the best mid-2000s Eurovision rave banger that never was. Oklou’s voice floats magnificently between each eerie synth stab and underscores is a welcome surprise on this too. Her newest album can’t come soon enough. If last year was a brat summer, it’s about to be a “choke enough” Spring.

Paranoia- Izaya Tiji

I miss you. I miss you but I don’t want you here. The opening lines of Izaya Tiji’s return are sobering, a complete reset as the ambient-plugg beat drones in the back. Izaya Tiji is as elusive as ever, active on one his several burner instagram accounts, but once he drops, he cuts through the noise and you realise why he is one of the greats of a new, highly online era of artists. He is at the top of his game when he’s stretching the autotune and stressing each line he raps, until it reaches its breaking point, collapsing under the strain, and the song ends how it started. I miss you. I miss you but I don’t want you here.

Patchmade- YhapoJJ

By far the best rap video of the year. YhapoJJ is so much fun to listen to and just has some of the most fun jerk songs around and it feels like bliss to hear him rap “She smokin’ on a fucking vape, OMG, what’s the flavour?”. It’s a simple joy to see a rapper dress up as a knight and travel through a cardboard forest. Nowadays, where every rap video is superficial, CGI, Lyrical Lemonade gunk (foreshadowing…), this feels like a breath of fresh air.

Still in the Paint- Denzel Curry, LAZER DIM 700, Bktherula

Speaking of Lyrical Lemonade… This is not a recommendation. This is the worst song to come out all year and I needed to share it with people. Point and laugh at this song. Then cry.

Catfished- Crutch

Crutch is a Dublin rapper that I’ve been keeping an eye on for a while, and this is certainly his best song yet. He’s always worn his Detroit influences on his sleeve, but this one takes it to the umpteenth level over a beat fit for a Michigan-style shittalking. The Detroit influence is quite startling at times, and every time he speaks about sipping lean I have to stop and wonder if we even have codeine in Ireland. But I digress. Crutch’s accent is authentic and even soulful, giving everything a playful energy as he raps “OnlyFans hit me up, getting paid to fuck ‘em”. Groovy hook as well. Tick, tick, tick- this checks all the boxes.

Diddy Kong- Jay Eazy

Jay Eazy is the rapper you may have seen on tiktok last year promoting his song by running towards the camera. Here’s a refresher.

Now this should have been where it all ended. I should not have to be here, telling you that the new Jay Eazy song is catchy, fun and instilled with whimsical joy not seen in rap music since Famous Dexter dropped Japan. But here we are. And maybe I’m crazy and this is a horrible song and I’ve been brainrotted enough to think this is good, but, frankly, I do not care. It’s also worth watching the video to witness the worst cutting technique for chicken parmesan. He holds a knife like a toddler.

Belt Boyz- SahBabii

This album just lost out to Conglomerate to be my favourite album of November, but SahBabii really impressed me. Before this album, I had only listened to Barnacles, and was moderately impressed but I never seeked out his other albums. It seems like I’ve made a horrible mistake and I will be sure to rectify it in the future. But for now, this is my favourite song on the album. A hook so addictive that it feels like its been coated in sugar. I’m already envisioning the fit pics I’ll take to this song. And yet, within this song of dreamy fun, SahBabii’s love for his deceased friend DemonChild is what shines through. The croak he hits on the “on God” when he sings “When I lost Demonchild I swear I lost my mind on God” is just so effective and sums up everything that makes this song so impactful. Coming out of a bout of depression to make this beautiful album is a testament to his strength.

Go Deep (Roni Size Mix)- Janet Jackson

Every Christmas, I make mince pies and a yule log. While I’m baking, I’ve found that 90’s house/rave/jungle are the best songs to listen to. As such, I’ve created a Youtube playlist of vinyl rips and bootlegs of these bangers, perfect to bounce around the kitchen to. This song is my crown jewel. Roni Size is already a master of jungle but his prowess is displayed by so easily he comes up with a brand new groove from Janet’s vocals. Seven minutes of funky bliss and I would listen to another seven minutes more. When people make songs that are inspired by 90s dnb, they just completely misinterpret it and assume all it takes are fast breakbeats. But here, the real soul is found by how it paces itself, not burning out in a sprint.

Sublime et Silence- Julien Doré

In November, I travelled to France to attend my grandfather’s funeral. The trip let me really reminisce on my memories of him. One of them is riding in the car as a child, travelling from the port of Roscoff all the way across to the other end of France to the Vosges. By then it would be dark and I would be half asleep in the backseat and this song would start playing on the radio. The synths would kick in, floating halfway between my dreams and reality, and my mum would point at the neon sign of the Thiriet ice-cream factory, which meant we were only twenty minutes away from my grandparents’ house. I haven’t listened to this song since my grandfather’s passing, but sometime I will. The next time I pass that neon sign at night.

And that’s it for the month(s). Thanks again for checking out my blog so far this year and I can’t wait to see what’s next for 2025. Here’s the playlist and as always, if there’s something I introduced you to, let me know. Catch you on the flipside.

Leo

One of the things that stuck with me was their discussion about critiquing Irish music. Ireland has a blossoming but fragile music scene. To criticise these artists, most of which still have a day job, feels wrong. “So often you know these guys, you meet them in the smoking area”, remarks Colm at one stage. Irish music in general needs a whole push just to get a smidgen of attention from an outside audience, so to critique the few that don’t impress you feels uncomfy. But I think it’s time I took up the mantel. This is also inspired by Eli Schoop over at No Bells, professional hater extraordinaire, who has been tearing into everything I love. And with that…

I do not like Jordan Adetunji.

Jordan has been doing the rounds with the song of the summer KEHLANI at the moment. I’m not a fan of it. I’ll admit that the opening lines “I like the way your body is/ Is that too obvious?/ Ok I like your confidence” make me giggle and twirl my hair. The lyrics go downhill from there, never really finding anything as interesting. It’s certainly earwormy. Jordan’s falsetto voice sounds like it’s already been set at “TikTok sped-up version” mode (don’t worry, there is a sped-up version anyway, as well as a slowed-down one).

Naming your song KEHLANI is a lazy attempt at creating a viral moment (see: Jack Harlow’s Dua Lipa, $NOT’s DOJA or Armani White’s BILLIE EILISH). The idea of Kehlani precedes the song itself. Being overshadowed by someone who isn’t even on the song is not a good look. When Kehlani hopped on the remix, it wasn’t a “full-circle moment”. It was an ouroboros, a snake swallowing its own tail.

The song has a sexy drill type-beat, but Jordan doesn’t have what it takes to elevate it. Cash Cobain and Chow Lee have innovated so much in the past few years that Jordan simply doesn’t cut it. I relistened to Chow Lee’s most recent album, and going from Jordan’s humdrum romance to Chow Lee’s horny hymns is like whiplash. Lines like “Most of my bitches like sex, I like sex too, that’s why we get along” and “She want a sextape, I made a mixtape/ ‘bout the sextape” remind me why sexy drill is good: it’s SEXY!

Scrolling through his Instagram, past the walls and walls of fit pics, you’ll find videos of when Jordan was just starting out, promoting songs mixing “hyperpop and jersey club” as well as “mathrock x hyperpop x jersey club”.

I can’t really say much about these promos. They’ve become part of the cycle of being an artist online now, the constant attempt to garner attention in a system that seems to have become more and more randomised. It’s never the artist’s fault for having to navigate the algorithm. In fact, my favourite song of his, INVOLVED, came from a TikTok stitch.

What I do take issue with is the constant genre-hopping. Despite mixing hyperpop, mathrock (brakence was making better hyperpop/mathrock songs well before Jordan even came up with the idea), afrobeats, jersey club and now sexy drill, his sound still sounds three steps further than your average 24kgoldn song (a 24kgoldn diss in 2024- how daring!). On his album from last year, he struggles to truly leave his comfort zone. On certain songs, he attempts a stale Carti rage beat, only to default back to the jersey club he knows and loves. And that’s fine! Jordan is really good at coming up with hooks that get stuck in your head. His lyrics may be somewhat sterile, but I’ll always take the bait on a good hook. But by racing through genres without offering any new takes on any of them, he proves that he’s not versatile, just willing to fall flat on his face more often than other musicians would be comfortable with.

As I write this, his newest song has just released with a feature from Lil Baby. Getting a Lil Baby feature is perhaps the biggest thing to happen in Irish hip-hop since Rejjie Snow got an MF DOOM feature (P.S. that song isn’t especially good either). In fact, I would even say Jordan is better on this song than Lil Baby. The beat is another sexy-drill knockoff, diluted even further. It seems to have been produced by electronic duo Chase and Status, two English, 40 year old drum and bass-heads, completely detached from the New York sound they are replicating. It doesn’t have the same earcandy as KEHLANI, but it’ll surely climb up the pop charts nonetheless.

Jordan has been working tirelessly for several years now. To label him a one-hit wonder seems disingenuous. But it’s hard to get excited when the biggest Irish rapper right now doesn’t have an identity that doesn’t already belong to someone else.

-Leo