Hip hop
It’s 6pm on a cloudy late-afternoon in Dublin and Clash is sitting down at the Metro Cafe with Ahmed, With Love. as he sips a herbal tea in his durag. We’re waiting for fellow rapper Curtisy to join us, another member of the bold and silly-but-serious new wave of rappers and producers currently calling Ireland home. You only have to look through the contemporary scope of the Emerald isle to see artists like Lil Skag, Sloucho and Rory Sweeney emerging; artist’s that don’t take themselves too seriously, but do take their art seriously.
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The names of fellow artists crop up often as it becomes clear that community is at the very core of not only what makes this group of artists create, but what gives them a total sense of freedom and belonging. Rory Sweeney produced much of Curtisy’s debut album ‘WHAT WAS THE QUESTION’, out on Brook Records, and also shares production credits on much of Ahmed, With Love.’s forthcoming debut mixtape ‘Comma, FullStop.’ which is to be released on the same label on October 11th. Whether it’s a beat, a lyric or simply just being in the same room together, this community is constantly feeding into each other’s art both consciously and subconsciously.
Curtisy and Ahmed, With Love.’s first meeting would spark the creation of their biggest collaborative track to date. ‘Men On A Mission’ was made on the day they met and would go on to receive the remix treatment from Irish Hip-Hop spearhead Kojaque, providing the catalyst for a beautiful friendship in the process.
“It’s like, it feels like you’ve known them,” says Karim. “I went in there with Curtisy and Rory [Sweeney] and we were chilling like we’d done it a million times before. Sometimes you be seeing people and it takes three or four times to meet before you figure it out, but it took us about five minutes to start being idiots together.”
Curtisy joins us and within seconds the pair are exemplifying that; cracking jokes, reminiscing about past shows and waving to friends walking close by.
“I’m not the type of person to try and figure it out if it isn’t clicking,” he says. “We’ve just always had a connection, y’know?”
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The pair started dropping music at around the same time, circa 2019/20. Curtisy got into rapping listening to Earl Sweatshirt in Tallaght (where Jafaris and Hare Squead also call home) and freestyling drunk at house parties, while Ahmed took inspiration from the afrobeats, Sierra Leonean heritage of his family and brother Skills 8 Figure, developing a competitive spirit with his rapper sibling, while also having his eyes opened by what was then the pioneering era of sillywave in hip-hop from Tyler, The Creator and Odd Future.
“Musically I’ve always been a fan of rhythm, in anything,” says Ahmed. “I remember finding Tyler, The Creator for the first time and I was like, ohhhhhhhh, I don’t even need to pretend to be a thug, I can just be weird as hell! People in school are already telling me I’m weird as hell, now I can be that and rap! That’s allowed now?!”
“I’d be watching the rhyming pattern videos of MF Doom too and that was crazy for my little autistic brain. I was like, so rap’s like mathematics! And I’m getting H1s in mathematics! This makes sense, man!”
That sense of rhythm is very much evident throughout Ahmed, With Love’s Comma, FullStop. As inspired by 70s, 80s and 90s Brazilian musical styles such as Samba, Bossa Nova and Tropicalia – by artists like Gal Costo, Joao Gilberto, Jorge Ben Jor, Caetano Veloso, Djaven and Tim Maia – as it is contemporary rap from MIKE and Wiki, the tape swoops and dives through Art Rap and World Music aesthetics, featuring a beautiful collaboration with friend and member of the band Burglar, Eduardo Pinheiro, which features Ahmed singing on a track for the very first time, as Eduardo sings in Portuguese.
“I was blessed that the very first song we made was the outro track to the tape, which I’d like to think is as pure a homage to classic Brazilian Bossa and Samba as I could do”, he says, taking it back to the mixtape’s inception. “I can’t really put into words how much that track means to me.”
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It’s one of just two vocal collaborations on the tape, the second coming from Curtisy on lead single ‘help wanted.’, a track produced by Rory Sweeney and TXPE EATER that showcases the more introspective side of both rapper’s consciousness. If ‘Men On A Mission’ is the party, then ‘help wanted.’ is the deep chat you have with a mate at the afters, but as much as it touches on important topics such as death, worrying about friends, taking care of their ego and the constant yo-yoing of their mental health, it also makes room for those silly personality traits to shine through. These guys don’t just fight their demons, they get high with them.
“Irish people are traditionally story-tellers,” Curtisy tells me. “Stories combine punchlines and comedy, unless it’s a fucking ghost story or something. Music itself is a story. We need people to lighten the mood occasionally… at least every four bars. No one’s gonna kill themselves tonight.”
“Irish humour is based on pain”, reinforces Ahmed. “They been in the trenches. They know how to write a song about it and laugh about it. With stereotypical hip-hop, I think it’s hard for artists to differentiate being silly and being serious, or thinking that there is a hard cut off, like I can’t be fun and be myself, I have to add a little bit of a narrative for people to take it seriously…”
“But you don’t need to take yourself seriously to have a serious piece of art, y’know what I’m saying?
This silly-but-serious is there to see across their close-knit community, with artists like Julia Louise Knifefist, E The Artist and Sloucho all calling themselves friends. It doesn’t stop at the performers either; the family extends to the filmmakers, the photographers and the team of creatives that contribute to each project.
“When I started doing music I didn’t even have anyone to text me to ask if I got paid for the show and stuff like that,” says Curtisy. “I didn’t know how this shit was supposed to go. I’m so glad that we’re all friends. The community is in a really lovely place.”
“I love making things,” admits Ahmed, “and I always make an excuse to make them. I started Youth Theatre when I was eighteen, where I met Eduardo. That was really fun; surrounding myself with creative people and realising it’s fun to be around people that have that same mentality.”
“I always say when Covid hit that everyone got really close, but I really mean it. Right now, there’s more sense of a community. We all know we’re pushing the same thing, we have a common goal. If one brother gets to eat then we all eat, and the fact that we’re growing enough now to have sub-genres or styles within our community is a testament of how far we’ve come.”
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‘Comma, FullStop.’ by Ahmed, With Love. comes out October 11th on Brook Records. ‘WHAT WAS THE QUESTION’ by Curtisy is out now on Brook Records.
Words: Andrew Moore // @agmxxre
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