Dublin rapper Curtisy: ‘I’m an emotional guy. I’m always trying to figure some stuff out’

In early May, Curtisy, a young rapper from Tallaght in Dublin, released his debut album, What Was the Question. Since then the record has built underground enthusiasm with the sort of word-of-mouth affection that almost feels like something from another time. Imbued with anxiety and humour, and balancing self-deprecation with braggadocio, Curtisy shirks cliche and serves up an incredibly satisfying style.

For someone at the start of a creative career, it’s a brilliantly accomplished album. The sound and feel, if not coming wholly from the depths of the wooziness of pandemic-era lockdowns, is certainly informed by a sort of existentialism or purgatorial state. And yet it’s neither wallowing nor a drag. If anything, Curtisy’s style is as pleasurable and free as a well-skimmed stone.

By the middle of the album, when the tracks Lower Your Hopes, Sofa and Tree Sap land in a row, the state of intrigue it induces becomes a full immersion. On Lower Your Hopes Curtisy raps an inventory of the flavours of his style: “This the runners coming covered in the muck flow. This the mother’s looking for me coming home f***ed flow. This that they can all get f***ed flow. This that slurred speech red face drunk flow. Garda car back seat smelling like a skunk flow. This that I can’t dunk flow. This that fail everything I’m Mr Flunk flow. It’s the Curtisy show.”

Two and a half years ago, in January 2022, a video came out for Men on a Mission, a track featuring Curtisy and his frequent collaborators Ahmed, With Love and the producer Rory Sweeney. It wasn’t perfect, but the wry confidence, intention and potential were all there. An undeniable energy was at work. By that September a remix emerged, with a new video, this time featuring the acclaimed Dublin artist Kojaque, himself a touchstone for many emerging rappers in Ireland.

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Curtisy is only four years or so into practising his craft. “I’m 24 now, so [I started] about four years ago, when I was about 20,” he says. “It was in Covid, and I was drinking a lot because there was nothing else to do. People I was drinking a lot with were rapping a lot when they got drunk.” When they heard him rap, his friends urged him to get into a studio. He did, and started freestyling, not entirely sure what he was at. But “when I started writing,” he says, “it felt like that was the thing”.

Writing had always been a refuge. He enjoyed composing essays at school and frequently wrote a diary to work out his feelings. “Sometimes I write a little short story here and there, but it’s never been my thing. Even with rapping, telling a story in a straight line has never been my thing. But, yeah, a lot of journaling. I’m an emotional guy. I’m always trying to figure some stuff out.”

Curtisy cites music released around 2016 as his awakening: Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, Drake’s Views, Tyler, the Creator’s Cherry Bomb. Before that, as an 11-year-old, he was in a youth group in Kiltalown; when a band of teenagers five or so years older than him began playing in local pubs, he was inspired by their ambition and the way they set about “realising and actualising the thought” of making art.

Curtisy sees his environment as informing both his music and his lyrics. “I think there’s something about Jobstown and Tallaght, and areas like it, where it’s all about silver linings,” he says, “The good in the bad. The beauty in the beast. That’s where a lot of my music is. There are sour thoughts, but it’s glossed with happier stuff. I guess that’s what my environment taught me: it’s all a bit doom and gloom around here, but there’s happiness to be found, there’s good things. The environment, honestly, held me back from it for a while. It was never too welcoming to new ideas.”

This reticence towards creative expression, he says, is changing. As young people in the area are seeing more of their peers gravitating towards art, Curtisy is sensing a shift in openness and creative experimentation. “It’s a conglomerate of a large amount of people starting to do stuff,” he says, “Do you know Munnelly? Like, he’s from three minutes away from me.” Jordan Scruffy Munnelly is the rapper behind the cult Dublin street hit Washed Up.

Curtisy cites Kojaque as his biggest inspiration. “He’s sincere in what he does, and the people are loving it. He’s proof that you can do that. I’m just going to keep doing what I love and try to make it like big bro.” He’s also a huge admirer of the brilliant Ballymun band Bricknasty. “I know they’re just like me – young fellas making music – but they’re so talented. They take it so seriously.”

On the album’s final track, Unclaimed Land, with Ahmed, With Love, Curtisy lays his vulnerabilities raw: “6am, dogs barking, I’m off to a bad start, stress levels off charts.” The creative process around the album’s conception and development, he says, “was definitely a bad time in my life when I was writing stuff – depression, addiction, love and loss hand in hand. There are themes that are confident, just bragging my sh**, starting to feel a little more solidified in what I do. Just confusion, too. The name of the album is that as well, a scary time in my life, wondering what’s next, wondering all sorts of things, every question there is to wonder.”

Listening back to the record, he thought “it felt like I was unsure of myself” before realising that “it sounded like I was sure about being unsure of myself”. He realised it was actually layered. “I think I’m good now. I used to be a serious drinker ... I don’t really drink any more. I have a drink here and there. It used to be my everything. But now I’m in a good relationship. I’m happy. Used to be I [was] never really striving for more than just comfort, but I’m starting to learn a couple of things about myself.” Like what? “That I want success within myself, and externally.”