Saturday, August 24th, 2024, was not a good day to be in the middle of Dublin City. The annual Aer Lingus College Football series brought the American football teams representing Georgia Tech and Florida State University to the Aviva Stadium in Dublin 4, which itself wasn’t much of an obstruction, but the City Council decided to shut down all traffic on Dame Street in Dublin 2 for the game, despite it being nowhere near the stadium, which disrupted many commuters’ routes.
If you tried to sneak into town through the Luas line, then the Niall Horan concert at Kilmainham in Dublin 8 would have blindsided you. Public transport and routes that way were clogged, too. In other words, unless you lived on the Northside of Dublin, trying to traverse into town that day was like the opening scene of Falling Down.
That preamble sets the scene for how hellish it was to make it in and out of town that day. Yet despite all of the obstacles, the people of Dublin showed up when their local rapper and poet, Malaki, came home to headline the Workman’s Main Room, which is situated right in the middle of the other two events.
The socially-conscious and thoughtful Malaki has enjoyed a lot of success recently, from playing Reading + Leeds, headlining across Ireland, the UK and Europe, racking up millions of streams across 180 countries on Spotify alone, getting strong radio play and press, collaborating with acts like 1000 Beats, Tolü Makay, Nealo, and Lucy McWilliams, and, most importantly, accruing a loyal fanbase.
Malaki’s success is the payment for the ceaseless work that he puts into his craft and vast output, the fruits of which can be seen in the dedication and investment of the attentive, sold-out audience. Malaki can play much larger venues than the 300-cap Workman’s Main Room (and, indeed, he has), but the room’s intimacy allowed him to jump right into the crowd and begin communicating on issues like mental health, masculinity, racism and bigotry, and general discontent with the political system on a much more direct and levelled manner.
But the choice of demanding topics did not strip the night of joy. Malaki was evidently having fun up there, and he made it clear that he appreciated both the faces he knew and those he didn’t for turning up. With tracks like “46A,” “Scumbag,” and “Fair Play,” the crowd were totally eating out of his hands. A few bars from Malaki and the crowd sang the rest for him. Trust that the audience will know all of the lyrics to your music and sing them back is not something which acts that are playing at the club level can confidently rely on, so it was a lovely thing to witness.
From a performance standpoint, the downtempo, chill-out instrumentation was assembled by a digital beat and bassline, some atmospheric sounds, and a guitarist and drummer perfectly in sync with the backing tracks. Malaki often put the mic away at quieter moments to make the crowd engage with his words more carefully, which would be trickier (although not impossible) at a bigger venue.
Support for the night came from Skull The Pierre, an eccentric Dublin-based Swedish rapper who has been making waves in the local scene lately. According to an interview he gave a few weeks ago on the Who Art Thou? Podcast, he has been hounding Malaki to let him open for him for a while, so it’s nice to see perseverance prevail!
It’s an interesting point of comparison because, while not engaging in comedy hip-hop, Skull The Pierre is focused on whimsical and, inconsequently, feel-good lyrics, as opposed to the headliner’s more purposeful, analytical and declarative words. Yet, from a music and stage standpoint, they’re very similar in their approach to getting the crowd engaged (utilising a lot of the same “Hands up” and “Let me see you dance to this next one” prompts). Despite being more familiar with Malaki’s work, the audience seemed equally receptive to both.
Skull The Pierre did an excellent job of introducing himself to the crowd, getting them hooked, and giving them something to remember. Dressed like a forgotten cast member of The Matrix, sporting a half-shaved-off handlebar moustache, having an ambiguous but oddly endearing stage prescience, and boastfully waving a toy Uzi, what he was about was evident as soon as he stepped on stage. The crowd, who were there for something completely different, got the gag and went along with it.
While not intentionally set up this way, the gig was a great showcase of how versatile the Irish hip-hop scene has become. The major (and probably not unfair) criticism of the grassroots, independent Irish hip-hop in its earliest days was that it had no unique identity, perfunctorily and uncritically copying either the gangsta rap of Tupac or N.W.A. or the shock value of Eminem. Now, that can no longer be said.
Irish hip-hop embraces various people with different ideas, perspectives, and means of communication, and the concise earnestness of Malaki and the absurd effusiveness of Skull The Pierre working together in harmony illustrates that.
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