- Top 1OJan
About
File under
Fynch, Rebel Phoenix, Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip
Free style
Mellow jazz-inspired hip-hop
" Hip-hop that examines the conscience. "
Dublin rapper Nealo fronted a hardcore punk band and worked as a trainee solicitor before he gave it all up to express himself to beats. Having taken the bravest of plunges, the Dubliner emerged into what remained a nascent Irish hip-hop scene armed with the strength, vulnerability and depth of a man who had already set aside a prior life to focus on powering his way into our consciousness.
To some degree, it’s Nealo’s own consciousness he was looking to explore, however, and he began to do so, by his own telling, by strolling through Dublin’s Phoenix Park walking dogs and scrawling his thoughts in lyrical form. Debut album ‘All The Leaves Are Falling’ (2020) resulted, an album that brings with it a sense of examining both the personal and the hidden, darker aspects of Irish society: alcoholism, drug use, emigration, depression, loss.
Nealo’s trick is very much in dealing with the dark and the personal without it feeling like preaching, giving an unusually toned-down feel to his output. It often feels like he’s talking to you in the confines of a pub snug, pouring his heart out, but with gentle elements of jazz and an easygoing lilt that’s somehow still clutching the remnants of his punk-edged past, too.
In sophomore record ‘November Medicine’ (2023), Nealo explores sparse collaboration and heads down a ‘warts and all’ road, once again bearing his soul in his words, both musical and drawn from voice notes. The strength here is in being relatable by being personal, and, naturally, in the creative and enthralling texture of the musical backdrop. There have been more tangible highs, sure, like a Choice Music Prize nomination and opening for Dizzee Rascal, but the bigger picture of the music has always felt more like something Nealo does for his own wellbeing.
On ‘November Medicine’, the Dubliner’s themes are still more introspective: divorce, depression, pain. After all, he says, “one of the most beautiful things in life is being able to transmute that hurt into something, like a song.”
