The 93 hiphop boom...

There's always been some heads since day one aware of hiphop and putting in work over here in any of it's elements - around 93 though was when, music wise, things hit their initial peak...

The 3 main crews making it happen with rap music around this time in Ireland were Marxman, ScaryÉire and Ghost and Jay

marxman:



- Marxman was two Dubliners (Hollis, Oisin) and two British Jamaicans (Phrase, DJ KI), they brought out the album '33 Revolutions Per Minute' on Talkin' Loud in 92 which exercised Irish traditional music within a hiphop framework, it featured collaborations with contemporary trad guru Donal Lunny (dad of group member Oisin Lunny), Sinead O' Connor ( who has also worked with McLyte on the track 'I want [your hands on me]' ) on the track 'Ship Ahoy', DJ Premier ( who produced 'Drifing' ), trad Group 'The Storm' and several others.

They gained notoriety for the track 'Sad Affair' about the North which was banned by the BBC, for featuring lyrics such as "a six county state is a bastard state, so why o why can't we all integrate".

That was followed up by the 'Cynic' ep in 94 which cut down on the trad influences and included some mellow instrumental only tracks (influenced by hanging round with Massive Attack), then came the 'Time Capsule' Lp on the More Rockers Label which included some of the ep tracks and some more, was received fairly well but without the hype which resulted from their debut.

Since then the group branched out doing other work, including intro music for Teilifis na Gaeilge, running their 'Pawnshop' label, Oisin Lunnys soundtrack work, as well as recording under the name 'Minatone' on Howie Bs Pussyfoot Label.

Also, Hollis Byrne from Marxman was a very early pioneer of graffiti in Dublin, writing under the name of SUT-ONE (Supreme Urban Terrorist), and did a legendary piece in the North Strand in 1987 which inspired many of todays writers from the area. Hollis has also recently resurfaced music wise, laying down vocals for Bristol based crew 'Offside'.

scaryéire:



- Then there's the legendary ScaryÉire, the pioneers of hiphop in Ireland, there are mad stories about these guys... they toured with U2 (as did Marxman), opened for acts like Gangstarr, Beastie Boys (who they toured europe with), House of Pain and Public Enemy... had a track 'Lost for Words' on the 1993 album 'Planet Rap' from Tommyboy, recorded a debut album, including production from Howie B, Tricky, Cutmaster Swift, DJ Mek and Sam Scuttery-Eye. Jim Fitzpatrick, the world famous artist renowned for his contemporary celtic art and 'Thin Lizzy' album covers was commisioned to design their logo / cover. Unfortunatly some hassle errupted between the group and island records and ScaryÉire got dumped by the label, Island retained the copyright on Scary's work but never bothered releasing it... a criminal act, those who have heard the album tracks on bootleg testify to its dopeness.

Then in '95 Scary reappeared on London independent label 11 records (a division of Island) and released 'Dole Q/That's no good to me' on 12", the former song their various encounters on dole day, the latter a rugged, frenzied cypher, both amounting to some of the most original hiphop ever, the crew were meant to go on tour around the uk and ireland at the end of '96, releasing their album at the same time, but then all went quiet ...

ScaryÉire were ahead of their time, the local music industry just unable to comprehend their product, preferring instead to stay with 'safe' rave and indie rock clones... in the last year or so however, hiphop here is fighting back, the growth of the graf and music scene reflects this, and Scary material in bootleg form continues to be highly prized by local heads. Here's hoping that the crew can reform at some point in the future...





ghost and jay:

- Ghost and Jay are two heads from Tallaght who were a warm up act for ScaryÉire on tour. Two tracks by them ( '2 Innocent' and 'Good N Evil' ) produced by DJ Mek around 1992/1993 have recently surfaced. Not much is really known about them except that it's been about 2 years since they've been heard from music wise...

( During this era, the documentary 'Celtic Grooves' that explores hiphop's assimilation into Irish culture was compiled by Key Feature Productions, check out an article on it here. )

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