Dean: On Curtisy’s boundlessly imaginative blog rap

Curtisy has been burning through that most precious of commodities: hype. There’s been broadsheet profiles, a Choice Music Prize nomination, inclusion on 2FM’s Rising Artists for 2026 list. Such accolades aren’t always bestowed on Ireland’s best rappers, and there’s little about Curtisy that screams mainstream palatability.

For me, he looks every inch a Soundcloud star; maybe even a throwback to a decade-and-a-half-old blog rap. This Jobstown boho makes music that’s loose, carefree and boundlessly imaginative, while presenting an image that I can’t imagine anyone would describe as being overly polished.

The first time I heard the song “Landmine!”, it reminded me so much of Lecs Luther’s “Dia Dhuit”. What a monumentally important moment in Irish rap that was: a blog-era classic from a MF DOOM-worshipping “charming little rapper” (who’d later shed the moniker and become Rejjie Snow) with a style that was already so dexterous, so fully formed, and presented in a bare-bones but visually arresting video that reflected how MTV had become old hat and YouTube was the future. With his slick flow and Tumblr-feed brain, Luther fit comfortably in the Earl Sweatshirt-end of the blog rap sphere. Released in 2011, “Dia Dhuit” redrew the lines of how great Irish rap could be, and how much star quality an Irish rapper could possess. It was a blessed precursor to much of the outstanding music we’ve enjoyed since.

Similarly, “Landmine!” features a crisp, head-nodding, yet devilishly simple beat – the ideal bedrock for Curtisy to spit bottomless bars (no chorus) about girls, money, and getting buzzed and loaded. Make no mistake, this is a pure rapping talent we’re dealing with here. Lacking the obvious star quality of Snow, he instead wields his weirdness like a stiletto, contorting his accent in wicked ways, always immaculately on beat, except when he chooses not to be.

​​For Curtisy (né Gavin Curtis), music first became a distraction during Covid-19 restrictions. Some of his earlier recordings that you’ll find online are less-than two-minute slices of lo-fi, low-stakes rap. Take “Clarified Thoughts”, from 2022, which finds an appropriately laidback Curtisy spilling loose ruminations over a sleepy lounge jazz rhythm.

He’s since become more expansive with his vocals, gaining total control over his off-kilter rapping style. His taste in beats is both eclectic and eccentric, encompassing everything from dusty jazz, to baroque symphonies, to Asian music. And while Curtisy insists he doesn’t make “stoner rap”, there is a druggy haze to songs like “Last Time”. This depiction of being young in Dublin includes the occasional smoke session.

For me, though, Curtisy’s true signature tunes are his flamboyant lightning-shock funkadelic jams with the lava-lamp tint. Delectable numbers like “mm mm good (In the Cellar)”, featuring Walshy, with its layer cake of seemingly incompatible vocals all trying to elbow their way to the front of the mix over a probing bassline. Or the airy synth patches of the bouncing “Ratatouille”, a collaboration with Ahmed With Love and Kylté. And, of course, “Eyes”, one of the best trash-talking rap songs of last year. Curtisy’s verbal panache has never been stronger as he runs wild-wild-wild over a twitching vocal sample in a classic push-back to unnamed haters: “I should’ve let you get some dirt a​​nd put it on my name? N-n-neverrrr!”

Latest project Get a Life! reflects a notion that Curtisy has been driving towards over the last couple of years: to make music with more prominent subject matter, richer lyrics and sharper songcraft – that is, to make music that’s more mature. As his team has put out, “It’s an album shaped by light and dark, anxiety and ambition, humour and heartbreak”. Because serious artists make music with serious themes, you know? It begs the question: Will this singular rapper smooth his style out into something that the broader audience he’s seeking will find digestible?

True enough, this is Curtisy’s most accessible album to date, but it’s still loaded with colour and joy; a 23-minute hit of rap excellence that invites Earl, Anderson .Paak and early Kanye to the same party. Get a Life! is entirely produced by owin, who provides pretty of different musical looks for Curtisy to face up to, beginning with the triumphant orchestral blare on “Talk of The Town”, an announcement, to anyone who might not get it, that this album is supposed to be a real moment. Quick like Houdini, Curtisy’s voice switches through various speeds like it’s nothing at all. He’s joined by Wexford rapper Lil Skag in the first of three appearances across the album, providing a welcome guest foil.

The vibey soul-splash of “Tell Me I’m Good” owes a debt to Mac Miller but also to Kojaque as Curtisy shouts out his home soil while declaring, “I’m getting better with age”. (That may be true, but an amusing thing for someone so observably young to say.) “Knotted” returns to the sleepy-eyed misty numbers, while the slow-burning orchestral soul of closer “Couch Spring” sees him punch out on a romantic note.

There’s also the highly personal “Sonny”, where Curtisy attempts to pass wisdom down to his young nephew: “I used to be wild and reckless”, he raps over owin’s pretty orchestral beat. “I feel like the child has left us.” Then, suddenly, the instrumental takes off, accelerating upward in a sumptuous swell of strings. It’s a genuinely thrilling moment as Curtisy boldly declares to his mother that success is imminent. Any second now.

What Get a Life! does not have is the brash bluster of “Eyes”. I hope that Curtisy’s quest to harness the hype around him into greater success doesn’t mean shedding that part of his sound and personality. Nevertheless, this singular eccentric is on an exciting trajectory. And should others want to hold him up as a new ambassador for Irish rap, who are we to stop them?

Curtisy performs at this year’s Forbidden Fruit Festival on Saturday 30 May.