Curtisy: I have to accept that I'm an artist, which I have a hard time doing

An interview with the Dublin rapper as he releases Beauty in the Beast, the followup to the Choice Prize-nominated What was the Question?

Dublin rapper Curtisy and producer Hikii released the collaborative mixtape Beauty in the Beast on May 30. The followup to debut album What was the Question?, which was nominated for the Choice Prize for Irish album of the 2024, Beauty in the Beast is inspired by horror movies and about, as he tells me, the hope in the hopelessness and the good and the bad. It’s not quite as insular and self-examining as the debut album - ‘Left, Right’, which features vocals by Shiv, sounds positively singalong - but he still examines societal issues like drinking and addiction (‘W’!, ‘Drunk Flow’). That’s what really made What was the Question? stand out in 2024 - just how deep things got. As Nialler9 said in declaring it the Irish album of the year: “Where most new artists breaking through in Ireland are addressing the socio-economic and cost of living and rent crisis this country is currently going through, Curtisy’s debut album is on a different tack – insular, personal, addressing his own situation, what’s happening at home and whether we are destined to repeat the predilections of our progenitors.”

I talked with Curtisy a couple weeks out from the release of Beauty in the Beast for the TPOE podcast. You can listen to it in full here or get it by searching for ‘The Point of Everything’ wherever you get your podcasts. You can read some of the interview, edited for length and clarity, below.

You released your debut album. What was the Question? on May 3, 2024.You said just before I pressed record that that sounds crazy it’s been a full year…

Even surviving a year is crazy, never mind the album being out a year. Yeah, it's nuts. It's nuts that people are still listening to it and it's kind of nuts that songs have picked up more traction since, and it makes me just feel like I've put art into the world that people can connect with and at first, you don't know why there's playlists and there's rollouts, and that's kind of getting you your views and your streams, and it's all going real well, but when it dies off and people are still listening, that's the thing. That's what it's really about: People just in the house a year later being like, 'Let me listen to 'Landmine'.’

It's been word of mouth, I guess? I don't know if you get a sense of that, since you're the person behind it. Have you seen that?

Yeah, I think if one person likes me in a group, I think they're gonna tell their friends. A lot of people will come up to me and go, 'I didn't even know about you. My best friend was playing ya at the session.' Yeah, I like that. I rather that than phone stuff. When someone's scrolling across me and I'm 1% of what they're seeing today. I really like when a friend tells a friend, this is something we need to do together.

What's success, when you're thinking about it? Is it that someone comes up to you and says, 'Oh, I heard your song at a house party?' Is it that almost personal connection?

Yeah, I think so. Because the people I listen to, I need that. I can't really listen to somebody that I can't separate the art from the artist, really. If I don't really connect with somebody - maybe that's not separating the art from the artist. But I mean, if I don't connect with what somebody's saying in a song and their ideologies and just stuff that they're saying resembles stuff that happens in my life, then it's not really gonna go anywhere. I'm gonna listen to it in passing. I'm not gonna think about it, I'm not gonna talk about it. So I'm just trying to get out there and have people talking about it and being like, 'This bar meant something to me.' Somebody sent me a DM, must have been a drunk one, like, 3am the other night being like, 'Beauty in the Beast is about my life' - the single - 'I can't believe what you've done for me. I've changed my whole life. I'm four days sober.' I'm like, holey moley! That stuff! I just showed it to somebody; 'Look, I'm - you know me, like!' I'm not supposed to be getting texts like that. It's good. It's really good. I never thought my emotions could connect with other people's. And since that happened, I probably used to think I wanted to be famous and rich and a million streams and stuff, but once we got past that and we started seeing what it's really about for the actual isartist then that's where I'm at.

It's a lot of pressure (to be getting messages like that). I'm imagining getting something like that, I'd be like, fuuuuck....

Yeah, that kind of makes me feel like the next song has to be connecting like that. But I usually just, when I get in the studio, everything goes out the window, and it's just how I'm feeling, because that's the base of it. The reason I'm doing this originally, besides maybe wanting to be famous - for some reason, I've always felt that since I'm a kid, that for some reason, I should be or I wanted to be - but other than that, it's always been like, the reason I'm going for this to be famous is because this helps me understand my emotions and feelings. I write stuff down and six months later, I'm like, 'That's how I was feeling'. So I need to remember not to feel like that anymore. Or as I'm writing it, something will come out, and I'd be like, do I feel that way? And I'm like, I do feel that way. Maybe we should do some stuff; it's really technically brain training, for me, it's really weird.

A year on from the album being released, do you think about the lyrics much? I mean, you're probably only listening to them now when you're performing the tracks, and I guess maybe you're detached from them a little bit. That's what a lot of acts say, that a song can be cathartic as they're making it, but then once you start performing it, it maybe doesn't lose its meaning, But you becomes a little less dependent on it. How do you think back on some of those deep tracks on What Was the Question?

So true. Yeah, I tend to not really perform the deep ones for that reason - I've done that in the past, and then it just turns into a song that I perform that doesn't mean a lot to me.

You want it to still mean something to you, is it?

Yeah, because in the past, I've had an unreleased song. I had a friend that passed away from cancer. I wish I could remember the year but there's a block in the brain on all that stuff, when we were about 18, I think. I wrote a song about him a couple years later. I never recorded or anything, but I used to perform it over the beat, just on stage, and it obviously didn't get the reaction I wanted, because people didn't know my friend. I didn't even know how to explain what this song was about, or do it right, or whatever. And then after three or four performances, I just kind of lost it. I didn't want to record it anymore, because I felt like it wasn't doing him justice. I think the things that really, really mean something to me, like that song 'Mad at Me' off my album, a lot about my relationship with my mam and dad, I still haven't quite listened to that song with them, or broke that down for me, even, I haven't listened to that in a while, and figured out what was really going on with me. I just feel like I'm not giving it all on the stage because I don't quite understand it, or I'm not quite ready to, if it's still the issue at hand.

When you were starting out, did you have it in mind what you wanted Curtisy to be? Did you want it to be putting putting things out there yourself, or did it take a while to figure out what you actually wanted to be rapping about, talking about?

It took me until after the whole 13-song project I released into the world to realise that, a lot of the time, I am not really talking about something, so that's something I've tried to implement into this next one. Before that album, What was the Question?, I just was trying to rap good, and that's not what I'm here for.

Rapping good?

Just only rapping good, though, you know what I mean, connecting words good, but like, who's leaving with anything, because there's so much of that, and that's no dig, because I listen to a lot of that. But what I want to do is what my favourite artists do, which is make you leave with something. But yeah, to answer your question, I didn't know, or care really; at first, I was doing it drunk and I was doing it with only friends, and it was about having fun and it was about trying to get famous at first, and then once I figured out, 'OK, I just wrote something, and I'm leaving with that thought', then I started trying to base it around that, but still, I would fall out and just make a - I wasn't holding it so precious, and I don't want to hold it super precious, but I always want to care about what I'm doing. I don't want to have verses out there that just aren't even from me, they don't even feel like me. And there's a lot of that. And if I write something like that, I'll write it, I won't record it, and I'll know when it's different. I'll know when one of the thoughts I have is about to be something or I'll look at a thought and be like, 'OK, I was just feeling like I wanted to write and be cool for a second there.' That was me trying to be famous.

The personal tracks on the album. We'll stick with What was the Question? for now. 'Sofa' sounds like that. Almost sounds like it's an interlude, less than two minutes long, but then you're just talking about personal stuff: "I thought I wasn't shit. I thought they wouldn't cheer. I tossed me life away. I thought to not be here. I toss myself in bigger holes." It's really self-examining yourself.

It's what it is. I don't understand me a lot of the time. I have a way better understanding of me since I started making music and analysing it, but I used to just run around, a ball of anxiety, kind of not knowing who I was. So that's what the music is. Again it's just to put it out there and for someone to be like, 'I think these ways. He thinks these ways, and he's doing something cool. So I can think these ways and also do something cool. I'm not less than anybody. I'm not not able for it.'

Can you remember the first time that you did a song where you were being honest, and you were like, 'Oh, this feels different to what I was doing before'?

Yeah, there's a song about my ex-girlfriend called 'Away From You'. That was the first time. I think I cried when I was writing it. We were going through some shit. I think I was bawling crying writing it. And I was like, I've never cried writing a song. And even looking back at it now, it's not too digging deep into what's going on, but there is somesurface-level questions that I didn't even quite know I was asking about myself. That was definitely the change. And then I was like, If I'm crying at music, then maybe other people can cry at it too and feel these emotions, so let's keep pushing for that.

So it's about channelling the emotion, not letting it get the better of you?

It is about that. And I've realised if I'm emotionless, writing the song, if I don't feel anything from the beat, if it doesn't make me feel sad or happy - they're very basic emotions - but there's really unique emotions I'm going for, and it needs to hit so I can feel that way. Sometimes I sound like I'm up me own arse with all this shit, but I have to accept that I'm an artist, which I have a hard time doing, and just accepting that I have a creative brain that works in these ways that sound nonsense when I say them out loud. But this is the way my brain works.

'Wok to Blackrock' is one of the standout songs on the album. It features Ahmed, With Love. Sounds like he's an important person in your life, an important collaborator.

He's my guy. Yeah, he really is. He took me out of the bedroom and put me into this thing. I did my first show with him. He performed during covid for this weird show where people were in blocks of four and you're not allowed talk or anything, no beers, no fun. Andhe brought me out for two songs. I absolutely botched it, but I had fun. I think that was his first show, too, and I think we had just met, but he had already been releasing music and stuff. He already had a kind of a buzz behind him, and that's why he was getting shows. We just met, I think, a couple weeks before that, and we recorded our song, 'Men on a Mission', and three other songs the first time we met. And it was just like an instant connection. 'Men on a Mission', great song, me and him are super proud of that for being our first song. You can just tell the instant connection. And Rory (Sweeney), obviously, is the main man behind that.

I was gonna ask you about the remix by Kojaque. That must be nice, because he seems like an influence.

Yeah definitely he is. I didn't quite know about Kojaque before I got into freestyling in the bedroom or whatever. Covid is when I tapped into Kojaque or maybe just before that, But the second I heard him, it was just like, 'Oh my God, somebody's doing the thing I want to do, this guy is being honest on the microphone and it means the world to me'. It was a battery in the back to just be like, do the thing;. somebody can do it, you can do it. You're not less than nobody.

That must be important to know that there is an Irish rapper who's from Dublin, doing the thing that maybe you would like to do?

I love all that older Irish rap, but I see why at the time, it was kind of derived from New York rap. That's not what we are and that's not what we're doing. There was no one to draw from back then. There was no Irish rappers to - and not to say that everyone has to be off a blueprint to somebody else - but it is good to have an idea of what Irish rap sounds like.

Nice capper to 2024 was playing Other Voices, getting down to Dingle?

Yeah it was sick, it's so good, it's so, so good.I never would have expected it. I think I was in a bad mood before I got there the first time... I was tired or something. We had to get up at 6am and I just was dreading it. And then you step out the car and the energy is just different. The sea breeze hits you, and it's not supposed to be nice out, but it's never freezing. It's December, and it's not supposed to be cool, but it's grand there. You get out, people are like, 'Hi, hey.' People are just shaking your hand. They don't know you. Everybody's like in a movie or a book or something. It's the weirdest place. I always talk about it as the most magical place in the world.

And a good start to this year, getting nominated for the Choice Prize. Was that a surprise?

Well, it was definitely a surprise, but I wanted it. I didn't even know about it until after I released the album, but my manager is definitely in tune with trying to get us the Choice Prize. He knows how many doors that will open for me and has opened for me. But I didn't really put a lot of stock into that either.

You're not thinking about an award when you're making an album.

Yeah and also it would have felt mean if I won. 'You'se are all lunatics'. People kept coming up to me being like, 'You have this' - just shut up! ... Like, bro, look at the names, but it was an honour, 100%, it was an honour to even meet people in there. I met Sprints and NewDad, who mean a lot to me because I've been seeing their name around for a longer time than I've been around. Definitely NewDad is somebody I care about, and it was really nice to meet all them,. Would have been cool to meet Fontaines but they're over there doing the work, doing the stuff I'm trying to do.

Are there limits that you're putting on it, expectations? I don't know if you talk about goals or expectations for either the last album or the next one that you've got coming out. Like, 'Oh I want to play 3Arena' or something like that?

No. I don't know. I think I know who I am and what I am. Maybe it's just not enough belief in myself, but I don't know if I'm the 3Arena guy. Earl Sweatshirt is not the 3Arena guy. OK, let me chill. I don't think there's limits. I think I'm ever changing and ever growing. And I think next year I'll have new limits and then I'll just break them, and I'll just keep working towards what I want to do. But if something pops into my head and I do want to do it, then I'll just go for that. I'll try it, 100%. I never thought I could make a conceptual song, like I have for this next project. There's songs in there that are really about one thing and really concentrated, which I always thought wasn't my bag. I always thought I had to hit the one liners and half talk through some stuff, but I'm starting to realise I could, I could make a Kendrick song. There's no ceilings.

Do you see Beauty in the Beast as a continuation of What was the Question?

No, super separate. I love What was the Question? for what it was, but looking back at it, I noticed so much more work that could have went into it, and I just know that it was kind of undercooked. I think people love it, but I know myself what I'm capable of. I remember the feelings of 'let's just get this out and let's just rush it.' [Kylte aka Killian Taylor], he's mixing and mastering the whole situation and he was nice enough to let me and Hikii into his lovely studio, and we really just got down to the nitty gritty, tweaked it, took our time. Every single noise is there for a reason. If the take wasn't good, we'd record it again. If the beat wasn't good, we'd scrap it and put the verse on a different beat if it fit, we'd scrap the verse. We really were just like, ‘This doesn't fit the album. This doesn't fit the song. Or this does fit the song’... Yeah, we cared about this one, and it's all in the lane of, like, the Beauty in the Beast is... all about the hope in the hopelessness, and it's all about the good and the bad. The mixtape goes into really ugly, spooky noises into OK, we're on the sunny side of things, and then it'll just drop back down. And it's about that up and down in life that I feel, and that Hikii feels, and that it's not all bad. It's not all good, but the bad stuff is gonna end and it's gonna get good and it's gonna get bad, and it's just a cycle of life. And that might seem like a real surface-level thing to be hitting on, but everybody doesn't know that. Everybody can't connect with that until you hear it from someone else. I've heard it from other people, and I'm like, 'OK, it gets better'. I don't want people to be thinking that this is a horror album. It's not spooky and scary. There's juxtaposition.