When Kevin Smith first started rapping, few people, let alone him, would have believed that he would become one of Dublin’s first breakout MCs. Born and raised in the Irish capital, it wasn’t until a friend took him to see Tyler, The Creator and the rest of Odd Future at the height of their powers that he even considered hip-hop as an outlet. “They seemed to get away with anything they wanted,” Smith tells me over the phone from Dublin. The group’s energy on stage, as well as the way they mixed hip-hop’s socio-political traditions with crass lyrics and a brazen disregard for anyone’s opinion but their own, won a teenage Smith over instantly. “They looked like a gang of friends who were able to be professional musicians. They inducted me into that cult fairly quick.”

That was 2011; when he was fifteen. Cut to 2019, and when I speak to Smith—now professionally known as Kojaque—it’s just been announced his track “Whitney” will feature alongside Kaytranada, Father, Jerimiah Jae and countless other hip-hop stalwarts on the inaugural Gangster Music compilation. A collaboration between Dublin’s All City Records and the blog/illustrator Gangster Doodles, the compilation is a milestone for Kojaque and for Irish hip-hop in general, putting relative upstarts like Smith alongside veterans like Madlib and House Shoes. “For the longest time it just felt like nothing was gonna happen,” Smith says. For him, the inclusion of Dublin artists like himself and Kean Kavanagh and Matt Finnegan—who also feature on the track—feels like a moment of vindication.

Having started rapping at sixteen, Smith has been putting out mixtapes and singles consistently for years, but it’s only recently that people outside of his hometown have started paying attention. “You’re just plugging away. You put so much effort into this stuff, and you get no response, or worse, people laugh at you and say you’re never gonna do anything with yourself,” he continues. “When you get those moments of ‘fuck it, you know what? This is going well’ I don’t know, I think it’s important to celebrate. I try my best to keep focused on what’s important and make art for myself and not worry about what other people think, but at the same time it does feel good.”

Far from being a sudden break, Smith’s inclusion on the project is a direct result of those years of hard work. As well as recording and releasing two near-faultless mixtapes—2016’s Sunday Roast and last year’s Deli Daydreams—Smith is the co-founder, alongside Kavanagh, of Soft Boy records, an indie label that’s on a mission to unite Dublin, and Ireland’s overlooked hip-hop talents. It was through Soft Boy, who have a vinyl distribution deal with All City, that Smith met Olan O’Brien, the label boss and brains behind the Gangster Music compilation. “First he asked us real blasé if we had any tracks lying around that we wanted to put out and then he told us who was on the tape, and we were like, ‘Better do something good for this,’” he laughs.

The result was “Whitney”, a subdued but soulful track, as inspired by Tyler, The Creator’s latter-day offerings as the sound which Smith and his peers have developed themselves. Featuring fellow Soft Boys Kavanagh and Matt Finnegan, it’s a short but sweet track with Smith opting to join Kavanagh in an off-kilter falsetto rather than deliver a verse. Sandwiched between exclusive tracks from Kaytranda and House Shoes, its ‘Stones Throw meets neo-soul’ aesthetic is very much at home.

“Whitney” isn’t Smith’s only offering of 2019, though. He recently released “Flu Shot”, a high-energy, albeit tongue-in-cheek track that sees him perfect the humour and quick-wit he first debuted on tracks like 2016’s “Craic Baby”. Celebratory and braggadocious, “Flu Shot” is one of the most energetic tracks he’s released in his career. Packed with nods to Irish culture, internet memes and accompanied by a self-directed video that sees him stage a bizarre variety performance with his friends and label mates, it’s sure to be a memorable introduction to new fans. Within the opening minute, Kojaque declares himself the second coming of Christ, however that braggadocio is something he says doesn’t come naturally to him or a lot of Irish MCs, and it’s why, he ventures, few rappers have made it off of the emerald isle.

“The Irish mentality doesn’t lend itself to pride; we’ve never been taught to be proud, really. There are acts that have tried in the past and made some great music, but they’ve not been able to take it to that next level or even be recognised for the work they put in,” Smith says of the legacy of Irish hip-hop, giving the example of Scary Eire, the first Scottish rap act to sign to a major label in the ‘90s. Instead, Smith says a lot of his music “comes from frustration and heartbreak; some of it comes from loneliness and isolation—that kind of thing. Feeling a little bit purposeless.” Kojaque’s presence as an emcee usually walks a line between downtrodden and defiant; his lyrics take mundane aspects of Irish life and refract them through internet memes and Ireland’s trademark dark humour.

“It’s quite easy to fall into that living here,” he says, reflecting on how his home has impacted him. “We don’t get a whole lot of sunshine. The government doesn’t do a lot to keep us here. Rent is insane! And there’s a whole lot of crises in Dublin if you pay attention—it can be a fucking scary place.” Those crises are well documented in Smith’s music. Take Deli Daydreams’ opener “White Noise”, for example—a blistering takedown of the Irish government’s neglect of its population, particularly its young people and women. Filled with bars like “Say that postcode wrong I wanna break you / Cause my home’s broken there isn’t love, and I’ll equate you” and “Weekly standoffs in the streets with the Siochana / Guard the peace but lock me up for just the peace tree”, it wouldn’t be hyperbolic to say the track is Dublin’s answer to Kendrick’s “m.A.A.d city”. Now though, Smith is feeling more optimistic.

As Soft Boy records continue to release what Smith calls “the best music Ireland has to offer”, and peers like Hare Squead, Jafaris and relative elder statesmen Rejjie Snow gain international recognition, there’s hardly been a better time to be a Dublin-based rapper. While Smith may not have had many footsteps to follow in, that lack of an old guard has given his generation room to experiment and define what Dublin sounds like to them. “I think the Dublin sound, to me anyway, is just forming,” Smith muses. “We’re hearing voices that sound unmistakably Irish now.”

At the end of last year, Kojaque appeared on Other Voices, Ireland’s equivalent to Later… with Jools Holland. Filmed in Dingle, on the south-west coast, his appearance on the show marked a turning point for him and his music. “I’ve watched it since I was a kid and I wanted to do something big, so I got a live band together, and we practised for months and then played at the church,” he says, sounding truly excited for the first time in our conversation. “To think where I was last year, it’s mad! I was very much on the dole, so to go from that to playing on this TV show I’ve watched since before I was 15, it felt very fucking good.”