Curtisy #CLMF26

Coughlan's, Douglas St.

Fri 25th Sep, 10:00 pm

Curtisy’s ascent feels like the natural next chapter in Ireland’s ongoing cultural purple patch. Since his breakout collaboration with Kojaque just two years ago, the Dublin rapper has become one of the most compelling new voices in a scene unafraid to blur lines between art, fashion, and community. His trajectory has been swift but deliberate: an RTE Choice Prize nomination for his debut album ‘What Was The Question’, a BBC Radio 1Xtra debut with CassKid, a widely-circulated Dazed profile that labelled him “one of the best rappers to ever come out of Ireland,” and a growing catalogue that doubles as a personal diary — candid, witty, self-deprecating, and bracingly honest.

His music lives in the cracks between sharp humour and quiet melancholy, drawing comparisons to Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE but refusing to lose its Irish vernacular. Each track reads less like a performance and more like a conversation overheard, rooted in the working-class surroundings that shaped him. It’s this voice — unfiltered, unpretentious, and emotionally transparent — that has turned Curtisy into a crucial documentarian of contemporary Irish life, the type of rapper who can capture both hopelessness and the flicker of light that cuts through it.

Live, he’s everywhere: from a lauded UK and Ireland tour to cult Irish fashion label Pellador’s runway show, from a storming set at Electric Picnic to opening for New York rap luminary Wiki in Dublin. Alongside those appearances, collaborations have stretched his palette further — a future-facing link-up with hyper-pop outlier Sloucho, and the collaborative mixtape Beauty In The Beast with producer hikii, a record that sought out hope in the most unlikely places. Endorsements from Maverick Sabre and NTS’s DJ Bempah only underscore what’s already clear: Curtisy stands among a wave of Irish artists breaking internationally, a generation that includes Fontaines D.C., Rejjie Snow, Kneecap, Gemma Dunleavy, and Kojaque, all pushing against the weight of circumstance to carve out their own space on the world stage.