Rolling and resonating: Cork rapper and singer Kestine exhibits a passionate pride of place

Pride of place: Cork rapper and singer Kestine. Pictures: IAMACOSMONAUT
Seeing rapper and singer Kestine on stage, in small venues and on festival stages, your writer has thought of him as having an easy, subdued, but self-assured confidence, a charismatic counter-foil to the earnestness and ambition of his peers in Cork’s Outsiders Ent. collective.

Addressing a defined pride of place that comes from growing up, getting educated and working in his field in Cork, Kestine makes his love for the Rebel County abundantly clear, before turning to an issue the wider community still has to face head-on: racism, both explicit and institutional, and the attitudes and tropes that perpetuate it. In talking about the song, he employs that same easy confidence in discussing his creative process.

Anywhere we go, there has to be that excellence. There has to be that precedent. It’s a lot of pressure, it’s a lot. But I feel it’s something we need to do, it’s something that has to be done. It’s an unfortunate responsibility, but it is what it is.”

While, as we’ve said in this parish a few times now lately, it’s increasingly difficult to make any calls regarding the future in music given the circumstances, stretching from a handful of singles to an extended-player is as good a place as any to start.
- Tale of a Black Irish is available now on all streaming services, with a lyric video currently available on YouTube.