Rapper GodKnows brings hip-hop to the Kino for Cork Jazz Festival 

Over the course of our conversation, it hits your writer that some people of his and Limerick-based rapper Munyaradzi GodKnows Jonas’ age – recently summarised neatly in a book title as ‘bailout babies’ – have the advantage of starting relatively young in music and arts, and developing something of a ‘young veteran’ status by the time 10, 15 and even 20 years roll by; a sweet spot of youth, experience and perspective that changes with generational factors, but lands people of our age cohort in the middle of several socioeconomic and creative tempests.

For GodKnows, reaching the milestone of a debut solo long-player, the suitably-pensively-titled ‘A Future of the Past’ comes with a degree of relief, and even validation. “First of all, over the moon about the album being out, full stop. It’s been in the making for a while, so having it out there to the people means a lot. So for me, as soon as we were wrapped, in terms of the mastering, I just remember being on the flight listening to the full album for the first time. I was just so, so happy, I had listened to this [sequence of tracks] for a while. After a while, you’d just be listening pretty much every day.

“But then the first time I listened to it, while it was out everywhere, the same time as everybody else. I was extremely satisfied with the full album. I was just like, ‘wow, this is amazing’. Like, it’s an easy listen, thank God, so, like, it was one of those ones, ‘oh, wow, it’s already finished’. Whatever happens from here, I’m good. So then to see my friends, family. and people that I know from around the way telling me how they feel about the album, it just changes everything.”

Working alongside longtime creative partner and fellow Rusangano Family member MurLi on production, GodKnows’ solo prowess is the fulcrum around which a lean, lithe but full-fledged long-player revolves, including a mix of collaborators ranging from siblings Godwin, DREDDY and OMGJOJO, to leading Irish lights like Jafaris, Farah Elle, Salamay and even the seldom-seen King Pallas – with a 13-track structure being whittled down from a stack of over 70 demos, sketches and ideas.

“Between myself and MurLi, we stopped counting after seventy-something tracks. We had two songs that we just needed to tweak for various reasons, and I remember MurLi going, ‘we could get someone to collab on this track, or if you still have it in you, write a new verse’, and I said, ‘I’m on fire right now, I’m good. Let me keep going’. So just knowing that we were still in it, even in the dying minutes, we were still very much locked-in, [and we knew] regardless of the quantity, we know there’s quality here, so let’s refine it.

“Once we started talking about what tracks would make the record, it should have been more painful, but what made it easier is that, like I felt like you couldn’t swap different songs and put them where the other ones would be. It made it easier to turn to MurLi and say, ‘you listen to these every day, and you battle with this every day’, and as the main producer behind the record, it just made more sense to me to give him the lead on that, and say which tracks would make it, because he lived with the music the most. But what we realised is that it’s just one chapter of the book, so if you stick with me, we will have the next album ready very, very soon, because we have music for days now.”

While he laundry-lists his juvenalia and early influences throughout our conversation, from 2000s US rappers like The Game, on down to UK grime’s mainstream explosion, at the end of the day, GodKnows himself occupies a rare place in Irish hip-hop: one of a wave of rappers and artists that was there when Ireland’s unique voice and identity in the genre was becoming readily recognisable, and as part of Rusangano Family, a member of the first hip-hop outfit to win Album of the Year at the RTÉ Choice Music Prize for long-player ‘Let the Dead Bury the Dead’.

With that in mind, and a much-considered new chapter unfolding as the album circulates among critics and listeners alike, the question of maintaining that hunger and passion emerges.

“It can be tough, it can be tough, but I think that what keeps me hungry anyway is looking where it’s inspired. I think sometimes you zoom out and the hunger can come from the most natural things. For me, it was changing my schedule, y’know, changing what I do within my day. That was an eye opener, because I’m somebody that pretty much continues to write ideas while I’m living life. And I think for a while I would have, like, a few bars here, a few bars here, a few ideas, few there, a few different things that were coming up. But then nothing was ever as concrete as when I changed my identity, habits, when I started considering my mental health in the morning and going for a walk.

“Just having time to go for a walk in nature for a good two or three hours, I found out that, ‘oh, wow, like I got more in the tank’, and suddenly ideas will start springing into my mind, and from there, in five minutes, I’ll write one song, and then by the time that I come home I’ll have the guts of four or five songs, and that’s not something that was natural to me. I think it’s just finding new ways of doing the same thing you’ve always done, because it’s the same thing I’ve always done, it’s music. But I found that by adding that little bit extra, saying, ‘I’m going for a walk, I’m going to literally walk until something happens to me’, that really helped me.”

• GodKnows appears alongside Celaviedmai and Jar Jar Jar at the Mo Cultivation Live Showcase at the Kino, 7.30pm on Friday, October 24. Tickets €19.72, available from https://www.eventbrite.ie/.
• New album ‘A Future of the Past’ is available for streaming and download at https://godknows.bandcamp.com/album/a-future-of-the-past; and across other digital streaming services.