Irish rapper Kojaque was recently presented an IMRO Award in recognition of his album Phantom of the Afters.
The IMRO Number 1 Award was introduced to acknowledge IMRO members who reach number 1 in the album charts here in Ireland.
“I feel a lot of pain, I found a lot of peace.” – Kojaque
Nothing lasts. Childhood, creative cycles, intentions, relationships, plans, dispositions, moods, gaffs, direction. Even love. Even home. The mode is transition. In this space between, Kojaque’s latest album contends with the past, and embarks upon a new future. His first two records changed the Irish hiphop landscape forever. Now London-based, Kojaque’s Phantom of the Afters traces the blurred outlines of childhood trauma, depression, grief and love. This is an album that finds comfort and assurance in the acceptance of the self, through shedding what no longer serves. Informed by the pursuit of simplicity, while meditating on heartbreak, home and health, Phantom of the Afters finds Kojaque reflecting on the landmarks of a young life, in all their beauty and complexity.
With Phantom of the Afters, Kojaque balances the themes and tensions of love, ambition, and internal and external sites of creation. “Love is accepting things for what they are,” he says, “ambition is wanting more than what you have.” This playful, triumphant album, wrestles with emigration, depression, and life as an expression of dreamlike fantasy interrupted by grinding, liberating, and grounding reality, the music opening up to allow for a space for vulnerability to be expressed in a radical manner. “What the record is about,” he says, “is shedding an idea I have of myself and trying to accept me for who I am, warts and all.” Taking visual inspiration from subverting the bigoted depictions of Irish caricatures in 19th and 20th century Punch Magazine cartoons, and Brian de Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise, which in turn was inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the Phantom of the Opera, Kojaque removes the many distorted masks present within all of these touchstones, and ultimately, his own. Written and composed at time of personal tumult, upheaval, and literal eviction, the result is a heart-spilling and filling album to savour. This is the mark of an artist in tune with the things that really matter. As the title track asserts: “all I want to be is me”
