Having the Rhyme of his Life

A talented purveyor of improvised comic hip-hop – performed in tandem with his group Abandoman – Rob Broderick followed in some famous footsteps recently when he scooped the Hackney Empire New Comedy Award. Previously won by one of Ireland’s most renowned stand-ups, Ardal O’Hanlon (other winners and finalists have included Eddie Izzard, Russell Brand and Stewart Lee), the gong has already hugely boosted Broderick’s profile in the UK.

“It’s been a bit nuts,” he acknowledges. “I’ve been doing improvised hip-hop for about two years, and we’ve been working as a group since last summer, which was when I met James, our guitarist. He was on the same bill as me and I asked if he could come up onstage so that we could freestyle improvise. Within a week we were supporting Atmosphere, a hip-hop crew from the States, again with no rehearsals.
“We’d been doing this for a while, but when you ring up people and say that you’re an Irish hip-hop group that improvises, and there’s no lyrics, they don’t exactly jump to book you. So, the award has been lovely. There were 2,500 people at the show, including a lot of the comedy industry. The short-term outlook is that we’ve got some really fun bookings off the back of it; everything from the BRITs after-party next week, to some really nice London gigs that we wouldn’t have been invited to before.”
Rob’s approach sees him ask audience members for various details from their lives, which he then proceeds to work into a hip-hop tune. Given that the end results are so consistently funny, he really does have a remarkable gift for improvised comedy. Although the guitar intro to each tune gives Rob a brief moment to collect his thoughts, he makes each composition up as he goes along.
“It comes to me 100% as I’m doing it. I do improvised shows by myself. It’s a better show with the group. It’s not so much coming up with lyrics, but it’s often that we collect a lot of information. So if we’re doing a love song, I’ll take a lot of details about the man and the woman. When I take a swig of water while James is doing the intro, I’m going, ‘Jenny is her name, she works in banking, her dream is to own the moon and sell it to China’, whatever it is.
“There are no lyrics, but I’m definitely reminding myself that this is Jenny’s tale, so it’s useful. But it’s not so much a composing moment so much as it is a Cliff Note’s moment.”
Rob also performs his comedic numbers at regular hip-hop concerts. Aficionados of the genre are generally very receptive to the humour in his material.
“With those gigs, my deep fear is always that I’ll wander out and they’ll go, ‘Who is this guy? He can’t rap.’ But my experience is that the audiences at those gigs enjoy it vocally much more than a comedy crowd does. They are genuinely surprised.”
As well as winning the Hackney Empire New Comedy Act Award, Rob also reached the final of the prestigious So You Think You’re Funny? competition a few years back.
“What was interesting for me about that was that I had no material. It was always improvised on the spot,” reflects Rob. “I was told I was one of the very few who literally didn’t have a joke to my name when that happened. It was big for me, definitely. Then I didn’t really gig as much, and I got a bit like, ’Jesus, this is going a bit too well’. It wasn’t that I sat back. I still did gigs. I wasn’t as comfortable with where I was, and I probably didn’t push as hard.
“But yeah, at the time it was huge. I’d started a couple of months before, and Bill Bailey was the host. I remember sort of going, ’Sweet Lord, I’m flying a bit too high today.’ I’m more comfortable with the hip-hop band than I ever was as a stand-up. I love stand-up, but with the band I’m like ‘This is where I’m truly happy.’”
Rob and James have also landed a gig performing their unique style of humour on Chris Hawkins’ BBC6 radio show.
“He gives us a call each week and says, ‘This is what the show has been about’, and then we write a song about it. It covers everything from the cold snap earlier this year to Chris getting new glasses and wondering if he looked handsome in them. We wrote a song that I really like, about a girl we used to know who would only date men with glasses. It’s quite silly and it’s a nice place for us to experiment with writing lyrics.
“It has a similar theme to our shows, in that somebody gives us an idea, but rather than coming up with it in the instant, we take four or five hours and work it out. I find that much harder than coming up with lyrics on the spot. I’d find it easier if Chris said to us on the spot, ‘This is what the programme was about’, rather than sitting down for a few hours and going, ‘I’m not sure about this.’”
When did Rob first discover that he had this unusual facility for improvised comedy lyrics?
“I’ve been listening to hip-hop for years,” he replies.

“When I got drunk at a party, I’d freestyle and it would be a bit dire. But I really enjoyed it. Then when I went to DCU, I put together a little hip-hop musical as my thesis. It was very scripted, but the best lyrics would come through freestyling. I’d freestyle for my girlfriend at the time, trying to find ideas, and she’d go, ‘This is far superior to what you’re spending hours doing with a pen and paper.’
“There was no moment where I sat down and went, ‘Today’s the day.’ It was listening to a lot of hip-hop since I was around 13 or 14, and I suppose it seeps in.”

Rob Broderick will play Dublin in March. Keep on eye on robbroderick.com for details