Jailhouse Rap

Controversial rapper Nailerz is leaning against the wall of a burnt-out house in the notorious no-go area of Moyross in Limerick, gazing menacingly into our photographer’s camera.
“You can shoot me all day – as long as it’s only with your camera,” he jokes.

The photo shoot is taking place on an overcast March afternoon. Just a few hours later, the troubled council estate will be thrust back into the national headlines after a drive-by shooting in which the facades of seven houses are riddled with sub-machine gun fire – part of a tit-for-tat retaliation between rival gangs.
But then Nailerz – real name Martin Patrick O’Neill – knows all about being the target of enemy ire. The day before our scheduled meeting he’d phoned me with the news that he was checking out of hospital after not one but two failed attempts on his life, over the Easter bank holiday weekend.
“My face looks like Freddy Krueger,” he cackled down the phone. “It’s not deep, but it’s bad. I was slashed – but I was very lucky.”
His reference to the villain from A Nightmare On Elm Street might have been exaggerated, but it’s obvious from his appearance that he’s been in the wars. When we meet face to, er, somewhat disfigured face, Nailerz is reluctant to discuss the source of his fresh wounds.
“I don’t want to kiss and tell now, you know what I mean?” he says coyly. “But I will say that I got scratched in the face by two fellas in balaclavas who tried to shoot me. That was it.”
After some time chatting, a clearer picture emerges about what was apparently an assassination attempt. The gunmen were aware that Nailerz can generally be found “at exactly midnight” jogging through the neighbourhood.
“I run from my home past my son’s grave every night. He was stillborn. We call him little Timmy,” says the rapper, who at just 24 years of age already has three children with his girlfriend.
What happened was this: during his midnight run, an unidentified masked man suddenly materialised from the shadows. Having stopped Nailerz, he pressed the cold steel barrel of a handgun against the rapper’s forehead. For a brief moment, Nailerz was convinced he was a goner. Miraculously, the gun jammed.
“The gun jammed not once but twice,” he says. “They came back the next night and tried to do the exact same thing. The two of them got stabbed in the arse! As I said, I was lucky – I only got slashed in the face. I had a pair of gloves on, three jumpers and a bullet proof vest. It was on Easter Saturday night – Jesus Christ’s Resurrection. I was slagging ‘Holy Hands’ all night long – with (text) messages to other people – because he gave me another chance at life. I have a joke there: why did Jesus cross the road? Because he was nailed to the chicken!”
Nailerz roars with laughter.
When asked for a motive for the two attempts on his life, he's reluctant to elaborate.
“I can’t get my head around it. It could have been for a hundred and one different reasons,” he shrugs. “You can get murdered for saying the wrong thing. I could get murdered for telling you this shit. I done something the other night – and I’m not going to say what – but it could’ve been over that. But you can’t go to the cops – not if you’re a rapper.
“I don’t want to be a gangsta rapper – I just want to be a rapper who talks gangsta,” he adds. “I can’t help it, like, it just comes out of my brain. I can be a gangsta when I want to be. If somebody comes along and does something to my family – does something to my mother or me – they are going to get it.”
Nailerz’s philosophy on weapons plays up to Limerick’s ‘Stab City’ moniker.
“Don’t go around carrying a gun, because you’re gonna get ten years straight away in prison. A small little blade can do the same job, know what I mean? I still have guns but I have a license. I like stabbing people in the arse. I don’t like shooting people at all. I like a fella coming into the courthouse and him not being able to sit down. When the judge says, ‘All rise’, he’s the only man standing up; do you know what I mean? (laughs). It’s a funny buzz. And if he does sit down he needs a rubber cushion.”

That Nailerz has talent is not in doubt. He has taste as well. On his Bebo page, he names Johnny Cash and Amy Winehouse as his favourite musicians. And, of course – how could he forget? – one of rap’s great legends, Tupac Shakur. Tipping a cap to rap lore, he also mentions Pete Cutter, a singer who – Nailerz explains – didn’t make it, but divulges the secrets of the rap industry. He nominates an impressive selection of favourite films too: The Kray Twins, City Of God, Scarface, Goodfellas, the Godfather trilogy, Sin City and the Academy Award-winning rap fable Hustle And Flow.
The rapper has been doing his own bit of hustling recently. He hit the headlines last month when audience members stormed out during his performance at an event in the Belltable Arts Centre, part of Limerick’s Unfringed Festival. The Moyross man apparently ruffled feathers (and perhaps the occasional boa) with references to the city’s notorious family feuds, and his own brushes with the law, and by attacking a certain crime reporter for allegedly referring to the rapper’s family in a book. Ironically, Nailerz later realised that he’d targeted the wrong journalist. Not that he’s bothered.
One audience member described Nailerz’s music as “vulgar and degrading to all human life”. The incident prompted the Unfringed Festival Director Joanne Beirne to “unreservedly apologise” for Nailerz’ “deeply offensive” performance. Nailerz shrugs off the criticism. As far as he’s concerned, it’s all about profile building. He has big plans and wants all the trappings of a successful rapper’s lifestyle.
In a sense, rap has given him a sense of purpose. By his own admission, he was on a downward spiral before deciding to focus on developing his innate talent. He spent his days hanging out on street corners with his posse. Three of them are dead now, while others are doing hard time. Back then he was peddling drugs and stealing. Music provided the impetus to change his life.
“I was selling Ecstasy tablets. I wasn’t making millions like Al Pacino in Scarface. If you want to look up to someone then look up to someone that is real – that's genuine. Look up to Tupac. I copped onto myself, cleaned myself up and grew up. You’ve got to choose your own way in life – don’t be forced to do anything,” he says.
Nailerz had accumulated more than 30 charge sheets and was imprisoned twice. The first time was for a week, and, he claims, the second sentence was reduced to six months from an initial two-year term after his school principal pleaded with the court for clemency.
“I was living up to my image, knocking people out. Robbing people mainly. I got two years, like,” he recalls. “But I was doing my Leaving Cert at the time and the principal of the school went up to the judge and explained that I was making a go of the rapping and this and that; so the next morning I went in and the judge reduced the sentence to six months. That was grand…”
Taking Hot Press on a guided tour of Moyross, Nailerz points to a wall dividing the housing estate from the adjacent students’ accommodation.
“I got brought down to the courthouse so many times for just jumping over that wall and robbing every single house inside the fucking place. All the front doors would be left open. I used to walk from house to house – no drink and no nothing in me – opening doors, and they’d (the students) be knocked out, no clothes and all of them be gangbanging all over the fucking place. I ended up takin’ phones there, there and there. Wallets. Phones.”
Nailerz jokingly recalls an occasion when he dashed home after a successful robbery, with a big load of cash and a bundle of mobile phones. He gave his mother a right fright when he plonked the phones down on the kitchen table. “All the phones went off at the exact same time,” he laughs. “There was an alarm in the phone to get them up to go to school!”
The pen picture that Nailerz paints of Moyross is a chastening one.
“If you come up to Moyross, right, in a suit with a purple tie and your hair slicked back like a stupid, fucking handicapped, you're going to get killed,” he explains. “It’s a known fact. Or you are going to get robbed or you are going to get, whatever, spiked with loads of drugs. But if you come up to Moyross and you act macho you’ll get on with anyone. If you come up and you’re frightened – you are going to get robbed. They can smell fear off you. They’ll take your life. There are a lot of heroin addicts going around Limerick City – give them €50 and say, ‘Go over there and blow that fella’s head off for me’, and they’ll go and do it. You’re gone out the door with clean hands. In Moyross, the mind is always working on making money, money, money.”
Nailerz’s deceased father was good at getting cash. The rapper’s love for the man he describes as a modern day Robin Hood is touching.
“My mother said that if she wanted that ring in the jewellery shop he’d jump over the counter and grab every single piece of jewellery. And if any woman asked him to get this or that, he’d do it for them. He was a pure Robin Hood of his time. He was unreal and unbelievable. My father was like… what your man’s name? The man who could get all the women. Casanova. The Italian Stallion! He looked like he was Italian. I’m nothing like my father – my father was perfect. I never knew he was my father until he died, do you know what I mean? That’s the God honest truth. He was locked up nine months of every year of my life.
“My whole family has a short lifespan,” Nailerz continues. “My father died, just sitting down, just normal – he had a massive panic attack that brought on a heart attack … Thirty four. Dropped dead. My dad’s brother got out of prison after five years for robbing a chemist and then a couple of weeks later, he went into a house to rob it and, as he was jumping out the window, his jumper caught got and he accidentally hung to death. My grandfather walked into his room – fifty-four – said he was going to sleep and then – dead.”

Nailerz himself suffers from panic attacks. He believes his condition is derived from the violent and precarious environment he grew up in. Walking past several burnt-out houses, he momentarily pauses beside a field with half a dozen wild horses grazing.
“There’s a lot of tension in Moyross. Can you sense it? Can you feel it? Everyone can feel that. And there’s a lot of people panicking and they’re suffering just from being up in this area. The atmosphere is fucked up,” he reflects.
Eventually Nailerz decided to change.
“There’s a lot of trickery, treachery and traitors all over the place. I said, ‘Fuck that. I’m getting out of this place’,” he explains. He saw music as his best escape route, and it was while speaking to a psychiatrist that he initially took up rapping for therapeutic reasons.
“I’ve been doing it (rapping) since I was 12 in hospital. I have about eight or nine panic attacks a day. No one knows nothing about it. There’s no cure for panic attacks. I was sick with the panic attacks and the nurse – and the psychiatrist – turned around and told me that you could release all your emotions by rhyming. That’s it. Once I started I couldn’t stop. I was speed-rapping on the pages. I was just rhyming and I was doing poetry after a while.
“I started rapping because there was a lot of problems going on in my house. I came from a broken home. I just felt like when I write lyrics it made me feel good – just to get it out on page and just rap about it. Then I heard Tupac and Snoop and they were going through the same type of shit – and I was Irish. I said I’d put my stuff on tapes and I was selling my tapes until about 18 when I met up with the label Northside Records. I rap over heavy metal beats. I rap over all different types of music. If it sounds good I’ll rap to it. Rapping. Rhymes. Irish rhymes. Irish hip hop.”
Nailerz believes that you can’t become a bona fide rapper without having earned your spurs.
“You have to have a reputation first,” he proffers. “You can’t just come into this game and try to be a gangsta rapper and not have any problems with the guards, or being locked up, or being fucking talked about, or shot at, or anything like that.”
Does he have an image?
“My image is ‘don’t fuck with Nailerz’. Trying to make money. Selling drugs and trying to get out of it. And slagging people off to get it out of my system. Get all the stuff out of your system by biro. It’s better than going to prison for 20 years for something stupid. Let them release their stress by paper, not by handguns and shooting people in the head. You could be doing the exact same thing sitting down with a biro. What’s the worst thing that can happen with a biro? What’s the worst thing that can happen doing this rapping?”
What are his songs about?
“The songs are sort of about everything I see. Most of the stuff I write is about people who I've seen doing things. People who I had been chatting to when I was locked up in the prison. And other stuff that I heard. Most of that stuff, only they understand. Only me and that person would connect if they heard that song; no one else would have a clue.
“I have one song about women called ‘Get It Up High’. There’s songs about selling drugs and smoking drugs. What’s my thoughts about drugs? Drugs are bad! Not all drugs are bad. Hash is grand. If you got everyone to smoke hash and take Es the whole time – and not drink – the world would be a quieter place. A lot of my friends are locked up for life or for a couple of years because of drink attacks, do you know what I mean? There was a friend out there in Moyross who smashed a hammer into a young fella’s head ten times and he’s up in prison – because the young fella was winding him up so much. It’s as stupid as that really.”
Inevitably, the violence on the streets of Limerick is reflected in Nailerz’ lyrics. In one song, he raps: “I’m going on a hit/ To kill some cunts/ Back through the back lanes/ Pieces of their brains on my packies/ Fuck the little plastic soldier/ Caught him while I was sober/ When I drink a drink, people get hit/ That’s why they call me Nailerz/ Every time I go out somebody gets killed/ What I fucking say is what I do/ Don’t take me for a fool/ Three chances, then you get blasted/ Fuck with me, man you’ll never last it/ Nailerz/ What’s up?”
On his Bebo page, Nailerz lists several people – including the three close friends mentioned earlier – who have been murdered on the streets of Limerick. Two of these deaths he has written about, but one is still too emotionally raw for him. “The one person I didn’t write a song about is the most fucked-up case I’ve ever seen in my life,” he says. ”It was my friend Keith Ryan. Me and Keith and the boys, we used to go out every night of the week – drinking, going crazy running around the roads, fucking bursting car windows, acting the toe-rags around the road. Keith suffered from panic attacks like myself. So, me and Keith were really close to one another.
“One night I wasn’t there – I was out with my girlfriend – and they fought, bare-knuckled fighting, or whatever. But they went too far – threw Keith off a bridge and he died. I don’t know who did it. If I was there that night I would be in prison for the rest of my life. Understand? I was lucky. I’ve always had a kind of sixth sense – knowing when to be somewhere and when not to be there. It’s got me out of a lot of trouble. I got away with a lot of charge sheets and a lot of stuff that nobody even knows about. If I was there I would have probably been trying to break it up, but I would have probably got life for murdering Keith as well. The guards are beating the shit out of yeh and trying to make you sign a statement. You don’t write the statement when you go in – they write the statements and you sign it. That’s the way it works. A lot of innocent people are locked up in prison for that,” he claims.
How did his other two close friends die?
“Steven got shot for nothing at a house party, and when he was getting off the ground he got shot again. Darren got kicked to death as well, and something stuck into the back of his neck – he had blood coming out of his ears.”

Nailerz has now signed up to a local independent label, aptly called Stab City Records, run by an entrepreneurial 18-year-old rapper named Doc. Later this year, the label will release its debut CD, featuring many rising talents from the rap scene. The CD, entitled Stab City Records Coalition Mix Tape, will include two tracks by Nailerz.
“It will be featuring rappers from all over Ireland,” Doc explains, “from Dublin, Limerick, Cork. It’ll be released hopefully during the summer. We're doing rap in a positive way. We don’t want anyone going around killing each other. Just get your frustration out in the track. We rap about positive things. Whatever is going on in your life – just write about it. People can relate to it then – they’ve been through the same experiences.”
Doc is determined, and ambitious.
“We don’t want to be dividing – we want all Limerick to be together and to get everybody involved,” he says. “Anybody who raps, just come with us. I’m working out of my home, but we’ll have a studio set up in town soon. A proper studio.”
“We're going to build it up from the ground – brick by brick,” Nailerz adds. “I’m the middle man in Stab City Records. I do all this man’s dirty work for him! That’s the way it is. If he says to do something, I’ll do it!”
What does he mean by “dirty work”?
“Anything at all.”
Would Nailerz’ describe himself as a so-called ‘heavy’?
“Not heavy – no. If he’s got problems with someone then I’ve got problems with them. If someone fucks with him, they fuck with me! That’s how it works. Like, we don’t go around causing trouble, but if somebody else causes trouble then they’ll be in trouble…”
Nailerz reckons that this Hot Press interview will give enormous hope to “all the young fellas hanging around Moyross”. I certainly hope so.
He explains: “They’ll probably think, ‘Oh, there is something to be made out of rap’. A lot of people seen us today – a lot of people were looking out the windows at us getting the photos done. This article will tell them that you don’t need to be doing crime or selling drugs – you can be making music. They can sell CDs and you can give them half the money – instead of selling drugs for a dealer and getting about 50 cent for every drug. That’s where we should be going.
“What we really need at the moment is a proper, good music producer that can make us beats, club beats to make Irish rap, not American rap. We don’t want to be American – we don’t want to be going around black and this and all that – the person who does that is a fool. He’s talking out through his arse.
“You can’t rap with American accents,” Nailerz concludes. “You’ve got to be original. You don’t rap using cops or police in Ireland – it’s the shades, Gardai, or the bluebottles.”
No matter who it upsets...
www.bebo.com/Nailerzr