Denise Chaila announces headline show at Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre

Limerick-based hip-hop sensation Denise Chaila has announced her biggest headline show to date, with the rap star set to hit Dublin's 3Olympia Theatre stage on Friday, February 25th 2022.

Rising to mainstream attention with her 2020 hit single ‘Chaila’, the Irish-Zimbabwean act went on to take home Ireland’s highest music award, the Choice Music Prize album of the year award, for debut mixtape Go Bravely.

That a mixtape was named ‘album of the year’ is emblematic of Chaila’s penchant for challenging stereotypes and deliberately flouting convention. Rejecting the tropes that society attempts to assign is one of the spoken word artist's trademarks - favouring kings, pharaohs and fantastical creatures as aspirations above queens and princesses.

The talented poet can be found trading stories of identity, race and displacement with President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins as well as bringing rap to the stage of the National Concert Hall with her narolane records family. Known for fighting for artists’ rights as a member of Ireland’s Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce; Chaila's music is often hailed for its sharp observations.

"My journey into Hip Hop is a real attempt to smash the walls between the academy, the pragmatics of my life and my needs as a person," she wrote for Hot press. "To claim the underpinning philosophy. At their collective heart, rappers are street philosophers. Sociologists, rogue poets engaging the world and transforming it by vulnerability or aspiration or confidence. Whatever you may think of their individual philosophies."

"‘Knowledge’, few people know, is the fifth pillar of the five tenets that make up the cultural tradition of Hip Hop," Denise continued. "This art began as an act of reclamation in itself, for a group of kids in the New York who divested from popular music to reclaim their streets, by creating music which centred their voices before they were heard."

Denise Chaila reminds us on early single, ‘Down’, she can fit a lecture in 16 bars.

Her 3Olympia Theatre gig is set to be one of the stand-out shows of 2022, don't miss out on getting your tickets this Friday.

Revisit Chaila's conversation with President Higgins for Hot Press here.