Lethal Weapon

For most artists, the prospect of the ‘difficult second album’ is nail-bitingly daunting. Not so for Paul Alwright, aka 23 year-old rapper Lethal Dialect. The Dubliner – born in Cabra and currently living in Blanchardstown – is already formulating his third album. “I can’t sit still!”, he laughs. “I’ll get a beat in my head watching a film or just walking down the street. It’s a gift and a curse.”

Let’s rewind. 12 months ago, Alwright was working full-time, on his way to completing his trade as a printer.
“I was working a day-job when I put the first album out”, he explains. “Like everyone else, I got let go.”
Did he see the silver lining in this recession-shaped cloud?
“Definitely”, he nods, “it gave me the last nine months to focus on this. People don’t have jobs, but that can provide an opportunity to go out and do what they always wanted to.”
Does he think that in turn, the recession has had an impact on what people want to hear?
“I’ve noticed that people are mad for ‘food for thought’”, he ponders. “The majority of music today is materialistic, and people are fed up with that. They have no money, so they don’t want to hear about anyone else throwing dollars around in the club! People are turning back to stuff that has substance in it – they’re starting to notice what really matters.”
Alwright’s latest album, LD50 – Part II, is a perfect example of such musical substance. An introspective writer, his lyrics centre around ordinary life in working-class Dublin, touching on issues like friendship, loyalty, emigration and crime. He delivers his musings in his own Dublin accent, though he admits to going down the ill-fated Bronx route as a young novice.
“When I started out, I was using the American accent,” he laughs. “We all were. We grew out of that quickly though. It takes a while, but you find your own voice.”
The Dublin accent, he reckons, has various connotations, depending on the listener’s own background.
“To anyone outside Ireland, it’s exotic!”, he grins. “I was talking to an English guy the other day, who told me I sounded Jamaican!”
It’s here, in Ireland, he continues, that stereotyping happens.
“There’s a misconception in Ireland when people hear my accent,” he says. “There’s an attitude of, ‘What’s this toe-rag gonna say?’”.
Rather than get defensive, Alwright relishes the opportunity to prove the stereotype wrong.
“I love it, because you surprise people. When you rock out the big vocab, it makes people think, ‘What’s going on here?’ It’s another thing that we’re breaking down – It’s not where you were brought up, it’s how you were brought up.”
As well as addressing accent haters, Alwright faces the challenge of appropriating a genre that grew out of the disadvantaged ghettos of New York. Does he think that any music fan, no matter what their class and background, can relate to hip hop?
“Absolutely,” he stresses. “It’s accessible to everybody. I’d never think that unless you’re from a certain kind of area, you can’t do it. Yes, it’s traditionally a voice for the voiceless, but it’s all about speaking about what you know, and staying true to yourself. People who come from the same place as me might have a different perspective on things. At the end of the day, good music is good music.”
Indeed it is, and speaking of which, LD50 – Part II is currently causing quite a stir on the interweb, having reached No. 2 on the Irish iTunes hip hop chart and No. 15 on the worldwide chart at the time of going to print. What’s the plan going forward?
“Financially, the idea is just to break even,” Alwright explains. “We’ll charge for Part II, but with that you’ll get a free download of Part I. There’s no point throwing albums up, charging for them all, then giving out when people illegally download them. You have to go with it.”
Again, he says, the pesky recession has had a hand to play.
“Music is selling, but it’s selling differently. In this day and age, people are taking a risk when they buy an album – the risk of throwing away a tenner! If you can hear an album first, on the likes of Bandcamp, you’re more likely to buy it, if it’s a good product.”
What does he make of attempts to implement legislation clamping down on piracy?
“Well, it’s the corporates that aren’t making money, as the internet cuts out the middle man,” he avers. “It’s all ‘fast-food’ music, and they want a quick buck! They can try to privatise the internet, but I think it’s gone past the point of no return. There’s always an opportunity to be had out of these things though. Most people wouldn’t have heard my music if it wasn’t for the internet. Times are changing, but it’s all about changing with them.”

LD50 – Part II is out now. Lethal Dialect plays the Menagerie, Belfast on March 1, Whelan's (TBC) and supports Ghostpoet in Cork's Pavilion (18).