Messiah, Complex

“I made a chickpea casserole for me girlfriend last night,” Messiah J is telling me over an orange juice on a Sunday afternoon in Dublin. I smile. It’s about as far from a messiah complex as you can possibly get - never mind the ‘guns ‘n’ hos ‘n’ dope’ stereotype that’s usually associated with his group’s music. But J, and his partner-in-crime The Expert, aren’t much for stereotypes. In fact, the Irish hip-hop luminaries are sick of being “patronised”, as he puts it, by people who dismiss them either because of their nationality or their chosen genre.

“I think the thing that frustrates us is when people say ‘Ah, it’s grand for Ireland’,” he shakes his head disgustedly. “I think we can compete with anyone, worldwide, in any genre. We have an insane amount of belief in ourselves, and we want people to take us seriously.”
He has a point. If MJEX’s previous two albums – including 2006’s Choice-nominated Now This I Have To Hear – haven’t already demonstrated their intelligence and persuasive way with a beat and a rhyme, their new record From The Word Go is set to firmly establish them as one of Ireland’s most eclectic and innovative acts.
“As soon as we started playing with musicians, everything began to make sense,” says The Expert, the production/music-making half of the partnership. “The second record took some of that on board, and that’s why the new one is a lot more cohesive, with the brass and strings. We’ve never had that much instrumentation before.”
The incorporation of live instrumentation into the duo’s sound is just one of the many changes in the MJEX camp; From The Word Go merges more styles and influences - “from psych to funk to dance” – than the duo have ever experimented with before. It also sees some nifty guest appearances from Ro and Kieran from Delorentos (on standout ‘Geography’), as well as soul/pop/jazz singer Leda Egri.
“If we’re being honest, when we mixed the album we thought it might be too eclectic and that it might work against us,” The Expert imparts. “I think we were a lot harder on each other. With this album, nothing was really set in stone, whereas previously our separate contributions would have been final, and we’d just have had to work with it. There was a song on the last album called ‘No Bagsies, No Keepsies’, and that was a turning point for us. I knew I could break out of structure and tempo and just do whatever I wanted, and the new album’s really benefited from that.”
From The Word Go also marks a shift in lyrical direction. Messiah J, whether talking about his chickpea casserole, the importance of his band’s stunning artwork (and the ‘devaluation’ of sleeve art as a result of the downloading era) or the current Irish music scene, speaks passionately and enthusiastically. He tackles politics (‘Year Of The Genie’), domestic violence (‘Jean Is Planning An Escape’) and growing older (‘Keep The Noise Down’), among other thorny subjects.
“We wanted to wake up and smell the coffee, in terms of what’s going on in the world,” he nods. “It’s a very uncertain place at the moment, and people are unsure of their footing. I found that those themes reflected back on my own life, too.”
“After the last album,” The Expert adds, “we sat down, and one of the things we both thought we had to do was change. In the very, very early stages, we bantered around a political album you could shake your ass to. I wanted to have beats for people to dance to, but also if they sat and listened to it, for there to be real substance too.”