Miss-Terious Girl

Thanks to a recent support slot with Alabama 3, several impressive Occupy Dame St. performances, and a YouTube hit, Temper-Mental Miss Elayneous, aka Dubliner Elayne Harrington, has emerged as a serious musical proposition. She is featured in an RTE documentary about rap in Dublin, was chosen to appear at The Music Show, and is being manageed by Frank Murray’s Hill 16, who also look after The Lost Brothers and The Mighty Stef. The future is looking bright.

However, as the 24 year-old explains, she’s always had deep a passion for music.
“I started rapping when I was about 11,” she recalls. “I got the Slim Shady LP one year, instead of an Easter egg!”
Even at such a young age, the singer says she was drawn to social issues, thanks in part to Mammy H.
“I was influenced by my mother a lot,” she explains. “She used to take me to the National Women’s Council meetings. I was always very interested in environmental issues – I went vegetarian when I was nine, vegan when I was 11. I always knew there was so much wrong with this world. That awareness was born in me, that psyche.”
Unsurprisingly, this awareness of society’s ills fed into her musical leanings, and as you might have guessed, ‘90s bubblegum pop didn’t do much for the young Miss E.
“I’d hear these poppy love songs, you know the type, (sings) ‘Don’t leave me baaaby!’, she laughs. “I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew it was something stronger. Give me something real! I knew MTV was trashy and fake. I’ve always liked things that are subversive, that challenge the status quo.”
Over the next few years, Elayne gradually began to forge her path as a rapper.
“I started bit by bit, scripting a little hook or rhyme here and there. A couple of years later, along with Mark [Lowndes, DJ/producer], I was ready. We created a song together called ‘Monologue’.”
It was around this time that she created the pseudonym ‘Miss Elayneous’. Is there a deeper meaning behind the obvious pun?
“It’s a gross misinterpretation of what it seems,” she explains. “It’s a play on titles. I don’t want Miss or Ms…. If I have to be anything, I’m me. As in, not referring to gender, class, colour... miscellaneous means everything and anything – and nothing in particular!”
Gender though is a topic that invariably comes up when a woman enters a male dominated genre like hip hop. How does Elayne feel about being one of the few female Irish rappers currently on the scene?
“Hip hop is predominantly male oriented,” she agrees. “But then again, if a guy chooses not to rhyme in a certain way, he runs the risk of being criticised. With me, I’m different anyway, so I’m almost ‘allowed’ to have a neutral accent, but then sharpen my colloquialism if I like. Maybe I have a bit more leeway because I’m female, I don’t know. Some – not all – male rappers want a good female rapper in their crew, but don’t want her to be as good as them. It’s a vibe I sometimes get. Build you up but keep you there. So I prefer to be solitary, I work well that way. I’ve always thought – If there isn’t any inspiration, I’ll be my own.”
Helping other young women build confidence and find their voice is in fact something that Elayne does regularly as a youth worker in her hometown of Finglas and with Axis Arts Centre in Ballymun.
“I recently asked the girls I’m working with what they think is the best thing about being a woman,” she says. “They found it so hard to think of anything. I’m helping them to break out and realise that if you don’t have that confidence, you have to feign it – act like you do ‘til you have it. That’s what I had to do – subdue my pride and let my self-worth come to the surface.”
She reckons she will always maintain her close ties with Finglas. “I’m trying to stay tight-knit there in the community. I believe that’s my vocation as well,” she says.
For now, Elaine has her hands full with the release of debut EP Proletarian Restitution. For her, putting together these tracks was a labour of love, and she sees her art as akin to poetry.
“For me, it’s about making the metaphysical tangible, through the medium of words,” she explains. “Then making it floral by making it rhyme – giving it rhythm and style. People say, ‘Irish rap, how trashy’. Listen deeper, though. Enjoy the sound of those words, the rhyming scheme... all these literary devices we’re taught in school. I’m utilising them to compose new sentences and transmit messages.”
So it’s accessible to everyone?
“Definitely, hip hop is about sharing,” she responds. “It’s a lot to do with intuition, that concrete knowledge – knowing where you’re coming from morally and socially. I try to smash that stigma, I don’t want to carry it. They’re just labels – ‘female’, ‘Finglas’, ‘vegan’. Before I’m anything, I’m human. There are no divisions. It’s all in the mind.”

Proletarian Restitution is out now. See temper-mentalmisselayneous.bandcamp.com. Miss Elayneous appears at The Music Show in the RDS, Dublin on Sunday, February 26 and plays Odessa, Dublin on March 29.