Reggie: "The Irish scene is like a pot of gold... There’s a lot of substance in the music"

You may have been surprised, in late 2025, to hear a chart-dominating track by one of the biggest DJs in the world referencing An Garda Síochána, Irish football manager Stephen Kenny, and Co. Louth area codes. But you probably weren’t as surprised as the man who actually penned those lyrics, Dundalk rapper Reggie – who first heard Fred again.. tease that initial remix of his 2022 track ‘Talk Of The Town’ on a Twitch stream, recorded live in Greece last May.

“I actually forget the story, but I think someone must have shown him my catalogue,” Reggie tells me now. “And out of all the songs he could have picked, that’s not even my biggest one. I thought he would’ve gone for one that had a bit more streams. But he turned it into something crazy. And that just shows Fred’s genius – he heard something that no one else was able to hear in the track.”

While Reggie’s name might have been new to Fred again.. fans around the world, the Dundalk artist was already long established as a pioneering force in Irish drill – clocking up serious streams and views since the late 2010s, across instant underground classics, and collaborations with the likes of Sello, Travy, Offica, Harlem Spartans’ Blanco, Cubez, New Machine and Evans Junior.

But there’s no doubt that his link-up with Fred again.. has set him on an entirely new trajectory. After that surprise remix, Reggie and the multi-Grammy-winning producer got chatting over Instagram, before meeting up in Dublin at the end of October, during Fred again..’s USB002 Tour.

“He’s exactly how he seems online,” the rapper says. “I sometimes have that thing in my head like, ‘You shouldn’t meet your heroes.’ You feel like they’re going to be arrogant, or just different to how they seem. But he was actually the exact same person.

“That was refreshing, and it made me comfortable,” he adds. “It was just a very authentic kind of meeting.”

Reggie ultimately joined Fred again.. onstage for both his secret warm-up event at The Button Factory, and his major headline show at the RDS. They also found time to finish the ‘Talk Of The Town’ collaboration, live on another Twitch stream – though there were some unexpected setbacks along the way.

“Literally, after we finished the stream, we jumped in a V-Class, going to the Button Factory,” Reggie recalls. “And Fred straight away got to mixing it. He was trying to show us some new music that he had as well – but then the computer just went black. It crashed.”

“But he didn’t even panic, which was really weird,” he continues. “He was just kind of like, ‘Ugh’ – and we went on with the show. Then, after the show, he asked if I could find a studio and send him some vocals. So we did that, and he got it sorted. He was very chill, but I thought the song wasn’t going to come out!”

The track, which also features contributions from BRIT-nominated DJ Sammy Virji, was officially released in November – and has since garnered over 52 million Spotify streams, as well as reaching No.2 on the UK’s Official Dance Singles Chart, and No.4 on the Irish Singles Chart.

Earlier this month, Reggie returned with his eagerly anticipated follow-up single, ‘El Paso (365)’ – a bold reworking of a track by fellow Dundalk artist David Keenan.

Like ‘Talk Of The Town’ before it, the new track makes no secret of the rapper’s hometown pride.

“Growing up in Dundalk was sweet,” Reggie smiles. “It has had a bit of a bad stigma sometimes, but it’s a very tight-knit town – everyone knows each other.

“But I didn’t know of a lot of music coming out of Dundalk when I was growing up,” he continues. “I was into sports more, and I wanted to be a footballer. I’ve tried a bit of everything – Gaelic, hurling, rugby, boxing. But football was my main thing.”

After being inspired by other Irish artists releasing songs, however, Reggie suddenly found himself “stuck between the two: football and music.”

“When I started dropping music, I was playing for Newry City,” he says. “I was semi-professional, so I was getting a little bit of money playing football. I remember this one time, I got booked for a show, and obviously I got paid for the show. So I had this moment, where I told myself, ‘Whichever pays me more in the next couple of months, I’m going to focus on.’

“And yeah – the music was paying, and everyone was showing me a lot of love for it. So I went in that direction.”

Credit: @jackoconnor

Reggie first heard David Keenan’s ‘El Paso’, an ode to their hometown, when a clip of the singer-songwriter performing it in Mark ‘Maxi’ Kavanagh’s taxi went viral back in 2015. The new music video for ‘El Paso (365)’ – featuring Reggie and David at familiar Dundalk spots like Mo Chara and Oriel Park – is dedicated to Maxi, who sadly passed away in 2024.

“It was like a full-circle moment when we dropped the song,” Reggie notes. “We were meant to drop it a week before, but we wanted to promo it a bit more, so we pushed it back to Friday, the 6th of March. And that happened to be the taxi man Mark Kavanagh’s birthday, which is absolutely insane. It fell perfectly – I felt like it was divine.”

Reggie went to some extreme lengths to promote the single – even getting ‘El Paso’ tattooed across his torso.

“I went crazy with that one!” he laughs. “I’ve been wanting that one for a while, and I never really had an excuse to do it. This was the perfect excuse.”

While the nickname has been reclaimed by some Dundalk residents in recent years, the border town was first dubbed ‘El Paso’ by British journalists during the Troubles.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t really know the history, but some of my friends I played football with would tell me stories about their parents, and what they went through growing up in Dundalk,” says Reggie. “That’s when I heard about the name. I used to play football up North, and I’d hear people calling my friends ‘Mexicans’ and stuff. I asked them about it, and they gave me the whole breakdown on ‘El Paso’. I just thought that was such a rich history, and I wanted to shine a light on that.”

Both ‘El Paso (365)’ and ‘Talk Of The Town’ find Reggie expanding his sound beyond drill, and venturing further into dance music – a move he highlighted by joining chart-topping DJ duo Belters Only onstage at the 3Arena back in February, for Hot Press’s History In The Making: The Concert.

“That was so surreal,” he tells me. “That was my first time at the 3Arena as well – I think that’s the biggest crowd I’ve performed in front of. Fair play to the lads for bringing me on. We’ve actually got something on the way very soon… I don’t know if I’m supposed to say that or not!

“I can still be myself with the rap and the drill stuff, but then it brings a new life to it, when I add the EDM beat and instrumental to it,” he says of his new sound. “I think the two worlds collide very well. I’m actually having a blast with it.”

 

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From his earliest releases, Reggie played a crucial role in defining the direction of today’s Irish rap scene – a community that, despite its relatively small size, continues to attract more and more international eyes.

“When we go to the UK, obviously we’re looked at as smaller – but it’s not about the size of the dog in the fight, it’s about the size of the fight in the dog,” he reckons. “That’s the mentality I’m using to navigate it – just taking it on, headfirst. I don’t mind being the underdog sometimes!

“The Irish scene is like a pot of gold,” he continues. “Everyone is very tight-knit. And because there’s so much less of us, the quality of the music, I feel, is stronger. There’s not as much saturation, and there’s not a lot of here-today-gone-tomorrow TikTok music. There’s a lot of substance in the music.”

And his homegrown favourites at the moment?

“Obviously you’ve got Travy,” he notes. “He’s really doing his thing, and representing Ireland as well. Sello is still killing it. Youngiz too, he’s up-and-coming. Skiifuego, coming from Belfast, is doing a lot of things. You’ve also deathtoricky, who’s killing it in the game. I’m probably missing out on a bunch of people – there’s a lot of talent!”

Reggie’s own focus right now is on releasing “back-to-back” singles – with plans for a multi-track project further down the road.

Still, he admits that “there was a lot of pressure” after the success of ‘Talk Of The Town’.

“Even though everyone around me was saying, ‘Bro, just do your thing’ – I was still putting pressure on myself to do the same thing again,” he reflects. “But I reached a point where I realised, it’s just a special track, and I just have to let it be special. I’ll catch another one – the same way it happened, it will happen again.

“So I just focus on the quality of the music, giving my fans what they want, and expressing myself as authentically as possible. Good music always connects.”

Fred again.. with Reggie at RDS Simmonscourt on November 1, 2025. Photo: Theo Batterham.

• ‘El Paso (365)’ is out now. Reggie plays The Road To The Great Escape at The Workman’s Club, Dublin (May 12).