Rhyme & Reason - Lethal Dialect Interview

He’s too modest to say it himself, so we’ll say it for him; with his third album, 1988, Paulie Allwright, AKA Lethal Dialect, has made a record that takes Irish hip hop to a whole new level.

Actually, it’s probably wrong to describe the JackKnifeJ-produced collection as ‘hip hop’ such are its overt flirtations with pop, rock and classic soul. There’s no pretending to be an L.A. gang-banger or a ducking 'n’ diving London grimester – what Lethal’s produced is an LP that’s uniquely of its place yet musically diverse enough to gain attention way beyond these shores.
“I definitely feel with 1988 that I’ve found my voice,” Paulie proffers. “Part of that comes from deciding a year ago to put a proper band together. We did a competition with Hot Press asking people to remix ‘Keep It Real’ and got this amazing version back from Overhead, The Albatross which was basically just them sticking live instrumentation over the track. It was like, ‘Fuck, the guitars and the drums... they’re really getting into it here!’ At the same time, I’d done a couple of gigs in rock venues and realised that, no matter how good your set is, if it’s just you and a DJ you’re not going to have the same impact visually and sound-wise as a band. The clincher was when I went to see them live and they just tore the place apart.”
With Overhead’s Ben Garrett and David Prendergast agreeing to double-job with him – “I didn’t want to be poaching anyone,” he notes – Lethal felt he had the necessary artillery to support Damien Dempsey at his traditional Christmas gig in Vicar St.
“We did a cover of House Of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ and there were people nearly falling off the balcony!” he reminisces fondly. “Having them on stage with me felt like such an evolution. It gave me great confidence going back in to the studio feeling, ‘Whatever we come up with, I can recreate it live'. 1988 was always, always going to be a hip hop record – one of the things I want it to do is open doors for other Irish rappers – but there wasn’t a set of rules we had to stick to. If we wanted to explore a certain idea,
we did.”
Lethal is full of praise for Damo Dempsey, who’s taking him out on the road again in November.
“I’ve known him now a couple of years,” he proffers. “He’s one of them characters. He’s a genuine bloke, but because he’s so genuine and such a person of the people he has to be careful...”
“I’m from the same housing estate as him,” takes-over JackKnifeJ. “He’s a legend round there, really sought after. If he went into a pub now, everyone would be trying to buy him pints, everyone would want to talk to him. He’s just so revered, and such a humble person as well. Some musicians separate themselves, but there’s none of that with Damien. He feels like he has to go out of his way to talk to people; you wouldn’t get a day to yourself!”
“It’s only when we did that Vicar St. gig with him that I realised we share a lot of the same audience,” Lethal resumes. “Damo’s fans are very proud of their music and their heritage – there’s no stigma attached to hearing somebody rapping in their own accent.”
Dempsey’s distinctive tones grace defiant album closer, ‘Brave’.
“That’s the biggest compliment I’ve ever received,” Lethal beams. “We sent Damo’s producer John Reynolds, who’s a great guy too, the ProTools files thinking he’d just sing the hook, but they came back with a whole outro segment.”
1988 is highly autobiographical – check out the opening seven-minute epic, ‘School Dayz Are Over’, to understand why Paulie was never going to be Trinners material – but he refuses to indulge in macho self-mythologising.
“I’ve never claimed that mine was a rough, hardcore upbringing, though living in Cabra you did get both a formal education and a street one,” he laughs. “I maintain it’s not where you were brought up, it’s how you were brought up. My mother and father were workers so we were always provided for. Around us you had the most diverse array of people – the WWE wrestler, Sheamus, Mrs. Doyle from Father Ted and Marlo Hyland who was active at the time.”
Mr. Hyland being the gun running, drug smuggling, security van robbing, extortion racketeering gentleman who was shot dead in 1996 outside the Royal Oak pub in Finglas by what Gardaí suspect was the Provisional IRA.
“There were a lot of drugs around Cabra in the late ‘80s/early ’90s,” Lethal acknowledges, “which is part of the reason we moved for a while to Blanchardstown. My mother and father were working and myself and my brother were being babysat by our auntie. Somebody we knew was shooting up in front of us; it was difficult. That was personal circumstances, though. Cabra’s a really tight-knit community and when I was at school the teachers were more like mentors; they were brilliant.”
When I tweeted the other day that no self-respecting record collection should be without a copy of 1988, the first person to ‘favourite’ it was UFC star Cathal Pendred. It turns out that him and Lethal have become bosom buddies.
“At a charity event, I was one of the judges and Cathal was another, and we just got chatting. He’s a highly-intelligent dude and very focused. I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from seeing what him and the lads are doing. I think 99% of it is confidence and mind-frame. Going into a fight, he knows he’s going to win. It’s the same with us: talent comes into it, and work-rate too, but it’s all about where your head’s at.”
1988 contains a skit, ‘The Shark Interlude’, in which Lethal gets to meet with a music industry bigwig stuck somewhere between the triassic and jurassic periods. Do dinosaurs like that really exist?
“I won’t name any names but we had a meeting where similar things were said,” Paulie nods. “There are still a couple of old heads who believe that, ‘If it's not a radio single, that’s it...’ You talk to them about internet buzzes and social media followings and their faces just go blank.”
“There’s been no backing, we’ve had to do it all for ourselves,” JackKnifeJ observes. “The Axis in Ballymun gave us a residency in their studio, which we used to do the vocals, and I did most of the production, mixing and mastering in my bedroom. I wasn’t college trained, so anything I’ve done on the album I’ve learned myself.
“There are so many great Irish hip hop albums circulating but not getting the exposure. If you’re on the Lethal Dialect YouTube channel, click the ‘related videos’ to the right and you’ll realise the level of talent there is here.”
Top of that list comes Jess Kavanagh, the featured vocalist on three of 1988’s standouts, who gives Ella Eyre, Foxes, Jess Glynn et al a serious run for their money in the lung-bursting department.
“I’d seen Jess on my timeline singing, emailed her, got a phone number and invited her into the studio where she absolutely nailed it,” JackKnife adds. “Again, it demonstrates how much undiscovered talent there is on
the ‘net.”
While on so many levels a celebration, the release of 1988 is tinged with sadness.
“Liam Pritchard, who was also in my band, took his own life this year,” Paulie notes solemnly. “I’ll never forget on the Damien Dempsey tour being backstage and him and (Lethal collaborator) Willa Lee, bawling their lamps out when Damo sang ‘Chris And Stevie’, which is a song about suicide. My uncle, who’d been ill, passed away on the Thursday and then on the Saturday I got a phone call from a friend saying that Liam was dead. I couldn’t believe it. Again, he’d sent me a file of him playing electric guitar over some of our stuff and I said, ‘That’s greeat, do you want to come on tour with us and Damien Dempsey?’ and he was really cool about it. ‘Yeah, lovely'. We didn’t know how much of a Damo fan he was until the funeral when they carried in his coffin to ‘Apple Of My Eye’. It was beautiful in a way because we were the catalyst for him doing something he was destined to do, which is play with his idol.
“We never saw it coming, but then again Liamo played his cards close to his chest. Fuck all that ‘don’t show any weakness’ bollocks. It’s not weakness to say, ‘I need help’. We’re going to go out with Damo in November and smash it as a tribute to our brother.”

Lethal Dialect's 1988 is out now and gets a live airing in The Opium Rooms, Dublin on October 24