Rob Kelly certainly knows the meaning of the word ‘no’. As a matter of fact, he hears it all the time. It still annoys him, though.

“Let me give you an example of something that happened recently,” he tells hotpress. “Someone from our label was on the phone to the director of programming at one of the big Dublin stations plugging the album, and his response was: ‘An artist like that could never get on a station like this.’ And at the same time – the very same time – I was getting an e-mail from one of my contacts in Def Jam in the US asking about my new stuff.”
This sums up the 28-year-old rapper’s experience of the music industry so far: sod all recognition at home, but some very impressive doors opening up internationally.
It’s been all of four years since Kelly first picked up a mic in anger.
“You might not think it because of what I do, but I’m a shy person. I always knew I could rhyme, but it took me a while to actually do it,” he says. “The first thing that made me actually want to get myself known was when I heard an Irish MC on Wes Darcy’s 2FM show in around 2002. I called in and said I could rhyme, and he stuck me on down the phone line. After that, he asked me back every two weeks or so.”
His hip-hop schooling began at an early age.
“I was lucky because a friend of mine’s father was big into hip-hop, he would have had a lot of the old BDP, Marley Marl stuff. He used to make mix tapes for us.”
The record that really made him want to write rhymes was LL Cool J’s 'Mama Said Knock You Out'. After that, he started listening to Public Enemy and the like.
“A lot of guys got into hip-hop because of Eminem. And then when the 8 Mile movie came out, I would see them at the battles that were organised, all decked out…looking like yer man in the Offspring’s ‘Pretty Fly For A White Guy’ video! I’m sure most of them don’t even listen to hip-hop anymore.”
Asked what other Irish MCs he rates, he refuses to get drawn on the subject: “To be honest, I don’t really pay that much attention to what everyone else is doing, I just do my own thing.”
You sense he has too much on his plate to be drawn into a slagging match with any of his peers. However, he does go on the record when quizzed about Irish MCs’ lyrical content.
“About 90% of them talk about drinking Dutch Gold and getting stoned. I find all that a bit low-brow,” he says sniffily. “In the past I was probably a little bit raw – but that’s because of who I was listening to. But now I realise that I don’t have to be like that all the time. I’m working on delving deeper into things, dealing with specific topics on different tracks.”
What started with a call to 2FM has ended up with him inking a well-publicised digital distribution deal with the Jay-Z-affiliated company Swagger.
Along the way, he’s found a beat-making buddy from Bray called Mike Donnelly, been selected by respected US DJ Vlad to appear on a ‘hottest unsigned’ mix-tape and released his own mix-tape “which was bootlegged over and over.”
He’s also had beats made for him by people who produce for the likes of KRS-One, Fat Joe and G-Unit, had over 127,000 plays on his MySpace and appeared on a track with Jay-Z’s sidekick, Memphis Bleek, who called him as he was driving up to Dublin to the Jiggaman’s gig. Phew.
“But the funny thing is I feel like I’ve only just started to get serious about this now, so who knows what will happen over the coming years,” he avers. “I’m going to go hell for leather now, because I’ve a good work ethic and keep my eye on the ball, you know?”
And unlikely as it may seem, you wouldn’t bet against him pulling this one off. Hot Press can’t help but think of a line from the LL record that inspired Rob in the first place – “I’m gonna take this itty bitty world by storm…and I’m just getting warm.”