Key Shall Overcome

Lowkey is a poet, playwright, hip hop artist and political activist. Last year his powerful composition ‘Tears to Laughter’ became the unofficial anthem for protests and fundraising events for Gaza and Palestine.

In town for Dearbhla Glynn’s ambitious Dublin to Gaza gig at Tripod, I ask the 23-year-old Londoner about his ‘voices for the voiceless’ philosophy.
“My name is Kareem Dennis,” he says. “I feel like an Englishman amongst Arabs and an Arab amongst Englishmen. At the same time, I don’t see one whole side of my reality reflected in any part of mainstream culture. How many popular Iraqi musicians in England aren’t marginalized just by the word Iraqi? That made my position a voiceless position.”
So what is it about hip hop that makes it such an important vehicle?
“Essentially it’s a simple way to get a point across,” he says. “Hip hop and rapping are about communication. Through hip hop, it’s my job to leave my fingerprint on the world and say: ‘this is me, this is what I stood for’. I think hip hop rings true for so many oppressed people, from here to Palestine to South Africa, because you don’t need anything to make it happen. The elements of hip hop are beatboxing, DJing, graffiti, breakdancing and MCing – the basics for a party. That’s where it came from. There’s a chance for people to speak and express themselves. There’s also the competitive thing, because it’s something all young people have growing up.
“So hip hop is something you don’t need a lot of resources to do. You need to buy an electric guitar to play one, but you can rap just with your voice. And it’s also something you can do privately, even if it’s writing a letter to yourself, and it’s just you, the listener.”
We discuss the anger in hip hop, and Lowkey slips spontaneously into rap as his natural form of conversation.
“When you’re dealing with people who feel disenfranchised, marginalized, stigmatized and dehumanized, you’re gonna get anger,” he says. “I think that’s necessary – either you listen to my song and you learn about it, or you find out about it when something bad happens, and then you’ll never want to know what we thought in the first place.”
What is Lowkey’s ultimate goal?
“I’d like to bring people together, because it’s like I’m a human bridge between cultures: while I’m both, I’m neither: I’m directly in the middle.
“When people gain money, power and influence,” he adds, “most of them ­– and I think it’s a symptom of capitalism – build a wall around themselves. They’ll be driven in their own personal car, they’ll live in their own personal house, everything will be private. Whereas essentially what my music stands for, and what I strive to stand for as a person, is equality. So therefore, anything I acquire, whether it be influence, money or power, has to be a force for unity. I feel it’s the least I can do.”
Lowkey’s humility stands in stark contrast to the big egos and materialistic concerns of a lot of mainstream hip hop.
“Hip hop’s been the voice of teenage boys,” he explains, “and also of disenfranchised and marginalized people, and both those groups tend to cling to whatever pride they can. They’re literally reduced to exchanging boasts. It then becomes individualism: ‘This is just me and I’m better than you, this is just me and I’m all out for myself’. While I’m sensitive to where that comes from, it’s a side of hip hop that I don’t want to go to.
“I’m aware that what I do caters to one’s ego probably in an unhealthy way. But to be honest, I don’t want to be in a position like The Sugababes, and these other people that are on TV all the time. Because essentially all you’re doing is feeding a bottomless pit. There is nothing at the end of it, and it doesn’t lead to a fulfilled, happy existence. I couldn’t be on there advertising these products I don’t care about. I wouldn’t feel free and I couldn’t sleep at night – I’d rather die. Not that I believe what I’m doing now will necessarily lead to happiness, but I do believe that ultimately, what I do now will actually have some type of positive effect on people other than myself.”