Off The Record: Hazey Haze's love letter to the Island

WHEN he’s not writing stories, rapper Hazey Haze often finds himself fishing along the banks of the Island, where the city straddles the River Shannon. That’s where it all started for Hazey.

“We were out on the Island Bank, maybe fishing, maybe not. One of my friends rapped a verse. I knew he wrote, but I never heard him rap, never knew he did it out loud,” recalls Hazey Haze.

“I left the bank that day, went down and got a bookie’s book.  You get the little sheet and the biro. I didn't have a copy book or a pencil, I just started to write bars from there. In my aunt’s coal bunker, me and two of the lads spent two years crafting, writing and making songs.”

'Raw' performance from Limerick rapper for TG4 series

Through his music, Hazey Haze shows his love for the city he grew up in. “The Island Field is my home, I love that place. As I always say in interviews, everyone's like ‘you're a Limerick man’, and I’m like 'No, I'm an Island man’. There’s a big difference, the island is a completely different world to Limerick. It’s lovely.”

His smile is wide. “It’s when you walk down and in an avenue or in a garden, and there are 30 people sitting down drinking tea and having a conversation, you know?”

What he cherishes most is the community spirit. After a recent painting project in partnership with schools, Hazey was asked to  meet the students. “Pure community heart-warming stuff. I absolutely hated school. Now, people ask me to come down and do talks. I hated that this place. But now, I love this place.”

According to him, it felt nice to hear his former teacher say he looks healthy.

“When I met the teachers, I hadn't seen them in 20 odd years. It was really heart-warming to see everyone  go 'we see what you're doing now. We're very proud of you.' One of them said I look very healthy, and I was like that's the nicest compliment I've gotten in weeks,” he says as he picks at his ginger beard.

In 2020, the rapper released his debut album, Is Mise, which he describes as a modern-day plague, colonising every county it reaches, leaving them with the taste, scent and sounds of a young Limerick man’s abrupt tales. Through 19 tracks, the rapper paints a vivid picture of his city, from a song about his grandmother who dealt drugs and passed away before seeing a judge to skits and conversations. In 2021, he followed up with Epitome, a second album on which he worked with Danny Lanham.

 At the moment, Hazey is focusing on his next project, Shy Boy Gets No Sweets.

 “That’s an old saying from family members, like, if you don't speak up, you'll never be heard. Or if you wait in line, and you don't put your hand out, then you'll never get nothing.”

He explains: “It's  longer than an EP. We call it a project and there’s sections to it. It’s gonna be a full show and we're gonna do it in small spaces, so it's not gonna be like a hip-hop gig at all. It's gonna be a live theatrical performance. Mankyy said to me, ‘I need you to dig deep, like really dig deep’. So it’s deep poetry, deep spoken word stories.”

After listening to Mankyy’s advice, he did dig deep. And over the last while, the writing aspect has been Hazey’s main focus.
“I'm not just a rapper, I'm a writer. I'd rather be known as a writer because that's what I've been doing. I know that I rap and do all that, but at the end of the day, that's not why I love doing it. I'm doing it literally for the linguistic of it,” he says.

When he talks about his music and his story with such confidence, it’s difficult to imagine he too can suffer from imposter syndrome.

“Don't get me wrong, I've always dreamed of myself not being able to walk into town or walk outta my mother's house or something. I want to be tackled while I'm on the road, that’s my dream,” he says. “When people come up to me and go ‘congratulations man, you're making a difference’, I'm like I'm just doing what I love, but that kind of thing is good to hear. I think it's a bit of imposter syndrome, to be honest.”

After an acclaimed performance on TG4 series, Hazey couldn’t help but get emotional. “My missus came home from work, and I haven't got emotional in like three or four years. I started crying at home and it was the day after the TG4. I wasn't sad, I didn't have any sad feelings. I had loads of energy  pent-up inside me and I just got emotional in the kitchen.”

There’s only pride in his voice as he shares his honest truth.

“I want a better life for myself, you know, that's probably the main thing,” he pauses.

“If I was sugarcoating it, I would like to say, I’m doing it for this and I'm doing it for that. But obviously, it's for me to get somewhere in life because I don’t like where I am. I don't want to be waiting for the day to be paid every week.”

Hazey points out he doesn’t want to be caught in the system.

 “I want people to look at me and go, he did it different and he's from where I'm from. I've been arrested, I've been caught with doing this, I’ve been caught doing that. But that changed me. Because I didn't like doing it, but I kept getting caught up in it.”

Looking back, he notes that Music Generation did a lot for him. “It made me realise that there's actually good people in the world.  

“The first day I left there, I said ‘Mam, I actually met real people today’. Real people with no malice hearts of them, someone that actually listens to what you're writin’. If he told me I’m good, then I must be good.”

That's when he started to have more confidence in himself.

 “I didn't stop getting butterflies. Why should I feel afraid or shy? Sometimes I get shy, two or three years ago, I wouldn't have come into this interview,” Hazey admits to a reporter who's so glad he cast his shyness aside.