Denise Chaila
tackles the Irish hiphop
identity
Denise Chaila (Chai-la) is a Zambian-Irish rapper, poet, grime and hip hop
artist from Limerick. You might know her song ‘Chaila’ which has garnered a
lot of airplay on Irish radio this year: “'It's not Ch-laay; it's not Ch-lala” ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
These are two of the most thrilling, stop-you-in-you-tracks songs of the year so
far as Chaila makes her debut with ‘Duel Citizenship’ and ‘Copper Bullet’. But
her voice should be familiar to many as the Zambian-born Limerick-based
rapper appeared with Rusangano Family and had a star turn on their Choice
Prize-winning debut album, with ‘Isn’t Dinner Nice‘. A beat poet (see the bottom
of the next page for definition) she sets her powerful rhymes to production from
Murli, one third of the family.
“Where are you from originally,” asks Chaila on ‘Duel Citizenship’, over a simple
repeated piano line. A sample of the powerful message: “Our souls are
composed of borders and all of the lines that we have crossed that tangle our
wires when we speak. There are some people that have borrowed accents from
every single continent trying to fill in the blanks where our tongues are trying to
trip over the languages that we were born into. There are some people who will
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