MEC: TY English Workbook 2020 - 2021 | Page 27

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 27