Nigeria, Jamaica and Ireland mightn’t be known as hip-hop hotspots, but it’s these unexpected influences that seem to characterise Damola’s music. He cites listening to his parents’ Jamaican music as a child in Nigeria as his earliest influence, although he didn’t start performing until he was a teenager in Dublin, making up raps to impress his friends. Since 2014 he’s been releasing tracks and videos with the Backshed Inc. collective, allowing him the freedom to develop his increasingly idiosyncratic sound. Last year’s ‘Workflow’, in both it’s production and hard-hitting, rhythmic flow, owed a lot to the earlier work of Kendrick…
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The first release as part of the Word Up Collective – a new-fangled Dublin collective with a particular penchant for Irish hip-hop, pop, soul and R&B – ‘WorkFlow’ by Dublin’s Damola reveals an artist that has come on leaps and bounds since he started rapping back in 2008 before formed Backshed Inc. a quartet that includes Sam Ojo, Ange MC and video director Steven Beatsmith. Written in his bedroom and Dublin’s 25A bus, the track is a preview from Damola’s forthcoming ChildLIKE Mentality EP, a song that professes to give “an insight into his struggle in finding balance between dream chasing and making a living while…