I’m Kojaque. I’m a hip-hop artist and a video director. Yeah, I’m an artist!

Good, I’m in withdrawals from it at the minute. Not to be facetious, but it can feel like the life of an addict. Your life is in on hold until tour happens, and then you’re on tour and it’s all encompassing, you work all night, then sleep all day. You can’t make time for anything then you come off it and suddenly what is life? It was really good though, it felt crazy because it had been so long.

What I always try and remember is no matter if it's sold out or if there's 10 people, those 10 people came to see the show, so you got to put the show on. And I mean, oftentimes it can be fucking fun to play for like a smaller crowd, there's less of the kind of bullshit, smoke and mirrors kind of thing.  I didn't get into it for numbers. I got into it because I love art, and I love music.

They opened the country up with a plan, they had a budget in mind with the idea that we would have an end to restrictions, so you know, full opening of the country. They had a budget in mind, they designated money for nightlife and they started weaning people off of P.U.P, which is a pandemic unemployment payment. Then four weeks later, they turned around and said, We have to reintroduce restrictions. Now, the issue in my mind is the healthcare system. It's not nightlife. It's not that they introduced the curfew for nightlife and restaurants and everything like that. Everybody that was signed off the P.U.P and signed off dynamic unemployment payment, that service has now ended. And we're basically looking at a lock down again, and everybody that was in the nightlife industry, who were looking forward to restrictions being lifted and able to get back to work, is now unemployed, again, but this time with no means of making any money.

I’d say the biggest ones were good kid, m.A.A.d city, To Pimp a Butterfly, ‘the ground will come for free’, Ready to Die,  Flying Lotus,  any of the strings by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. I kind of just wanted to make, good kid, m.A.A.d city if he grew up in Cabaret, Dublin. That's kind of what I wanted to make. And that's where a lot of storytelling comes in. Even the interludes when you listen to them you can see the influences. I think I wear my influences on my sleeve to be honest.

To be honest, I've co-directed pretty much every music video that I've put out, bar maybe three and I've absolutely loved making them. The big issue is just it's just so expensive when you want to make them at the level that I want to make them, which is really just like mini movies. Something that just hasn't been done before, because there is like a formula to a lot of music videos like rap videos. And that's not really what I'm interested in, I'm interested in making cool art or unique art, at the level that I like to do it at, it’s just very expensive. There's a lot of people that need to be working and you’ve got to pay them all. Basically, all the music videos I love, but I also would love way more money to deal with them. It's funny because people are kind of a little less interested in music videos now. Which is a bit of a shame, but then again, I'm interested in them. So that's kind of where I spend all the money.

It’s a technique called purging, which is basically when you purge all the carbon dioxide out your lungs, because  you’ve got residual carbon dioxide in your lungs.  That’s what gives you pain in your lungs when you're holding your breath.  So the idea is that you take a full inhalation of breath then exhale and you keep doing that cyclically for about two or three minutes. I did that the first time and managed to hold my breath for like a minute and a half. So I was like, yeah, this is doable. I was big into performance art in college, and the whole idea of using your body as a canvas. And so I got the simple idea of like, could I do a music video? One breath? Three and a half minutes? I wouldn't advise at home doing it at home though.

I suppose the government that we have is the same government for the past 50 years or even longer, in one shape or form. It's been two parties that have ruled basically since independence. And I think we've seen kind of time and time again, where their interests lie and that’s in multinational companies. It’s profit before people. And you see that with the erasure of space in Dublin. There are just countless buildings, countless nightlife venues, that have just been raised from the city to make way for hotels, and that's with only the most recent. I’m in Ireland at the minute you know and it's just, I don't know, it’s quite sad. I just don't know who to visit. And I don't know who's left and that's an overwhelming feeling from kind of people my age.

Start.  That's one of the biggest pieces of advice I would give to anybody starting off.  I’ve had at shows young people coming up to me and being like, I look at the shit you're doing and I'm like, How the fuck does anybody do that? Like, how has he got this far and stuff? And I'm kind of like, you know, I'm nearly six years into this. It's only fair for you to look at me. Try not to compare yourself to others, especially if you've not put anything out if that's something that you're looking to do, just start. I just had to start putting stuff out regardless of what I thought or my fears of it not working. If you're making your art and you keep putting it out it, it doesn't fucking matter because they'll be sat at home typing on Twitter while you make something and go forward and do something with your life.

A good pint of Guinness as stereotypical as that is. People in this capital that can pour good Guinness are few and far between, but there are a couple of pubs that do a good Guinness in London anyway.

Yeah, I want him to rake it across the coals! I've been trolling him on Twitter trying to get him to review the album. I'm going to rally up the twitter army and just be like ‘hit this man up.’ I think he really does take his time with the albums that he reviews. So I don't think he has much of an agenda.  With him, I feel like if he likes it, he likes it. If he doesn't, he doesn't. And so that's what I respect about him. Regardless of whether or not I agree with his opinion. So, I like that about him. And I'd like to have my shit reviewed by him because I think he's a tastemaker. And it'd be cool to open it up to a new audience. I like the idea of spreading music.

We just signed Yankee for a project and getting the test pressings back for the album is amazing. I'm a really, really big fan of his and have been for years. So, it's been great to be able to work with him. And when he was on the tour, he was a fucking dream. We’ve figured that we're really a one project at a time kind of a kind of a label, just with the manpower that we have. We haven't really expanded much more than that.  You just have to work with the resources that you have. Yankee’s the next one that's coming out and then we'll figure out who's after that.

I'm collaborating a bit more than I have done in the past. And I want to do that a little bit more, I think this year, just because I haven't been able to with the pandemic. And as well as that, I think it's good to have an open mind about this stuff and approach people and see can you make something that sounds a little bit different than your usual stuff. So I'm doing a bit more collaboration. Basically, just keep chugging, keep chugging along and keep chugging along and see what works!