‘It’s spiritual warfare’: Bricknasty are fighting for Dublin’s precariat

Irish hip-hop band Bricknasty’s hometown is under threat, and, for masked frontman Fatboy, this destruction manifests rather innocuously in student housing. “Our drug addiction centre was demolished to build accommodation for university students,” he tells me as he pushes his BMX cruiser through the shadows of Dublin’s Ballymun estates; an area whose historic deprivation rarely makes for a positive news headline, but one that Fatboy cherishes deeply. “It was a massive two fingers up to all those who suffered during the heroin epidemic.”

Fatboy’s signature embellishments aside, it’s a tale of gentrification that is familiar to many – and one that the Bricknasty vocalist is more invested in than most. The band’s previous album, Xongz, featured an interlude in which Fatboy breaks down in tears at a fundraising gig, thanking attendees for helping to keep his family housed while his mother recovered from cancer. It was a sobering moment amid the musical madness that permeated the project, existing as a stark reminder of the rich community that often accompanies financial poverty in areas like Ballymun. 

“We’ve buried aunties, uncles and granddads here, we’ve had all our Christmases here,” says Fatboy, greeting residents as he walks through the area situated on the outskirts of Dublin. “We’re a niche Irish community. I used to be called a junkie and a ‘knacker’ because I came from the blocks, but I just want to be able to raise my kids here too.”

Right now, Fatboy feels like he is being “pushed out”. Constructed in the 1960s against a homelessness and drug epidemic in Dublin, the Ballymun estates suffered neglect from their very beginning, but residents found ways to make do. A recent urban regeneration scheme by the city council, however, threatens to disturb this precarious balance. The original seven Ballymun estates have been demolished in favour of “state-of-the-art” newbuilds, priced out of reach of many longtime residents, while many of the area’s key communal centres have been shut down, currently pending suitable replacements.

These regeneration efforts might be rooted in wider housing issues in the region (Dublin has consistently been ranked as one of the most unaffordable places to live in Europe), but it culminates in a palpable tension in Ballymun today. Almost like an army preparing for battle, Irish tricolour flags have sprung up all over the area in recent weeks, its residents clinging onto a collective identity amid a seemingly existential threat.

It’s in this context that Bricknasty’s latest mixtape, Black’s Law, is released – a project that draws heavily on Ireland’s rich cultural history. It collides folk classics like national composer Turlough O’Carolan’s “Eleanour Plunkett” with Bricknasty’s longstanding language of Jim Legxacy-esque DIY pop, elsewhere weaving a loose religious allegory throughout the neighbourhood’s tower blocks, swapping the devil for a drug dealer and St. Michael for a well-meaning Bally Munna. Much like Ballymun itself, it’s a chaos that conceals a fragile beauty. 

“It’s probably the same in a lot of Ireland, but particularly in Ballymun there’s these beautiful, timeless memories contextualised by violence, drugs and crazy stuff you couldn’t even say in an interview,” explains Fatboy. “So, when you put that on a project, it just feels good. It feels representative of where we’re from.” Meanwhile, the band’s producer, Cillian, describes how efforts were made to situate Black’s Laws’ sequenced drums and voice recordings of Ballymun locals within the same space, sonically embodying the idiosyncrasies of the neighbourhood.

The project’s title itself references Black’s Law Dictionary, which Fatboy describes as “the foundation of legal doublespeak.” He gestures toward the Marxist concept of mystification – the way complex class relations are obscured – to contextualise the conditions the Bally Munnas navigate today. Terms like “bank” and “currency,” he argues, are abstractions of words once tied to the natural world, repurposed to conceal the mechanisms of working-class repression. “There’s a reason they colonised for the English language,” Fatboy says. “When you remove the words that describe how you’re being misled, you remove the thought process that [lets you recognise it]. It’s a form of black magic.”

He continues: “We’re sitting across from Plunkett Tower. But, if you look at the roads – Marwood, Hampton, etc. – these are all Protestant planter names. I should live on Plunkett Road or Connolly Avenue by rights, no? The seven towers were named after the seven signatories [of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic]... What did they do? They flattened it out, swapped all the [residents] out for students and whatever, and now the roads are all named after Protestant planter names. That’s spiritual warfare of the deepest level. They do it quietly. They did it quietly in Palestine, then loudly. Before they even shot a bullet, many pieces of paper were signed.”

Still, the hardships faced by Dublin’s working class residents don’t always crystallise into something palatable. As my flight took off from Dublin airport, rioters congregated outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in the city centre, leading to violent confrontations with police. Their rage, it seemed, had been misdirected at their fellow precariat. 

Fatboy acknowledged that racism was a pressing problem in the area, but emphasised that open discussion was their only way out of the predicament. “You can’t watch as Ballymun is decimated and forgotten, its residents scattered,” he explains. “What I’m asking people to do is just take a deep breath and all get on the same level. With humility, we can navigate this thing together.”

As Fatboy spoke, the clouds over Ballymun began to part behind him, revealing a rainbow that stretched across the neighbourhood. One end was planted in Ballymun’s community centre, The Reco, where Fatboy had first taught himself guitar and now runs music sessions for learning-disabled residents of the area, and the other in the Axis arts centre across the way. Neither, of course, concealed a pot of gold, but, listening to Black’s Law today, it seems that both gave birth to something far more precious. 

Black’s Law is out now. Bricknasty are going on tour this November, featuring dates across the United Kingdom, as well as Paris and Amsterdam. Grab tickets here.