MM Rising Star Profile: Reggie

Since 2018, Irish music has had a resurgence: bands like Fontaines DC have kicked the door open for Kneecap and Inhaler to conquer Europe. With indie flying the flag for Ireland worldwide, rap acts such as Rejjie Snow, Hare Squead and Travy have fought to gain more than just a cult following outside their native country. In 2019, Dundalk’s Reggie made his first move, dropping his debut single Risk It in the early stages of Irish drill. This began a long battle to carve out space and gain respect for a new scene. “Sometimes you do feel like an underdog,” he admits to Mixtape Madness, “The hardest part was competing and being respected in a space where you’re outnumbered.”

Deservedly, this diligence paid off as the industry started to pay attention just across the Irish Sea. There is now a thriving rap scene, brimming with talent and waiting to burst onto the world as soon as someone fully opens the floodgates. From that first single, Reggie has been trying to go global while remaining connected to his home. Effortlessly blending his hard-hitting drill roots with pulsating electronica and an undeniable ear for melody, he has intentionally become impossible to pin to a single scene. “It’s all music at the end of the day,” he says. “I’ve blended rap and rock before.”

After years of cutting his teeth, Reggie was finally thrust into the spotlight after a viral Fred Again.. & Sammy Virji remix of his 2022 track Talk of the Town. “I didn’t really know much of it,” he remembers. “My producer had watched Fred’s stream…he actually started his set with Talk of the Town…my producer clipped it on the stream. We were buzzing.” Before the track was officially released, Fred asked him to join him at his Button Factory show in Dublin. “That was surreal. It wasn’t even out yet, and people were singing it back to me, just from the reels,” Reggie says. Following the release, his reputation skyrocketed, resulting in over two million monthly listeners on Spotify and genuine questions of what he would do next. 

After taking his time delivering a follow-up, the thumping El Paso (365) dropped last Friday. While initially sounding like a hard pivot from drill, El Paso (365) finds inspiration in both his musical and personal roots in Dundalk. “It’s a legendary song where I’m from. It’s like Dundalk’s You’ll Never Walk Alone,” he explains. “Win, lose or draw, the lads are singing that song. It felt like a perfect one to give back to the community, give back to the area, and shine a light on Dundalk musicians.”

The track directly samples local singer-songwriter David Keenan’s El Paso, a powerful acoustic track that has become something of a regional anthem. “There’s a story behind David Keenan and El Paso,” he reveals. “A taxi man called Mark Kavanagh discovered him. He would drive around, and pick people up, and if they had a talent, he would put the camera up… He would post it on Facebook, and that was how the song actually got discovered. We were meant to drop it on the 26th February… we ended up pushing it a week later. We found out it’s actually Mark Kavanagh’s birthday the day we dropped the song.” While the track leans into dance-drill somewhere close to a Duskus-produced Headie One track, it holds more depth than most club-ready releases, with layers of local history in every note. It’s admirable how Reggie has used his first release after Fred’s co-sign to bring stories from his hometown to the world. 

Proud of his roots, Reggie takes time to shout out artists like Belfast’s SKIIFUEGO and deathtoricky as ones to watch, but admits: “There’s a lot, I’m probably missing a few.” An early pioneer in his scene, he is flying the flag for Ireland and striving to create something unrestricted while keeping his feet rooted in his hometown. His genre-melding approach is as easy to like as his commitment to building more space for Irish music worldwide. While primed for big things, he evidently wants to uplift his community along with him. What’s next? “I remember hearing El Paso when I was in school, and that really inspired me. I want to put out music that can live in the world for a long time.”

For 2026, he teases: “Definitely more songs, more bangers… I’ve got some that are gonna go crazy in a viral sense or a club sense, similar to Talk of the Town… Gonna keep dropping more music.” While it seems impossible to know what genre he’ll borrow from or where he’ll go next, it’s practically undeniable that more people will start to watch. Reggie seems like the real thing, and 2026 may be the year he puts Dundalk on your radar. 

Reggie’s new single El Paso (365) is out now.

Words by Keir Shields

Photo Credits Theo Batterham and Spydersweb