Last Irish show for Pip and Dan

SCROOBIUS PIP sounds surprisingly upbeat as he contemplates the imminent demise of his collaboration with musical partner, Dan Le Sac.

After seven years, the Essex rapper and London producer are calling it quits. There is no bad blood or creative tension. They’re ending on a high. After three albums and a dozen tours, what else is there to strive for? “Our entire career has been a huge surprise to us,” says Scroobius (real name David Mead). “That’s why we’ve always gone as ‘Dan Le Sac versus Scroobius Pip’. We didn’t expect the project to have legs. It was only after a couple of tours that we stopped up and thought, ‘oh wow, I guess we’re a band now’.” Their calling card was the 2007 single ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’. A blistering spoken-word rant, illuminated by Le Sac’s expansive beats, the track was an overnight hit and the unofficial anthem of that summer’s festival season. Both musicians were utterly blind-sided by its success. Luckily, they’d already recorded an album, so there was no danger of buckling under pressure.

“It set us up very well. We wrote the first LP not knowing if anyone would hear it. From that moment, we’ve been able to write exactly what we wanted to. ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ was the first song we made together: it went top 40, got four, five million views on YouTube. Not many bands have that quick a turnaround.”