Denise Chaila: 'I'm doing an exceptionally difficult thing in exceptionally dangerous territory'

The Limerick rapper talks racism, being a role model, and making a spectacular breakthrough in such a strange year 

Denise Chaila and dancers in the video for her new single, O61. 

Limerick rapper Denise Chaila is talking about her past year, one dominated by a pandemic but also the ubiquity of her all-conquering breakthrough track ‘Chaila’. It led her to interviews on the Late Late Show, attention from overseas, and regular radio play, while the mixtape it opens, GO Bravely, won the Choice Prize for Irish album of the year. 

 Chaila’s rise also led to sadly predictable vitriol and racism, however, so much so that she asked RTÉ, sponsors of the Choice Prize, not to tag her Twitter handle in tweets about the award. “I don't do music without risk,” she says, explaining that the idea of ‘oh isn’t she great’ that’s developed over the past 12 months, in the context of the nastiness she's been subjected to, has seen something lost in the narrative.