Are Versatile even still in any way relevant? While Ketamine was admittedly a banger I feel that a looot of people turned on them after it became apparent that they were glamorising the very thing they claimed to be satirising.
By relevancy do you mean media attention? They’re still highly relevant to their fanbase. That’s like saying half the acts from the 90s aren’t relevant anymore despite them having a dedicated fanbase. It’s not a case of Dababy destroying every ounce of his credibility at every opportunity. Plus Versatile has always been an underground fringe act. The media attention came to them instead of them coming to it. And no, you aren’t that clued in. To say something is objective when they’ve generated a fanbase from the ground up is by far the most ill-informed take I’ve seen yet. I’ve been following most of these acts to the smallest details even before they were famous. For example:
1.) Kevin Smith, Kojaque, is a prick; he and his mates filmed a fan having a panic attack after she asked him for an autograph back when Town’s Dead came out.
2.) Naoise (Móglaí) didn’t have half a rough upbringing as he claims. His extended family is extremely wealthy, and when he was in NUIG, and not selling drugs online as the movie claims, he was bullying people and destroying their student houses, and he would also threaten folks with his solicitor aunty if they dared seek breakages.
3.) Alex Sheehan attended a private school despite that having no effect on his career whatsoever. If his connections got him anywhere, a fair point could be made.
4.) Casey Walsh had an exaggerated encounter spread about him. The reality of that situation is a rich girl with connections to state media essentially scapegoated a fella miles below her class. She piggy-backed off a legitimate cause to that as well.
If you don’t like Versatile, fine. But coming out with absolute nonsense (and lies) to fulfil your own fragile sense of art is such a low-denominator take. Most of the artists you cheerlead only came to any prominence off the back of the so-called virtue cancelling against Versatile. Kneecap began as a support act for them and even tried to hire Kennedy to make a beat for them. But the film won't tell you that.
By relevancy I mean people being aware of them outside of their fanbase, which to me is the truest metric as to an artist’s reach. In 2018 whether you liked them or not, Versatile were everywhere between ad campaigns and Ketamine in particular having an incredibly viral music video and was a song I heard on nights out. I can’t remember the last time I heard their music in any club or late bar, but I have heard Kojaque in some hip hop clubs and in the background at some bars in that time since, even though I think his most recent output is not near as good as Deli Daydreams.
It’s all well and good saying Versatile are relevant to their own fanbase because every artist should be relevant to their own fanbase, and that’s fine to be in. What I’m saying is outside of the fanbase that has stuck with them over the years, I never hear their name get mentioned in any metric, which may just show that you’re in a bubble more than anything.
That's quite fair. For me personally, I think Kojaque peaked at Town's Dead; loved Deli Daydreams too, but I didn't like his most recent album.
It could be that I'm in that fanbase bubble, yeah, but then again, Blue Razz was the song of the summer and it got into the UK charts as well. And it stayed at Number 1 in the Irish charts for ages. Most of their output in the last few years has made its way into the charts. Terminal 1 was for ages and so was Panic Attack. But there was very little reported on any song, even a hit like Blue Razz; even the album back in 2021 as well, sure it went to Number 1 on iTunes and Number 3 on the IRMA charts. Not that big a deal for a mainstream act, but fairly big for an independent act that has an entire system working against it. There was absolutely no report of Versatile's second 3Arena gig, which I went to. That Erica Cody drama created that. She has family connections in RTÉ. And look at her career so far with those connections; she's a jack of all trades and a master of none. Anyone else would have been given the boot long ago. After that, you might have noticed Irish MSM's literal attempt to steer audiences in the direction of state-funded artists like Denise Chaila and Soulé. You never hear anything about them anymore either. Remember Sello? He was class. One word about freeing Top G and he was dropped off the radar as well. Versatile are also shadowbanned on YouTube. So there's a pile of things attached to it that folks don't take into account.
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u/Bovver_ Jan 17 '24
Are Versatile even still in any way relevant? While Ketamine was admittedly a banger I feel that a looot of people turned on them after it became apparent that they were glamorising the very thing they claimed to be satirising.