Talking to: Ahmed, With Love.

Photography by Adam Kelleher @weeopywoopy

For those of you that drive, I’m sure you remember your first car fondly. And when the day comes for it to depart, going to the big car park in the sky, you might even feel inspired to write a song (or two) about it. That’s how much love Ahmed has in his heart, immortalising his Fiat Punto (R.I.P to ‘THE Punto’) in his new single ‘WHATCHIMACALLIT.’ from his upcoming mixtape, ‘Comma, Fullstop.’

Whilst there’s easy comparisons to make with Ahmed’s influences - MF Doom, Tyler, the Creator, MIKE - he’s undeniably genuine, both in his music and in person. There’s no bravado or fake sincerity about ‘WHATCHIMACALLIT.’ and whilst we chat, it becomes evident that Ahmend is a pretty multifaceted individual. He’s got a healthy sense of humour and manages to balance music, his pharmacy career, collaborations with other creatives, events…In his own words, he just ‘like[s] just knowing people’.

Obviously we have to kick things off with the most difficult question.

What happened to the Fiat Punto…?

All good cars go to heaven…but my poor little Punto, it was just time. I knew it wasn’t going to pass the NCT and an opportunity arose where I was able to not get a replacement, but a second coming. So I thought, you know what? It’s time. You’ve done me good, it’s time to send you back to heaven. In my eyes, there’s only one Punto.

Do you find that when you start a project (especially one immortalising the Punto) you come up with a few lines first, or you hear a beat and feel influenced by it? What’s your creative process?

I think it’s a combination of the two, because more often than not I’ll always think of a line and I’ll think, ‘Oh, that’s fun. Let me save that for something’. Once I have that one line, I’ll find a beat for it and then - if the beat’s good enough - it’ll inspire me just to keep writing more. I remember I was at work one day and I was daydreaming; ‘hop in a zipididoodah, pull up in a whatchimacallit’. I thought, ‘that’s so stupid, I can’t wait to make that song.’

It’s a really good quality to be authentic and have fun with your music. Do you feel like this is sometimes missing from the rap genre?

I don’t even know if it’s missing per-se. I know that there’s a big surplus of a lot of people feeling a need to be something that they’re not, like not showing certain parts of themselves because ‘that’s not how I should present myself’, but I was a really shy kid and wouldn’t say much. One of my biggest fears is not being able to speak my piece. People always forget that there’s beauty in the absurd; you don’t necessarily have to take yourself seriously to present a serious piece of art. I don’t know how you can be taken seriously if you don’t give your all to something.

I also really like your use of sampling - are you a big fan of Jamie Carragher or did you just really enjoy that interview?

The funniest part is I can't even take credit for that one. It’s just my friend Adam’s producer tag [also known as POSER]. He said, ‘Oh, I got these beats’, and that was the first one. I was thinking, ‘How can I not use that one when the tag is that?’

I’m a big fan of adding little extras, random noises and stuff to any song or project - anything that just feels right. There are a few songs I have in the vault that either have voice recordings of my Mum or random clips from YouTube. I like being able to hear how much fun I was having when I recorded something.

On a quick aside, one person who really does that well is my friend Rory Sweeney. The last album / mixtape that he dropped - Carlos Danger Presents Irish Hash Mafia - has every little video he showed me over the time of us being in the studio. He just cut out snippets of it and put it in as random transitions for songs, unedited or uninterrupted. I thought, ‘that’s so beautiful, I feel like I’m listening to your head and I love that a lot.’

I think the originality of your merchandise also reflects the fun that you’re having with the music. Can you tell me more about the sponsor; Muck Lager?

With any merch I love the fine print on a lot of silly ideas. And when I came up with the jerseys I thought it needed a sponsor. I thought to myself that it would be funny to have a drink sponsor, it’s just super Irish. So what’s a fake, funny name? And let me just make it an impossibly high percentage.

Down the line, I really want to make proof of concept cans of ‘Muck Lager’. I like making silly stuff. I just like ‘nothing to do with music’ merch drops. And Muck is great. Once you’re on Muck, you can’t get off the stuff.

Three cans of Muck and you’re blind.

You’re solving political issues off of three and a half cans of Muck.

Speaking of politics, I would say that your 2020 single ‘Pebbles.’ - written in reaction to the murder of George Floyd - was a shift from your usual tongue-in-cheek style. Did you also feel racial prejudice and unrest in Ireland at that time?

I wouldn’t even say I felt personal unrest at the time when I was [in Dublin], I guess I felt a personal connection. In the lyrics of ‘Pebbles.’ a lot of the lyrics were stuff that had happened to me before. I know that Ireland has that kind of history and energy; even right now in places like Coolock there’s a load of anti-Irish rhetoric or just ‘Ireland is for Irish’ rhetoric*. I feel like this is never gonna not be relevant. Even when I made ‘Pebbles.’ it wasn’t just to make it; I saw another video of a black man getting killed for no reason. That really upset me and I just wrote how I felt. I didn’t even think I would end up recording it, but things fell in place and I thought I wanted to do ‘Pebbles.’ the service of dropping it.’

*At the time of writing, Coolock is experiencing serious unrest and anti-immigration sentiment, with immigration being blamed for housing shortage, the rising cost of living, and increasingly stretched healthcare services.

Definitely. I feel like creating art in protest or reaction gives people a lot of hope. What’s been inspiring you this year in music; what’s going to be on your Receiptify?

The way I listen to music is kind of cursed, because I only listen to one song on repeat indefinitely for a week or a week and a half. Then I'll go back to my playlist and just listen around, or I'll listen to a song radio. There's this one Japanese musician - Kahimi Karie - who was raised in France in the 70s and 80s, and she has a really nice song that I've been listening to called ’ZOOM UP!'. A good few Action Bronson songs are going to be on there. A lot of 70s and 80s Brazilian music, like Joao Gilberto, Jorge Ben Jor, Djavan, Gal Costa. And, for some reason, one of my songs because I'll always listen to it after it drops. Apparently I listen to it enough that it's always on my top 10 songs. I'm just a big ‘me’ fan, I think.

But don’t get me wrong; after a song is dropped, nine times out of ten, I'll probably dislike it a lot. It will be on the record, and I’ll think, man I do not like ‘Pebbles.’...but once I’ve dropped it, for the first day or so, I’ll listen to it. Then I’ll think, ‘yes, this is a real thing that has been dropped out in the world. Let me listen to it, not as me planning a release of something, but as what it is now.’ And then I’ll get it out of my system.

I’m a bit of a perfectionist. But that being said, I’m getting a lot better just trusting it. Sometimes I think, ‘just be out there, man, you’ll figure it out. Whoever needs to listen to you will and they’ll enjoy it.’

It’s a beautiful process, and it sounds like you’ve got a lot of supportive, creative people around you.

Definitely. Rory Sweeney is one of them. And Curtisy. The first song we ever made all together was ‘Men on a Mission’ and that’s also probably the biggest song we made together. It’s testament to how well we mould with each other. Gav has a little shed that he lives out of in the back garden of his house and it’s just us sitting there making music and watching funny videos. The majority of the songs that we’ve made have been in a really comforting [environment], which is great and ties in with my need to feel and enjoy making a song to ever put it out, otherwise there’s no point at all.

And, finally, have you got any plans for the rest of this year & early 2025?

I’ll hopefully have another project on the way. Hopefully I’ll get into a cycle. If Rory Sweeney and Curtisy want to do some stuff in the next year, that’d be pretty cool. I definitely wanna do a sequel to ‘Clash of the Quays’ just because there needs to be more wrestling-themed music events. But hopefully I’ll also have my masters by then and I’ll be a qualified pharmacist.

Oh yeah, that’s another aside! Another fun fact about me; I do pharmacy. I have my bachelors and I need to get my masters before I can be licensed. So 2025, I’ll be on the register, please!

Do you enjoy doing pharmacy? And how on earth do you manage to balance doing everything?

I like helping people a lot, so this is pretty good for me. I’m pretty content. I like that music isn’t something that I necessarily need to live off of. So anytime I do something for music, it’s solely because I really want to. Sometimes I’ll end up prioritising music over other things I should be prioritising, but that’s just testament because I don’t have to do it.

For better or for worse, I think you can do a lot in a day. There’s definitely times I burn out and need to remind myself; ‘I need to calm down’, which is something I’m getting a lot better at. I just like doing things. I live off sitcom logic; ‘wouldn’t it be funny if I do that?’ Or, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I was in a wrestling ring doing songs and somebody paid me for it?’.

Interview by Kate Hoare

'COMMA, FULLSTOP.' is out on 11th October - it's going to be a 9-track mixtape with hip-hip, art rap and baile funk influences (from what I've heard about it so far!). The second single, 'help wanted.' featuring Curtisy has more of a lo-fi vibe than 'WHATCHIMACALLIT.', but the vibes are just as impeccable.

Want to explore what else Ahmed, with love, has to offer you? Find out more about his new grooves and wrestling moves here:

Ahmed, with Love is on Instagram, Linktree, Spotify, Bandcamp and Youtube.

Interested in some Ahmed, with Love merch? You can find it here.