Celaviedmai’s mantra is “Always stay ready.” Over the past half-decade the Galway rapper has evolved into a compelling live performer of increasingly sophisticated music, notably from the EP she released this summer, Issa New Era!, five tracks that are explorations in eclecticism.
She’s currently preparing for an Ireland Music Week gig: on Friday night she’ll close out the line-up at the Grand Social in Dublin. “I’m so excited,” she says. “I’ve been dying to play Ireland Music Week. I can’t wait. It’s going to be something different. I have a full band. We’re just really locked in, so it’s going to be a great show.”
Growing up in Galway, she says, her parents “used to always play music, every time they brought us to school, on Sundays, during the weekends, just vibing. My parents back in the day had house parties. They’ll deny it now, to be fair, but they had house parties. My dad was really into music, and he was in a band when he was really young. I think that just bounced off to me.”
A key musical awakening for Celaviedmai (real name Maimouna Salif) came from an unlikely source: mimicking with her sister the “Shabooya, Roll Call” cafeteria sequence from the teen film Bring It On: All or Nothing. “We weren’t allowed to watch it when it came out,” she says, “but later we watched it when we were in secondary school. Me and my sister felt so out of place, and I guess were thinking, ‘What will make us fit in?’”
Another key moment was seeing Missy Elliott on television. “I was, like, ‘Oh my gosh, if she can do it, I can do it.’ Because I always saw women on TV who were very slim. I never thought it could be me. And she was a rapper. I just thought, ‘One day, I’ll do music.’”
She was listening to pop music at the time: Shania Twain, Britney Spears, N*Sync, Justin Bieber. Creative inspiration came from reading “random books. I used to read The Spiderwick Chronicles, a mystical kind of thing. That used to inspire me. I read a lot of fiction, and I was into Greek mythology. I got a lot of inspiration from that.”
She began writing poetry, which gradually turned into raps, running over rhymes in her head. Eventually, the bars found their way on to the streets of Galway. “In my first year in college I’d seen these cool guys, a bit older than me, on the streets rapping to instrumentals. I went up to them and said, ‘I can freestyle, I can rap. Can I try?’ They were, like, ‘Go ahead ...’ I was freestyling for them, and they were, like, ‘You’re unreal. Come to the studio.’ That’s how my career started.”
Freestyling on the street gave her confidence to progress. “It was the validation from the boys who were doing it for real. That was enough for me to be, like, ‘Yeah, I’m fire! I’m cool ’cause the boys said I’m cool!’ I can’t remember the bars, but I remember where I was, outside Spanish Arch.”
But college work also demanded her focus. “I did freestyles here and there but wasn’t taking it too seriously. I got to a point where I was, like, ‘I just don’t know why I’m doing this [music]. I should just quit. I have a degree. I’m a biochemist. I could get a great job, settle down.’ But then I was, like, ‘Let me just give it one more shot.’” That shot came along in the form of a performance at Electric Picnic. The gig went exceedingly well. “I really believe in divine alignment. I happened to be at the right place at the right time.”
In 2019, her track Confessions turned heads. The song clocks in at under two minutes; rapping over a sample of Mozart’s Lacrimosa, Celaviedmai enters around the 45-second mark with the urgency of someone bursting the door open, full of energy and humour: “Never wore Louis [Vuitton], these are knock-offs!” she raps.
That same year she collaborated with the Louth rapper and singer Alicia Raye on the track Feelings. In 2020 she released more tracks: Reckless, another collaboration with Alicia Raye on Love Wins, and a track with Nealo and Alan Mckee, Questions.
Lately, her sound has become more intriguing, as a collaboration with Ben Bix of Meltybrains? took hold, with the Issa New Era! EP. “He reminded me of who I was and the artist I always wanted to be. If I didn’t meet Ben when I met him, I don’t think I would have been making music any more, to be honest. For the longest time I didn’t find anyone who actually got what I wanted to do. It became frustrating. I was tired. Meeting Ben established the sound I had in my head for the longest time that I had never been able to make myself. He played a huge part in who I am now becoming.”
Her rapping, she says, has also become more refined – “I don’t curse as much as I used to!” – and, lyrically, she’s reaching more for subtext. “My songs, you have to sit down and think about what I’m saying. It’s not that in your face. The meaning is underneath. Sometimes I think about Hey Ya! by OutKast. If you really listen to that song, it’s deep and emotional. But when you’re hearing it initially, all you want to do is dance. [André 3000] even says it in the lyrics: ‘Y’all don’t want to hear me, you just want to dance.’ My whole EP has messages in it, but I want to make you dance as well.”
As well as the Ireland Music Week gig, Celaviedmai is preparing some remixes for release, along with a new EP. She says her primary creative driver is a desire for connection. “We should strive for connection. That’s the premise of life. We should strive for a real love of people, a love of community.”
