The majority of people aged 20-30 know who MC Pat Flynn is. The Waterford man has a huge following to this day and his most famous tune is closing in on 100 million listens.
A stat like that would suggest he's one of Ireland's biggest artists - but if you Google search his name you won't find much about him or the story behind what was a fascinating saga in Irish pop culture.
It's a strange scenario to be in given the huge cohort of people who know exactly who he is, and to tell this story we have to rewind the clock to around 2014 when he was only 17.
It was a time you'd regularly hear groups of students shouting "I'm the best MC inside the country" while making their way to a club, and it was the year English DJ Philip George released his hit track 'I Wish That You Were Mine'.
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The Nottingham producer's track was sampled from Stevie Wonder's 'My Cherrie Amour' and it went big-time - amassing almost 170 million listens on Spotify while its official video has been seen 142 million times. It's one of those "you'll know it when you hear it" dance tracks. You'll still regularly hear it in clubs to this day.
It was so big that naturally a wave of remixes followed it, and that is when a young buck from St John's Park in Kilcohan dropped into the picture.
MC stands for 'Master of Ceremonies', and the best way to explain it to someone who isn't familiar is that it's a mix of rap and audience engagement. It's as much about keeping a listener hyped up as it is about having a good flow.
In recent years UK group The Bad Boy Chiller Crew have blown up with some of their songs, but Pat has been at it for a much longer time and is just as passionate about it today as he ever was.
You could say its following is niche, but sometimes it crosses into the mainstream and that's exactly what happened when he had a pop at rapping over the Philip George tune.
Not long after George, Pat's version titled 'Get on Your Kneez' came out and he captured his own audience - it became a boy racer anthem while youngsters would throw it on right as the predrinks hit the peak part of the night. There was a huge amount of love for it.
Eight years later his version has almost 60 million Spotify streams and almost 40 million on YouTube. Yet here he is, only doing his first interview about it all now.
When we asked Pat to chat to us he got back swiftly enough, and when we asked if he'd ever spoken about it all before he simply said he "wasn't given the chance before".
Pat is still banging out tracks and is targeting to branch himself into the UK where he says the scene is growing in popularity and it's "really the place to be" for his type of music.
Although many readers may only know his most famous song, his other work has been doing really well too. He's got multiple tracks that have been streamed millions of times each. His next big release is on March 17th.
From Kilcohan just south of Waterford city, he tells us how he first heard Philip George's 'I Wish You Were Mine' while scrolling Facebook, and he just wanted to have a bit of fun with it more than anything else.
He said: "I used to listen to old MCs and stuff like that. I just picked it up for some fun and would rap in the schoolyard for my friends and stuff.
"I was scrolling through Facebook one day and heard the Philip George track, and I just had to have a go rapping over it."
Pat had never been in a recording studio, and he had no idea how to get into one either. He approached a friend Lorenzo and asked if he knew any way he might be able to have a go at it.
"He put me in touch with a man called Murka Murcury. He had a studio in his garage on his house. It was my first time going into one ever.
"I got a lift off my mate Dylan Roche, he's actually mentioned in the song, he gave me a lift up and waited for me to it.
"I think I had €20 in my pocket and went in and gave it Murka.
"He just told me what to do, I cleared my throat, we recorded it in that one take and then that was it.
"I uploaded it to my sister's Youtube and it got a few hits, then a group called the Irish Rap Movement saw it and they uploaded to their channel and it just blew up.
"When I saw the numbers go up, people started adding me on social media and I was getting loads of gigs. I was getting popular.
"Other tracks to started to pick up then."
This was only the start of something big - Pat found himself in demand to do nights all around the country, especially for student events. He even found himself flying over to Magaluf to perform there on a few occasions.
"My first booking was in The Pumphouse in Kilkenny I think. There was loads of people there and it went a bit mental.
"I don't know exactly what it is about the track, it was the first song I'd ever recorded, and the students just loved it.
"I wasn't taking it seriously at the time, but the track changed my life completely. It blew up and the stats were crazy.
"I was only 17 turning 18 when I made it. It was just a small thing on my sister's Youtube you know.
"Next thing I was playing all over, the colleges and student gigs were really mental. My friend Jelly used to drive me up to all of them, he was a huge help throughout it all.
"I gigged in almost every county in Ireland, I'd even done some in Spain. I got booked for some in Magaluf.
"I don't know why but I never got asked for festivals. I only got to play one in my home town. I never got to do Electric Picnic or Longitude or anything like that, but I'd love to get the chance."
As all of this was happening there was another saga that helped his career go even further. As the MC Pat Flynn brand grew, another part of that era that his fans will remember was the "beef" that kicked off with a Limerick rapper who goes by the name of MC Lynchy.
One day Pat was on social media when a video of a schoolboy rapping at a bus stop came up on his feed. The video was titled along the lines "MC Pat Flynn watch out".
There was another rapper on the scene, and he was slagging Pat off.
So of course Pat did what anyone else would - he made a response and the pair started a back-and-forth which ended up growing both of their profiles significantly.
Pat said: "A rivalry kicked off, a bit of beef started and we were doing videos back and forth and then that started to get a lot of attention.
"Lynchy is grand now, we were actually supposed to make a track together a few years ago but I've not been in touch with him for a while.
"That saga really helped us both get a bit more exposure. Another thing that really went well for me was another video uploaded by Billy Grey of me MCing, that also got a lot reaction and played a big part in helping me grow.
"Since all of this I've made about 30 or 40 songs. And it's not all deep house anymore I've one called No Justice that's more rap and that has millions of listens too."
Pat, now aged 27 and a father of two, kept music going right up to covid before things went a little bit quiet.
Since the country started opening back up he's been back making tunes, and thankfully the royalties off his previous work have been enough to get him and the family by.
Ironically his biggest track isn't actually the one that pays, as it's him rapping over another song he doesn't own the copyright to. It wasn't something he thought too much about as a teenager but his later tracks were all original works and he's able to monetise them.
"I get a small bit of money from Spotify, Philip George gets most of the cut I think, or that's how I think it works.
"Back then those were just 'messing about' tracks, but what I make now is originally produced and I own the copyright to it.
"We were just having fun then and it wasn't something we thought about, then it blew up.
"It's nuts the way it went, and when I look back on it now the language on it was mad too, but like I said it was just a thing a 17-year-old recorded and put up on a Youtube account.
"I get gigs, and that along with the money I get from Spotify with my other songs it gets me by. I don't make a lot from Spotify but it's enough to live. Over the years I was always good at putting money away too.
Going forward Pat says the UK is in his sights, as his particular brand and genre has a much bigger market over there and it's where he says the majority of his listens are coming from.
Along with the UK, Australia is also being good to him, with a sizeable chunk of his streams also coming from there.
He's continued to make tracks in Ireland, recording from Sesh Studios in Waterford, and he's dropping his next single on March 17th which he's got high hopes for.
He said: "These days I actually have more fans in England than here, and I get a lot of listens from Australia too.
"So going forward I do want to tap into that more. I don't have any management now I'm trying to do everything on my own where I had a lot of help years ago.
"Now I'm trying to make music as well as run all my pages and make contact with people. I think I'd get more bookings if I had someone pushing to get me those again.
"I'm going to try get a booking agent and get over there to where my fanbase is. I've a track coming on March 17th too, and other than that just keep making music because it's what I love doing. I'll keep at it and that's really it."
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