Julio Kompoloi Rapper

Where do you live?
Cyprus, Limassol port area with my family and my animals

What did you have for breakfast?
Nothing. I had a coffee.

Describe your perfect day
The perfect day is called Studio Day. Friends, creativity, music.

Best book ever read?
Notes from Underground by Dostoyevsky. What won me over from the first time I read it (and what makes me go back every now and then to its pages) is the unfiltered description of the human condition, and the sincerity that flows through the author’s words. I love Dostoyevsky and anyone who follows my music may be able to discern how much it affected my expression.

Best childhood memory?
I’m 11-12 with all my family at the sea, no worries, no one is missing, lots of childish laughs and watermelons…

What is always in your fridge?
Ice…

What music are you listening to in the car at the moment?
Usually rap, sometimes reggae, or whatever. I’ve never been dogmatic with my sounds. I hear everything given they have something to give me.

What’s your spirit animal?
Cats… I identify very much with their independence and the fact that after so many years in our homes they still maintain their primal nature… A cat can never be owned…

What are you most proud of?
That I managed to help and that I help with my music people who really need it. Whether in practice (through contributions of my live shows income) or psychologically (through my lyrics). If my music turns into a crutch or even medicine then I succeed much more than I had wished for.

What movie scene has really stayed with you?
Charlie Chaplin’s speech in The Great Dictator… Because of the period it was shot, the content of the speech and of course the unrepeatable interpretation… It is a hymn to the simple and free Human…

If you could pick anyone at all (alive or dead) to go out for the evening with, who would it be?
There’s a lot of them… I’ll tell the first one that comes to mind… Banksy… Because if his art has so much to say, I imagine his mouth…

If you could time travel when and where would you go?
I would go and find us in the caves to figure out where we got it wrong…

What is your biggest fear?
My verse says… ‘My only fear, is myself, and this darkness that has fixated within me.’ My fear is to become what I condemn and for despair to defeat the hope in me…

What would you say to your 18-year-old self?
Hold on tight, kid… You haven’t seen nothing yet…

Name one thing that would stop you from dating someone.
The fact that I’m in a relationship, hahaha… Also the saying says ‘No Sex with Nationalists’

If the world is ending in 24 hours what would you do?
Live on a boat together with the Barco Pirata Collective (our collective)

Julio is a local rapper who recently released songs criticising the handling of the pandemic on the island as well as the recent incidents of police brutality to break up an anti-corruption protest in Nicosia. Find the Barco Pirata Collective Community on: https://www.facebook.com/barcopirata17/