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I caught up with Cashlin, a surreal, one of a kind rapper whose work feels like a pirate broadcast from the fringes of American cultural memory and at the frontier of the music underground. Cashlin’s music is brimming with sincerity, humility, humour, and it provides genuine depth as a result. Cashlin is serious about paying homage to his inspirations and in coming from this place, his innovations are always sincere and effective. The cashlin formula lies somewhere between classic hip hop mixtape and Lynchian rave, his music speaks to dislocation, legacy, and the strange intimacy of being alive in a crumbling world. What follows is an honest, funny, and raw conversation about identity, the underground, the bigger picture and why sometimes your best songs are the ones you least expect them to be!
10/24/25
Konbini2004: Where did your artist name come from?
Cashlin: My artist name comes from my name in real life, Cashlin is the phonetic spelling of the irish language word for castle. I basically grew up an only child with a single father, who had no family left really due to the nature of Ireland being a less developed country, so he has like more than the tenth child his mother had had, grew up raised by catholic nuns and his old world grandfather who put shoes on horses.
Konbini2004: Do you think your Irish American roots contributed to or shaped your music?
Cashlin: i think my irish heritage is one of the biggest things that gives me a political affiliation to the world of hip hop. It’s easier to process and understand that many black americans are currently going through a genocide that has been whitewashed and never really fully ended when you’ve felt the shockwaves of world tragedy and religious war in your own life.
Konbini2004: Where did you grow up? And where are you based now?
Cashlin: I grew up in upstate new york, moved around a little bit, and ended up back up here, I feel like a lot of posh and upper class people hold Saratoga in high regards but I feel like there’s not much life and culture in all the woodsy towns up here until you get downstate enough to get near Albany, I’ve gone to a lot of shows in Kingston and Phoenicia because those are great towns to see punk and hardcore and indie rock shows
Konbini2004: What age did you start making music and what sparked that?
Cashlin: When I was a kid I totally wanted to be Steve Perry of Journey, but I couldn‘t sing, I think the insecurity of thinking I couldn’t sing helped reinforce the kind of boyish safety a kid gets from rap and punk and hardcore music, the more underground and weird it was the more “real” it was, I saw singing as something posers and sell outs did until I was an adult, then I became comfortable with trying to practice singing when I was alone. I still don’t have any songs out that are anything like when I sing along to the beach boys in the car or something like that.
Konbini2004: When did you start releasing music?
Cashlin: I started releasing music online as in uploading and posting it as like, a twelve year old on newgrounds, but not super frequently. I made a CD in high school, only a run of 100, and tried to keep myself to the rule of releasing at least one mixtape a year as I navigating being an adult and the working world. I still haven’t recovered from that, like 11 years later, but I eventually did what everyone does now and get their music on streaming with distrokid. I’ve never had a comprehensive serious approach to marketing and distribution, it’s always been on basically no budget, and DIY.
Konbini2004: Your flow has that golden era hip hop feel, but your production goes to some really adventurous places. What drives you to make something different and not just follow the trends?
Cashlin: I grew up with hip hop as a teenager in a way that showed me how important the golden era was, it was being revered in retrospect and there was all of how it developed in front of you, in a way just respecting what came before me and understanding that things worked for a reason has kept me sounding different. In a gen Z landscape everything is so hip and polished like pop punks iphone grandchild is just tearing through the climate with melodic and presentational sensibilities, it can feel alien and like I don’t make sense anymore, but I listen back to foundational experimental shit like Velvet Underground or Throbbing Gristle and I weirdly feel like I can hear myself more than in the newer world. You know like it’s kinda fucked up even Beck who every dude who makes music in my niche will get compared to a hundred times is getting kind of old and represents foundational values rather than new trends or cutting edge sensibilities
Konbini2004: To those who haven’t heard your music yet, which song would you send them to first?
Cashlin: I send a lot of people “I want to Romanticize” first because it’s super short and a little catchy and I really like all of the weird experimental layering and mixing I did with the vocals on that. I struggle to find something I’ve made that’s exciting and palatable and not too noisy or harsh. I put “These Magic Nights” as the first song on the cassette tape I pressed a couple of years ago because I was really proud of it’s kind of dreamy twilight charm and put togetherness while still being weird and kind of David Lynchian, but the one all of my friends at parties always love and remember is “Mommy I Don’t Wanna Be a Gangsta” where I’m basically doing this super silly baby voice thing for the whole song.
Konbini2004: What inspires you outside of music-books, films, real life, whatever comes to mind ?
Cashlin: I used to be incredibly inspired by tv shows, anime, films a lot a lot of films as a teenager and kid, I used to absorb and eat up tons of music, I think as an adult I realized I need to have a life and just absorbing everything eventually gets super time consuming, like almost detrimentally so, I think I’m inspired by everything but festival and rave culture and being able to go out and meet people who become meaningful in your life is a huge part of what drives me, which is weird as fuck because I have never made music that my friends would really like and I’ve never been good at setting goals like that or imitating things. I think I took the whole “don’t bite” and “be original” ethos of the hip hop world way too seriously as a teenager so it turned me avant garde as fuck for life
Konbini2004: What’s your recording ritual look like? How do you get yourself in the right mindset to bring the mood to the track every time?
Cashlin: Recording kind of looks different from season to season. I've had times where I record a bunch of rough guitar based songs in my car in a parking lot coming down off of drugs because I just went to go, like, see a movie or a concert or something and I need to wait to be good to drive. I often record just sitting on my bed with the laptop on a desk or something next to it, I’ve gotten my most productive segments of time like that, which honestly, i think sometimes hurts the music and makes it too sleepy and sound less serious, i think there’s a reason people amped up on coke with huge loans and record deals produce engaging music, they're moving around a lot and doing a hundred takes and shouting and utilizing all of their options, in an energetic sense a lot of my bedroom producer music is spiritually like, folk punk, never been able to afford a drumset, no huge amps, no violins or saxophones.
Konbini2004: What's your earliest song you made which you still love and the most recent song you’re proud of?
Cashlin: The earliest song I am proud of is probably one of the first things I recorded on a macbook as a kid. I slapped a rolled up computer mousepad to make a drumbeat and then I sang lala la sunshine is beautiful over it. In some weird ways I possibly can't ever top that. The original recording is gone but a remix of it someone made still exists somewhere. The most recent song I made is called “Cooridoorless Wardrobes” it's not the most flashy or polished song ever but it has this serene creepy liminal space feeling to it that I’ve never captured and it holds so much of the weird energy of pulling the curtain away on life, or rather the layer of sod and seeing all of the insects underneath, going through different traumas and struggles, I really think it’s important to create art at some point that honestly makes the listener somewhat uncomfortable in a way that is not very theatrical or glamorous, like you’re looking into your grandfather‘s journal from surviving the holocaust or some shit. People live life mentally and spiritually dominated thinking others have it worse and their problems are because they are lazy when they’ve been forced to be trailer trash, cattle like animals trapped in a cage of faith limitations and intellectual limitations while horrible shit goes on all around, we owe it to the future of civilization to try to catch the energy of being in fucked up and weird places and situations and represent it in something poetic, artistic, and more comfortable and romantic than what the original documented trauma and strangeness is. I definitely have tried to do this over the years but this is one of my best attempts at it yet.
Konbini2004: You’ve been vocal about harm prevention and social issues in the music underground, does it mean a lot to you to use your platform responsibly?
Cashlin: I would definitely say yes it’s important to use any platform you have responsibly, people don’t even consider that when they’re alone with one other person, something they say could get warped and promulgated to infinite people, the energy of what we do is always warping and transmuting through everything that we do, so in a way I also am not sure if I can even control what the effects of using my platform are, so to me it’s important to be somewhat strategically selfish, if we could all somehow synergistically get all of our music seen and supported the world would work better, we’re all trying to accomplish that at the same time I think. But beyond that, to be objective, we do really need to educate people on what is right and wrong and stop hate. There's so many deluded people who can't cross reference information and end up supporting celebrities who are toxic and false idols, I really hope I can believe the way I use a platform, whether it’s the internet or music or just how I live my life, to make things better.
Konbini2004: What’s next for you-any projects you’re excited to let people in on?
Cashlin: The next projects I potentially have lined up are sadly LESS exciting. I have a lot of old beats and verses I want to give a chance to see life and love by factory recording them combined as a way to process all of my old material and I honestly think it doesn’t come out as good that way as when I explore new things and try to make something where I’m learning more about art and creation as I do it. The noisy hyper lyrical rap stuff feels like I’m paying respect to my past and roots but I’m almost doing fan service for my past self, it makes me really happy to know there are some people out there who enjoy this stuff, and who knows, maybe the more time I spend with it the more new life and excitement I could breathe into that particular subgenre.
Music is often more than just music, it holds a mirror up to reality from which artists paint a picture. I feel as though the best art comes from subverting trauma, speaking in your true voice, cracking the code on your identity and understanding the roots of who you are while also upholding the responsibilities of being part of a community. Cashlin understands this well in my opinion. He demonstrates his ability in knowing how to pay homage and when to innovate. Cashlin is a true artist in how he approaches every aspect of his music from production, delivery, the content of the lyrics and how he conveys discomfort, humor, and heavy truth with equal parts grace, dignity, courage and grit. If you like your rap with a conscience but free from petty pretentiousness, music that respects and understands the traditions of the genres it innovates within-tap in.
Follow Cashlin: x.com/CashlinRap
Written By Konbini2004: linktr.ee/konbini2004
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