Casper Walsh

Two lads from Dublin, one name on the poster

Casey Walsh, who records as Casper Walsh, was born on 16 January 1998 and has been working in Irish rap since 2014, when he and his friend Alex Sheehan formed the duo Versatile. Sheehan rapped as Eskimo Supreme; Walsh took the Casper name, and the pair built their following out of Dublin on records that treated the city's street slang as the point rather than a garnish.

The climb was quick. By the end of 2018 Hot Press had given them a cover story and described them as Ireland's biggest rap group, and the ticket trade now dates Walsh's run at the front of the Irish hip-hop scene to 2017. What the duo had was not critical consensus but volume: a very large, very young domestic audience that bought tickets faster than the industry expected it to.

The 3Arena years, and the argument that came with them

Versatile announced a headline show at Dublin's 3Arena on 10 July 2019. Hot Press reported it sold out nine days later, on 19 July — an Irish rap act filling the country's largest indoor venue without a major label behind it. The show itself landed at the end of November, and Hot Press ran its live report on 2 December 2019 under the headline "Versatile triumph at 3Arena". Walsh is billed as the first Irish rapper to headline the venue, and he did it twice.

Not everyone was persuaded. In August 2019, between the sell-out and the show, Hot Press published a piece headlined "Versatile: Are They Racist and Misogynistic?" — a fair summary of the argument that followed the duo through their peak years, and one Walsh has carried into his solo career rather than escaped.

The international CV from the same period is substantial for an act of that size. Walsh has recorded with Coolio and with D12, took Best Hip Hop Act at the Urban Music Awards in London, and appeared on Snoop Dogg's I Wanna Thank Me tour, with current tour copy putting the figure at more than 25 arena shows worldwide. At home the duo played the Longitude main stage on bills shared with Cardi B and Stormzy.

The split, and a solo single that did the work

Versatile's recorded output thinned out towards the end — "Prefontaine" in May 2019, then a gap, then "Blue Razz" on 7 July 2023 and "27 Club" on 8 December 2023. On 24 May 2024 Hot Press reported Walsh confirming that the members were moving on to concentrate on solo careers, with one commitment left on the books: headlining Vancouver's Celtic Picnic festival on 8 June 2024. "I'd like to just say from the bottom of my heart thank you so much to all the fans for the support throughout the years, couldn't have done it without yous," Walsh said at the time. Sheehan went in a different direction entirely, towards filmmaking; his short Cat Burning Ultras was selected for the Louth International Film Festival.

Walsh had already moved first. "Simmer Down" arrived on 5 April 2024, mixed by Evan Kennedy — a long-standing Versatile collaborator — mastered by Felix Davis, with a video directed by the filmmaker and musician Ovie Etseyatse, choreography by Kelly McCardle and artwork styled after Grand Theft Auto. It reached number two on Ireland's independent chart, broke into the UK official top 50, and topped the TikTok charts in Britain and Ireland across April and May 2024. By the time Hot Press wrote about the split in late May it was approaching four million Spotify streams.

The first solo headline shows were small and quick to follow: Monroe's Live in Galway on Thursday 26 September 2024, a ten o'clock start, twenty euro in. "Staar Kid / Pure Dopamine" followed on 21 June 2024, and then the pace dropped — a year's silence before "North Face" on 18 July 2025 and "Kitchen Talking" on 31 October 2025.

2026: Malibu, a boogie and a label

The run that put him back in the conversation began with "Big Jet To Malibu" on 15 May 2026. It reached number three on the Irish homegrown singles chart and, by the time the autumn tour was being advertised, had logged an eleventh week inside the Irish official homegrown top ten — a longer stay than anything he managed with the duo.

The double A-side "Gerrup Outta Dat / Hustler Boogie" followed on 17 July 2026, released through Greenback Records, the label Walsh is now signed to. "Hustler Boogie" became the bigger of the two by some distance, pushed along online by an unlikely spread of boosters — Stormzy, Conor McGregor, the American comedian Theo Von, Boy George, the boxing promoter Eddie Hearn and Katherine Ryan among them. A "Tactics Remix" of the track appeared on 18 September 2026, and a new single, "Running Man", landed on 25 September, a week before the tour opened.

A debut solo album is being prepared for 2027. Until then the catalogue is a run of singles, which is part of what makes the current live show an odd proposition: a performer with arena history, hundreds of millions of streams behind him and no solo record to tour.

The Hustler Boogie Tour

The tour that carries the single's name opened at Soho in Dublin on Friday 2 October 2026 with an eight o'clock start, then crosses to Britain for a tight mid-October block: the Moth Club in London on the 13th, O2 Institute3 in Birmingham on the 14th, O2 Academy 2 in Liverpool on the 15th, Manchester Academy 3 on Saturday the 17th at half past seven, and Stereo in Glasgow on the 18th. Belfast's Limelight 1 closes the run on 6 November. Seven shows, two countries.

The scale is the story. Every British date is a club room or a venue's smallest space — Institute3 and Academy 3 rather than the main halls upstairs — which is a long way down from the 3Arena and reads as a deliberate reset for a solo name that most of the British audience is meeting for the first time. No support acts were listed by any of the ticket sellers at the time of writing, and no reviews of the run had been published.