Willzee, Limerick-based artist of Traveller descent, releases new track The Tribe today, from forthcoming album Deep Tinker due May 22nd. Following initial single Travelling Man, the new release turns inward, reflecting on identity, legacy, and transformation.
The song looks back on younger years, a time shaped by culture, community, and the traditions of traveler life. It revisits that connection with a renewed sense of understanding, as the artist steps into a new phase of life. As time moves forward, so too does responsibility.
Rooted in heritage yet driven by change, The Tribe explores the weight of legacy and the courage it takes to forge a different path. As the last child in a long line, and the final chapter of his father’s legacy, Willzee stands at a crossroads, between honoring the past with the need to define his own future.
While others followed familiar roads, he chose another way.
Through education, music, and leadership within his community, the track captures a quiet but powerful shift, a breaking of cycles, and the carving out of a new identity grounded in both pride and progression.
The Tribe is not just a reflection on where we come from, but where we’re willing to go, and what it means to carry legacy forward on your own terms. “I’m a TraBuffer – Traveller blood, Settled rearing. I’ve tapped into my settled artistry for years. Now it’s time to give the Traveller in me a go,” explains Willzee.
Working across music, poetry, screenwriting, and activism, Willzee is known for his direct, honest writing and a hybrid sound that fuses rap, Irish folk, and spoken word.
His upcoming album Deep Tinker draws on ancestral storytelling and a drive to challenge prejudice. Willzee explains, “It’s like my ancestors awaken in me each time I hear this album.”
Rooted in Willzee’s lived experience, academic research, and ancestral memory, the album emerged “from studying how policies have harmed our people” such as the 1963 Commission of Itinerancy, a policy which reshaped Traveller lives for generations. “But it’s also about the stories, the love, the music I grew up with around the fire. I wanted to go back to the grass roots of Traveller music – and honour the uncles and aunties who inspired me.”