Tebi Rex: Three Acts to Fin.
Matt Ó Baoill looks back on the decade of friendship and creativity that led Tebi Rex to their perfect goodbye.
Photo: Press
Over the past decade, Tebi Rex have carved out a singular place for themselves in the Irish music scene. Building their reputation across two ambitious, concept-driven albums and a string of inventive singles, the duo have evolved from alt-hip-hop upstarts into boundary-pushing artists unafraid to experiment. Now, with their third and final record Fin., they’ve chosen to end the story on their own terms.
But before Fin. could even become a concept, the tale began with two individuals finding common ground in creativity and trust. A partnership that would fuel their debut album, The Young Will Eat The Old – a three-act examination of the rise and fall of an artist.
Act I – 10 years by your side
Every story needs its protagonists. Enter Max Zanga and Matt Ó Baoill. When they first crossed paths at a college talent show, they were little more than acquaintances – aware of each other through mutual friends but not yet close. Then came a Facebook status from Max — “which was the style at the time” — announcing he wanted to start a band. A casual reply led to collaboration, and from there, a friendship began to grow.
“We kind of developed a friendship while developing music,” Matt reflected. “And now we’re at the point where he’s a groomsman at my wedding in June. We are best friends, and it’s beautiful.”
Part of what made the partnership click was how differently the two navigated the industry. Matt balanced music with a full-time tech career, sometimes juggling work calls from tour buses, while Max lived the unpredictable life of a freelance artist – chasing invoices but also free to throw himself fully into creative opportunities. Two halves of a whole, their contrasting circumstances created a natural balance: one offering stability and resources, the other, time and flexibility.
“He’s had the time and flexibility to do a lot of stuff for the band and be in lots of rooms that I wouldn’t have had the time to do. Likewise, I’ve been able to pay for things up front while he’s waiting for invoices. I think if we were both in 9-to-5 jobs, it wouldn’t have worked. I think if we were both full-time musicians, it wouldn’t have worked either. So, we were lucky that way,” Matt admitted.
That balance extended beyond logistics. In over a decade, the duo only ever fought once, and over something so trivial it’s barely worth remembering. What carried them through was an unspoken pact: if one of them vetoed an idea, it was gone; if one of them pushed for something, it deserved serious consideration.
“I’ve never said no [to Max] because a lot of the things that I love most, none of them are my ideas – they were all his idea,” Matt confessed. “He is insane. He’s an insane person to work with, and he knows that, but I put a huge bit of faith in him because it’s always worked out. The ideas I thought were silly or stupid, when we saw them through to fruition, it turned out to be some of our best stuff. So, once I learned that quite early on, I was like, ‘Right, whatever this guy says, I’m going to do it.’”
But, of course, a harmonious creative partnership couldn’t shield Tebi Rex from the challenges of building a career in Irish hip-hop in the mid-2010s. Mainstream radio once rejected a single because Matt sounded “too Irish,” the duo felt pressured to bring guitars onstage just to be more palatable, and race, Matt admits, was often an unacknowledged factor: “When we started, people didn’t want hip hop. They really didn’t want a lot of black acts either. My whiteness got us into a lot of spaces.”
Fortunately, times changed. By 2018, hip-hop was hot and suddenly Tebi Rex were landing huge festival slots at Longitude and Electric Picnic – stages that had seemed unthinkable just a few years earlier. “It was interesting to watch the whole scene flip and to watch the Irish audience’s taste change,” Matt said. “It’s so flipped now. I’m happy it’s changed for the better.”
Yet, for a duo so rooted in sincerity and storytelling, onstage highs were never the full picture.
ACT II – The final moments on film
The video for And I’m Mad. – a stripped-back and startlingly sincere reflection on grief – feels like a time capsule cracked open: childhood photos of Max and Matt, flashes of sweaty festival crowds, grainy studio snippets, and snapshots of the loved ones they’ve lost. It’s tender and heavy, but also deeply human: a reel of memory and meaning, showing exactly what Tebi Rex’s last chapter is about. Endings, and the things you cling to before the credits roll.
From the very beginning, Tebi Rex knew their story would close with album three. They just didn’t know when it would arrive. Bands usually dissolve in chaos – fights, fallouts, or the industry grinding them down – but Tebi Rex’s ending has always been part of the plan. As Matt put it, “Everyone’s band is ending, but no one knows it. So, it’s a real place of fortune to be.”
That sense of inevitability lent Fin. an unusual calm. Where earlier projects had to be wrestled into shape, this one seemed to fall together with ease. “I thought I’d find it difficult to make dance music,” Matt recalled. “But it kind of just flew out of us. I said to Max then, “Why is this so easy? Why is this album coming together so quickly?”. Maybe we touched on something that was good, or maybe we’re just better than we were ten years ago. We’re not as shitty musicians.”
Sonically, Fin. reflects that growth. Max’s love for dance music gives the album its pulsing backbone, while Matt’s current leanings towards jazz and Irish trad ripple through the arrangements. The result? A genre-blurring collage rooted in hip-hop but alive with colour – the work of two artists who have obviously stopped worrying about what others expect and now fully trust themselves.
But that doesn’t mean Tebi Rex have ever claimed to be virtuosos. If anything, they’re unusually open about their flaws. “We’re far better storytellers than we are musicians. We mean that. We know that we’re not the best singers, we’re not the best rappers, not the best lyrically or sonically, but we’re very good at telling a story, being interesting, being funny.”
That clarity runs through Fin. itself. Every title ends with a full stop, as if each song is its own statement, finished and final. No ellipses, no trailing off. Just endings, one after another, like a series of closing scenes.
The piano-led Not with a fizzle fr. lingers on questions of legacy. The ship of Theseus. weaves in voice notes and studio snippets, a meta-commentary on artistic evolution that doubles as the director’s cut of their own career. Meanwhile, Ireland’s Full. combines the Irish language with the folk song Báidín Fheilimí to reflect on racism and the idea of a flawed home. Together, the eleven tracks highlight a band looking forward and backwards at once, weighing what to leave behind and what to carry forward.
But for all its heaviness, Fin. still bears Tebi Rex’s playful streak: “To be very sincere and funny with the ending of the band made the most sense because we’ve always been silly. We’ve never taken anything too seriously, and that’s what people are used to with us. We very much wanted to keep a lot of the background studio noise in the album because we wanted it to feel like you’re there while we’re making it, part of this little team.”
And with that blend of sincerity and silliness, grief and humour, Tebi Rex are now ready to close their story the way they’ve always told it: together, and unafraid to put a full stop where most bands would write ‘to be continued…’
ACT III – It’s goodbye, it’s credits roll
For Tebi Rex, the measure of success has never been charts or accolades. It’s always been about the fleeting, intimate moments that stick. The ones that become private family tales long after the spotlight fades, especially now that Matt is stepping away from music for good.
“I’m done in music. I think I want this to be my last ever release,” Matt said. “I’m 31, I’m getting married next year, and I want to put energy into being a good husband. I run a clothing brand called Forever Worldwide Studios, so I’ll be putting a lot of my energy into that level of creativity. I’ve also been learning to play trad guitar, so I might go and play trad in pubs as a background member. I don’t want to be a frontman anymore.”
Even though Matt plans to slip quietly offstage, he knows Max’s creative journey will continue, with theatre, solo work, and further installations: “He’s heavily involved in theatre. He’s writing his third play at the moment, maybe the fourth. He wrote up a play about the album, which we launched at the start of the year, which was a huge success, a sellout. He’ll definitely be a lot more visible. I will be doing the Homer Simpson meme into the bushes and just kind of fading back a little bit.”
Yet, even as their paths diverge, what remains is not just the music but the story they wrote together. The friendship first struck up after a college talent show, the shared memories peppered throughout Fin., and now, the quiet contentment of choosing their own ending.
As Matt shared, “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s been the centre of my life for ten years now. I don’t think I’ll remember much of the actual music or the creation of it. I’ll be fond of it, but I’ll remember the stuff I didn’t expect. Those weirdly special moments that are very unique to me.”
“We played the President’s House in Ireland one time, and my mam had never really seen us perform live, but she got to go to that. Her and dad and Max’s mum were at a table in the President’s House watching their kids perform – like, that’s special.”
“Or like when mam couldn’t sleep at night, she had a little transistor radio that she’d plug into her ears and just tune to different stations to see if she might be able to hear Tebi Rex on the radio – and so often she would! That’s the stuff I get to hold onto that I wouldn’t have had. That’s incredibly unique and incredibly special.”
So, with memories made, albums complete, and final shows approaching, Tebi Rex are ready to take their final bow. Not for legacy or accolades, but for the magic of the journey itself. For friendship. For music. For the stories that will linger long after the lights go down.