DUBLIN — The Irish are renowned for their way with words. But the nation of bardic poetry, James Joyce and W. B. Yeats has proved a latecomer to the wordiest of music genres, hip-hop.

“It’s always been corny to rap and be from Dublin,” Rejjie Snow said in an interview in his dressing-room in the Olympia Theater, a plush 19th-century concert hall in the Irish capital. “I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the accent, maybe it’s the lifestyle. When I told people I wanted to rap as a kid, they were like, ‘Oh you want to rap?’”

But Rejjie Snow’s eccentric choice of career has been vindicated. A few hours later, one of the rising stars of Irish hip-hop, 24, stood in the spotlight on the Olympia’s stage, microphone in hand, faced by a young, excited crowd chanting “Rejjie, Rejjie” and rapping verses from his newly released debut album, “Dear Annie,” back at him. At one point, a teenager at the front hauled herself onto the barrier separating audience from stage to shout, “Rejjie, I love you!”

The first rap acts in Ireland emerged in the early 1990s. But it has taken until now for hip-hop culture to start flourishing, with rappers and groups proliferating across the country. The situation resembles Irish rock in the 1970s, when bands sprung up in a grass-roots modernization of Irish music.