Alocal hip-hop artist has been crowned victor of the Adelaide Beer and BBQ Festival Untapped competition at the Adelaide Showgrounds on the weekend.

Nic Beare, 20, who performs under the rap name Esketamine, took out the top spot after winning the Mount Gambier heat at the Woolstore Brewery in May.

Mr Beare was unanimously selected by a judging panel as the winner of the overall competition and given $1000 in cash and a spot to perform at a future Beer and BBQ Festival event.

Mr Beare performed the first set of the competition at 6.15pm with five original songs, followed by Adelaide acts young rapper Tommy Marsh, country rock band The Flying Squad and alternative indie rock group Purée.

The young gun said heading into the competition he did not think he a chance after witnessing the high quality of the other acts.

“I had stalked their social media and their Spotify and whatnot and I was very intimated,” he said.

“They were very well put together acts and their songs were great and I honestly thought I was going to walk away a bit upset, but I obviously surprised myself.

“I feel like it went as good as I expected it to go. I expected to do just fine, (but) I did not expect to do great.

“I obviously surprised myself, but I was confident going into it.

“It has kind of left me speechless because it is just such a big thing to accomplish so soon.

“I only had my first performance a few months ago and now winning something so big like that definitely gets you kind of speechless.

Mr Beare said even if he wasn’t winning, it was fun to get up on stage and rap and sing.

“I felt that thrill before I even started performing. As soon as I just stepped foot up there it just felt so great, I could not even describe how good it felt just being up there and knowing that in a matter of minutes I was going to be showing the whole festival my music.”

Mr Beare has been rapping for about five years, but only decided to pursue it seriously late last year after releasing an original song called ‘Skeletons in my Closet’ with a friend from New South Wales.

The young rapper said, like many of his songs, ‘Skeletons in my Closet’ has a mental health theme he hopes others can relate to.

“I thought writing songs that people can relate to is always going to get further,” he said.

“If I write a song about struggling with something there is going to be so many other people out there struggling with the same thing and realise they are not alone.

“A lot of my songs do revolve around mental health, some being about having low mental health and some being really happy – so I think it is a really good topic to cover because a lot of people can relate to a lot of different things.”

Mr Beare said he has been well supported by the Mount Gambier community at both the local heat and the Adelaide festival level.

“I have had people all around, family and friends, supporting me the whole time,” he said.

“Then there’s always all the people on Facebook commenting on it, complimenting me, tagging their friends and supporting it.

“It is great to see something like that in a small community.

“I really look forward to making more music and having more people hear it.

“Just going online and posting it and promoting and advertising is one thing but to actually get out there to show people and put it in their faces is another and it’s definitely going to help me grow.”

Mr Beare said he hopes to encourage other young artists to pursue their dreams.

“I really hope there’s people around Mount Gambier as well that just want to start doing this,” he said.

“It’s good because I do not see a lot of people doing it and kind of taking it seriously and I would love to.”