Hip-hop pioneers Kneecap on peace, Super Noodles and bringing Irish into the modern day

Controversy is the very DNA of Belfast, Irish-language hip-hop rapscallions Kneecap. There’s the time their debut song was banned from Irish-medium radio for “drug references and cursing”. The time they made headlines for chanting “Brits out” at a gig in Belfast’s Empire Music Hall, 24 hours after a visit to the same venue by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The time then-UK business secretary Kemi Badenoch blocked them from receiving a £15,000 music export grant because the Conservative government didn’t want to hand taxpayers’ money “to people that oppose the United Kingdom itself”. 

Kneecap – their very name a nod to the brutal punishment traditionally meted out by paramilitary groups – are gold medalists at pissing people off. And champions at channeling that ire towards creative dividends.

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“I mean, we know good PR when it comes,” smirks rapper Mo Chara, (aka Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh). “£15,000 for a touring band in America, that’s not a lot of money. The PR we got, it was worth 10 times that. So we just want to thank the Tory government for the publicity. As chaotic as it seems we are as a band, we’re actually very calculated with the things we do. Because we know what reactions we’re gonna get out of people.”

Mo Chara, fellow rapper Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Cairealláin) and balaclava-clad DJ Próvaí (JJ Ó Dochartaigh) formed Kneecap in 2017. Three working-class lads, born into a Republican area after the end of the Troubles, their antics – part anarchic mischief, part politically barbed performance art – have inspired a rolling series of pearl-clutching headlines and puffed-up outrage on local talk radio. 

They’ve been caricatured as drug-crazed, sectarian troublemakers, “hoods, low-life scum”. Yet it’s more than roguery. Take the upcoming court case – yes, they snigger at the irony of using the Tories for PR department, but there’s a real principle at stake, too, in fighting Badenoch’s decision to disqualify them from support. 

“It goes completely against the parity of esteem in the Good Friday Agreement,” explains Móglaí Bap, “because you’re meant to be able to have a belief in unionism, or a belief in republicanism. And that’s meant to be fine in the United Kingdom.”

“She was saying we’re not entitled to that money because of our politics. By that logic, people who are republican or nationalist or whatever shouldn’t have to pay taxes,” chips in Mo Chara.

“It’s a dangerous precedent to set, if you’re going to start doing that,” concludes Próvaí. “Because that’s what happened with fucking Nazi Germany.”

Among young people in the north of Ireland, Kneecap have built a fervent fanbase, glad to see their post conflict lives reflected back at them with brio. This week, the story of just how they did it hits cinemas (mythologized, like all the best Irish tales – as Móglaí Bap says, you should always “print the legend”). 

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Kneecap, in which the band star alongside both Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender and former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, is another milestone in a year that’s already seen the band release their Toddla T-produced debut album Fine Art and take Glastonbury by storm. The movie became the first Irish language film to premiere at Sundance and won the Utah festival’s audience award. Like the band, it’s a striking mix of laugh-out-loud comedy, drug-fuelled hijinks and discombobulating sincerity.

The fight for the future of the Irish language is at the heart of the film, as it’s at the heart of Kneecap. Once banned by the British and long a political football in the north, the Irish language is deeply entwined with nationalist identities, seen as a threat by many unionists. It was finally recognised as an official language in Northern Ireland in 2022, but only after collapsing the Stormont government. Despite the history, the band are keen to see it become a uniting – rather than divisive – force.

“The Irish language is important because it connects people. It’s our culture,” says Móglaí Bap. “The language is intertwined with the Irish identity. I’m not gonna say you have to speak Irish to be Irish, but it definitely gives you a deeper understanding of what being Irish means. And that’s for everybody on the island to enjoy, whatever religious background you come from. 

“We want to encourage people to enjoy the language from everywhere in Ireland. The Shankill [the predominantly unionist area of west Belfast], for example, like, that’s an Irish word that comes from Seanchoill, meaning ‘old forest’. These are terms people should get to know, because the Irish language was the language of everybody in Ireland at one time.”

Though they’ve broken new ground for the language, Kneecap have horrified some in their own community for “tainting the Irish language and bastardising it”. They’ve invented drug terminology to fill gaps in their native tongue. “We have words like snaois, which means snuff – the tobacco you sniff – but we use that for cocaine. Dúidín, which was an old clay pipe, is a joint.” But it’s all in the cause of bringing Irish “into the modern day”, says Móglaí Bap. 

“A big aspect of Kneecap was intertwining the two cultures together, the youth culture and the Irish language culture. Creating a space for that identity,” he explains. The recipe has granted their Irish language hip-hop a previously unimaginable cross-community audience, breaking down barriers enough that people from protestant communities also show up for their gigs.

It shouldn’t be that surprising, Móglaí Bap continues. Young working-class people are facing the same issues, whether they’re from the (largely Catholic, republican) Falls Road or the Shankill. “We talk a lot about how much we have in common. We lived in the Falls Road for the last eight years. The Shankill was a two-minute walk away, if the gate [in the ‘peace wall’ that still divides the areas] was open. There is no difference. We were all watching Coronation Street at eight o’clock.”

“Shared problems don’t stop because of a peace wall,” Mo Chara adds. “It doesn’t stop the same government neglect in these communities. Whenever you’re neglected by the state that obviously breeds fucking mental health issues and poverty. That’s why we always say we like the olive branch. Like, we’re stronger together… and all that shit.”

Kneecap know of where they speak. These are the communities they grew up in. Where they still live. When Big Issue caught up with them, Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara had just been thrown out by their landlord. They called from their “emergency accommodation” in Móglaí Bap’s grandmother’s house. “You can probably tell from the decor and the wallpaper,” he smiles, gesturing to some nice floral wallpaper, “it’s very granny-esque.”

They’re waiting for the life-changing money to hit – and hoping it might happen when Kneecap comes out. But for, now, says Mo Chara, “There’s still fucking Super Noodles in them cupboards.” 

At the beginning of Kneecap, Mo Chara sets out the stall for his peers in voiceover. “They call our generation the ceasefire babies,” he says, “as if our only defining feature was that we were not the shit that came before us.” 

Growing up in the ’90s, the ceasefire babies were meant to be filled with hope, but have been stalked by deprivation and a serious mental health crisis. Their elders told them they “didn’t stand for anything”. They had Super Noodles in the cupboards and no cause to join. As Derry Girls did (with much less sex and drugs), Kneecap are reframing and reclaiming their own narrative, beyond the old stereotypes.

“Stories are built from language,” runs the moral at the end of the film. “Nations are built from stories. This is our story.”

Fine Art by Kneecap is out now (Heavenly). Kneecap is in UK cinemas from 23 August.

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