Kneecap on new music, a united Ireland, and how they became part of a Fassbender film
Kneecap play Cork City Hall in December. Picture: Patrick Glennon @ptgphotos
Of all the headlines that Belfast gael-rappers Kneecap have generated in their controversial career to date, the latest may have been the strangest.
Forget the time they caused outrage in the UK press for leading a pub chant of “Brits out” on the hallowed ground of a hostelry recently occupied by some British royals, or the Lego set featuring Kneecap with a burning PSNI van behind them, or the tour poster of a cartoon Arlene Foster strapped to a rocket.
The recent news that Michael Fassbender is about to star in a feature-length biopic about the band’s rise and rise has, as it happens, not been exaggerated.
The film, directed by Belfast-based director Richard Peppiatt, is now awaiting a release date. And, if Kneecap members Mo Chara, Móglai Bap and DJ Próvaí are to be believed, it’s not just a hedonistic romp through their formation as a hip hop act, but is the single highest-funded Irish language film ever.
They met director Peppiatt after a hometown gig in the Limelight Theatre several years ago, Mo Chara explains. “Afterwards, he said he’d like to make a film about two rappers who rap in the Irish language,” he says.
“So for a couple of years we’d sit down and write and have a couple of pints of Guinness. But the danger of writing a script when you’re having a drink is the first ten pages are amazing and then the quality of the script starts to seriously deteriorate. We ended up working out a system where he would put the dialogue together from the stories we’d give him.”
Do they think there will be an international market for a film as Gaeilge? “Subtitles don’t really put people off now; there’s all those drug cartel shows in Spanish on Netflix,” Móglai Bap points out. “My favourite movie when I was around 14 was Amelie. That was class and it was all in French.”
“Squid Game was one of the biggest-selling shows of all time on Netflix and that was in Korean,” Mo Chara chimes in. “It’s like our music: When we were starting off people would say they thought the language would be a hindrance because it’s such a small market, but we find it’s the opposite and people are interested because it’s a minority language. We find it opens doors rather than closes them. And we think the film will be the same.”
The trio are back from a coast-to-coast US tour in October, and into the narrow gap between that and the start of a UK and Ireland winter tour that kicks off in November, they have dropped 'Better Way to Live', their debut release under a new record deal with Heavenly Recordings, a label whose stable includes Baxter Dury, David Holmes and Saint Etienne.
The new single features the familiar Dublin drawl of Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC: as with so many Kneecap stories, that’s a story that begins and ends in the pub: “We got himself and Tom the drummer over to London to a studio and banged it out in one day and then went for a rake of drinks,” Mo Chara finishes the story. Another sprinkle of star power is added by Andy Nicholson of the Arctic Monkeys, who plays bass on the track.
Kneecap will play Cork City Hall on their winter tour and are looking forward to the date, not least as they're so familiar with Leeside because Móglai Bap’s eldest brother was based in Cork for many years: he’s Ainle Ó Cairealláin, founder of Aclaí Gym, which closed in September; while middle brother Cairbre is strength and conditioning coach for Limerick’s champion senior hurling team.
Since Kneecap’s self-released track ‘C.E.A.R.T.A’ burst onto the scene in 2017 and earned itself a Raidio na Gaeltachta ban for its references to drug use, they have been poster boys for a previously untapped winning combination of the Irish language’s natural flow and lyricism and a gritty, gangsta-rap sensibility that gels with their republican Belfast roots.
But sectarian, they insist, they are not. They make no apologies for their uncompromising lyrics and imagery. “People who call us inflammatory are not paying attention to what we’re really saying,” Mo Chara says. “We’re always saying we’re cut from the same cloth on both sides of the division, that we’re working-class people with more in common with each other than we do with rich people in Dublin. It’s actually those headlines that stoke division.”
Móglai Bap remembers going to shoot video on Sandy Row on the 12th of July: “The marches were on,” he says. “There was a crowd of young loyalists and all of a sudden they were singing ‘C.E.A.R.T.A’ at me. We ended up having a ball, drinking Buckfast together and following each other on Instagram. I put them on the guest list for our next gig.
“The thing about the North is that we have a very incompetent police force and that’s felt on the Falls Road and in the Shankill,” he says. “When we did that mural of the police van on fire, that resonated with all young people. It wasn’t a sectarian thing, done because the force is mostly Protestant. It’s just the incompetence. Us having resentment towards the police resonates strongly with young people in both communities.”
Having spent years generating their own online fanbase who admire their outspokenness and their politics, are Kneecap worried that now they’ve signed a record deal they’ll have to rein it in a bit, be encouraged to tone things down for the sake of a bigger crowd?
Mo Chara says it was “non-negotiable” that the band retain full control. “But also, they made it very clear that they don’t want to do that,” DJ Próvaí says. “You can’t have them undercutting everything you’re going to say.”
It’s quite possible that these three will see a united Ireland in their lifetime, they feel. Precipitated in part by Brexit, by Tory politics in Westminster, and not least by a growing desire for inclusivity amongst a young generation.
“The DUP are seen as on their last legs, you have LGBTQ people from those areas that are not being represented,” Mo Chara says. “They’re just not catching up with modern society. You have so many young people coming through who are now very liberal and very much of the opinion that everyone needs to be accepted. I feel like that could be a big sway here. Whether or not that united Ireland will look like what we thought it would.”
If and when that happens, the 32 counties will end up with a unionist minority, one that might well feel under threat. At what stage will Kneecap’s “Brits out” chants and tricolour balaclavas cease being a form of punching up and become punching down?
“’Brits out’ is a term from the Troubles that completely is about the British government,” Mo Chara says. “We don’t want British citizens out of Ireland: we want the British government out of Ireland.”
“I think they [unionists] fear that in a united Ireland they would be treated the way they treated Catholics,” Moglai Bap adds. “The gerrymandering, the abuse of power and all that. So I think there’s a job to quell them fears and make them feel more welcomed. But the DUP would still have power in Ireland: a lot more power than they have in Westminster, where I don’t think the Tories listen to them at all.”
To DJ Próvaí, the Irish language itself is a symbol of hope for a future, and a way towards forging a new and inclusive Northern Irish identity.
“The Irish language is being learned in East Belfast now,” he says. “There are people beginning to learn Irish as part of their Protestant heritage. That might give them the confidence to know that they’re not going to be ostracised, that they are going to be a part of whatever society comes next.”
- Upcoming gigs by Kneecap include Olympia, Dublin Dec 12-13; Millennium Forum, Derry, Dec 14; Ulster Hall, Belfast, Dec 21; Cork City Hall, Dec 29
