“If you’d told us ten years ago that two PMs in a row would be writing about an Irish rap band in the tabloids, you’d be in a padded cell.”
A few years ago, I was quietly asked to leave a bar when I started playing Guilty Conscience on the jukebox. Just last week, that same song was being blasted in a Liverpool pub as I ordered a taxi home.
It’s been a helluva few years for the Belfast and Derry lads. Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí have spent the last 36 months being denounced from podiums, dragged through op-eds, banned, unbanned, sued, celebrated at Glastonbury, and turned into a Bafta-winning film.
They’ve been in court more times than Charles Bronson and somewhere along the way (This started in Coachella) they became the band that British politicians cannot stop talking about.
The band, in turn, cannot stop talking back.
Just last week, we sat down with Kneecap ahead of their second album release and asked them some of the big questions.
On Nigel Farage: ‘Get back on Cameo, you f**king eejit’
If there’s one figure who draws the sharpest fire, it’s the Reform leader.
“You’ve got Nigel Farage doing cameos saying ‘up the Ra,'” the lads point out, referring to the now-infamous clip of Farage recording a personalised video message in which he cheerfully parroted the IRA-associated chant, apparently unaware of what he was saying. “So we know who he supports.”
“The only people Farage is fighting for are the rich people,” they argue. “Nothing to do with helping working-class people. It’s all a mirage. It’s all fake.”
“Get back on Cameo, you f**king eejit.”
On Starmer and Labour: ‘They’re supplying arms, simple as’
If Farage gets the punchlines, Starmer’s Labour government gets something colder.
“The Labour government are supplying arms,” they say. “Simple as.”
It’s a line without theatre, and a line that lands harder for it. There’s no rhetorical flourish, no qualification, just a flat statement of what they see as the central fact of the matter.
They added: “Imagine Keir Starmer’s your dad. Imagine him telling you to go to bed. F*ck away.”
On Palestine:
Ask them why an Irish rap group from Belfast has become so identified with the Palestinian cause and the answer comes back rooted in geography, history and upbringing.
“Growing up in Belfast, Derry, and being in Ireland in general, Palestine is always something that’s been close to us,” they explain. “It was natural when things escalated that we were going to show support and solidarity with the Palestinians.”
They’re keen to place themselves in a longer tradition rather than claim it as their own invention. “We come from a tradition in the Irish context that’s been happening a long time, of bands using their platforms for causes. Be it Sinéad O’Connor or Christy Moore. We didn’t start this.”
“It’s no coincidence that a lot of Irish bands are conscious of international solidarity, because of the history of Ireland, the history of colonisation. That’s why you see most Irish bands are in unison on Palestine or international solidarity.”
On a United Ireland: ‘We’ll keep the NHS. Brown sauce as well’
Eventually, inevitably, the conversation turns north and south.
“We’ll keep the NHS,” one says, “and bring that into a United Ireland.”
“We’ll take the deli culture up north.”
Underneath the cracks, though, there’s a serious thought, and they get to it before signing off: “A United Ireland is about a diverse culture and everyone having a say and chipping in and not leaving anybody out.”
Kneecap can be hilarious and they can be furious, sometimes in the same sentence, and certainly in their latest album. But strip away the swearing and the sound bites and there’s a serious worldview underneath: solidarity with people who don’t have power, scorn for people who pretend to be on their side, and an absolute refusal to be told to pipe down.
Two Prime Ministers and counting clearly haven’t worked out how to shut them up. And they never will.
#Kneecap #tear #Nigel #Farage #Starmer #explosive #interview
