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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. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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It’s been a helluva few years for the Belfast and Derry lads. Mo Chara, M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap and DJ Pr\u00f3va\u00ed 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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They’ve been in court more times than Charles Bronson and somewhere along the way (This started in Coachella<\/em>) they became the band that British politicians cannot stop talking about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n The band, in turn, cannot stop talking back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n Just last week, we sat down with Kneecap ahead of their second album release and asked them some of the big questions. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n If there’s one figure who draws the sharpest fire, it’s the Reform leader.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n “Get back on Cameo, you f**king eejit.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n If Farage gets the punchlines, Starmer’s Labour government gets something colder. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n “The Labour government are supplying arms,” they say. “Simple as.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n They added: “Imagine Keir Starmer’s your dad. Imagine him telling you to go to bed. F*ck away.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n 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 Sin\u00e9ad O’Connor or Christy Moore. We didn’t start this.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\nOn Nigel Farage: ‘Get back on Cameo, you f**king eejit’<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
On Starmer and Labour: ‘They’re supplying arms, simple as’<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
On Palestine:<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n