Irish rap trio Kneecap out of Belfast in the North of Ireland have grown exponentially over the last year. With their new critically acclaimed album Fine Art, along with a biopic starring themselves as well as Michael Fassbender, Kneecap’s recognition has grown far outside of their homeland. The controversial rap group will be bringing their own brand of drill and house music with rapping in the Irish language to the opening day of Louder Than Life Festival. LEO was able to talk to members DJ Próvaí and Mo Chara about their music, acting, and political activism.
LEO: You all are going to be playing Louder Than Life, which is predominantly a metal festival. Why do you all think your music will be a fit at this festival?
Mo Chara: I feel like it’s the energy. Obviously metal bands and all have that very DIY feel to it, it’s all very from the ground up. We also have a very big punk element to a lot of our songs, but I feel like just the actual energy and the vibe of Kneecap fit. We’ve done a few rock festivals and you feel like it’s something you wouldn’t imagine would work but for some reason it’s just a crossover that fits. We played 2000 Trees in Cheltenham, which is a rock festival. We’ve done a lot of rock festivals in Europe there, and for whatever reason it just fits. It’s definitely because of the influences punk music has on bands from Belfast, there was a big punk scene here for a long time. I feel like you hear that in our music and also just in the sentiment.
You mentioned the influence punk music has, I was wondering if you could go in a little more on your past influences and inspirations.
Chara: The RubberBandits are our big one we always mention because they were a hip hop band from Limerick, they wore plastic bags over their heads, and they were like the first hip hop group in ireland to really talk about Irish issues, and not even just irish issues, but they weren’t just talking about american slang or American subjects. I feel like the hip hop scene in Ireland was a lot of people imitating America, because they didn’t really know what to rap about and they were trying to be braggadocious and it was all very American. The Rubber Bandits came along and started writing songs about how it’s superior to have a horse than a car and shit.
DJ Próvaí: They did it in their own accent as well, they were unapologetically Irish.
Chara: It was just stupid subjects but done so cleverly. They’re the biggest influence by miles.
Could you go a little bit into the new album and the story behind Fine Art?
Chara: We got a mural painted of a police jeep here. Our police jeeps in the North are rocket proof and they’re big eye sores, like they’re bug ugly fucking things. And we got one of those on fire painted. It wasn’t a real police jeep, at the outrage over you’d think we actually torched a load of police officers. So we got the police jeep on fire on the wall as a mural and a lot of people was outraged over it and they wanted us to make a statement, trying to get us on all the news media outlets and trying to get us to come out and defend it or whatever it was they wanted so we just said “oh it’s fine art” because we knew we couldn’t engage with these people. Once you start engaging with them they just bring you down to their level so we just said “it’s fine art.” Then basically sampled people on the news or people, whoever, it was saying the statement they released said it’s “fine art” and we used that in the opening track, and it’s just a wee term that’s stuck to the band over the last couple of years.
Próvaí: Just to recap, no painted policemen were harmed in the making of the mural.
You all just released the “Kneecap” movie. How was it playing yourselves, especially with it all not being 100% true, how did that feel?
Chara: It was good. A lot of people think it might be harder to play yourself but it was our only experience acting so we thought it was easy enough to play ourselves. It was harder on the director we say, because the director, Rich Peppiatt, struggled because if he had direction for us during the filming if he was like “do this” we could just be like “no” because we wouldn’t do that and we’re playing ourselves and we know best.
Are you going to be in any other movies, maybe some Marvel movie or something?
Chara: I don’t really like the Marvel movies, what was it Ricky Gervais said, it’s not really acting, it’s going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids.
Próvaí: Probably end up in Godfather 4 or Sharktooth 3, that’s the only two we’re gonna accept.
What’s something you want people to take away from your music? You all rap in Irish, why is that important?
Chara: I suppose people look introspectively at their own culture, especially if it’s sort of an indigenous culture or you come from an area that was oppressed. I feel like there is always such shame around the language of the oppressed because of the oppressor, they make it out that it’s a peasant’s language or you’re never going to be in modern times if you speak this old language and that we should all speak English. People [should] look introspectively at their own native cultures and learn their own languages and be proud of traditions and fucking, it’s good that we’re different. It’s good to be diverse, it’s like, how boring would it be if we were all just hipster tech bros speaking english and drinking lattes all day.
I feel like there is a big boom of really good artists coming out of Ireland right now like Fontaines D.C., Lankum, the Mary Wallopers, and you all. Do you have any idea why you think multiple different Irish artists in multiple different genres are becoming popular all over?
Próvaí: I think it has something to do with the fact that, [Mo Chara] touched on it there earlier, that people are actually proud about their heritage and their culture. Just in the last few generations people are actually really confident in Ireland, because there was a lot of shame just in general in Ireland, just people being apologetic about nothing. Now people are like owning their accents, owning their material and just being unapologetically genuine and being themselves, and that just kind of resonated with people in the world. It seems to be flourishing in Ireland at the minute. A lot of the biggest bands are Irish, like the ones you mentioned and others, it’s Ireland’s time on the main stage here now. You can see it in the movie scene as well, like in the Oscars last year, An Cailín Ciúin [The Quiet Girl], which is an Irish language film, was nominated for an Oscar. That kind of gave us a wee bit of confidence when we were making the movie that there was a path there that we could hopefully follow.
I mentioned Lankum in that list of artists, and they are like, one of my favorite bands of all time at this point. So, for me, I wanted to ask how it was working with Radie Peat from Lankum on the opening song of Fine Art, “3CAG,” which I feel is a perfect opener.
Chara: Ah Jesus, we know Radie really well now, like we’re good friends, our manager is Radie Peat’s partner, so we know Radie really well. We were just with [her] yesterday in, where were we?
Próvaí: Dublin, yeah?
Chara: Yeah, Dublin. Radie’s the fucking queen of Ireland. She’s an absolute talent, absolute pleasure to work with, and just an all around fucking, lovely person. So, to have somebody like Radie Peat, somebody that talented, it’s just a fucking gift, obviously, on the album. And like you said it’s the perfect intro. I’ve seen a few people saying it’s their favorite song on the album, cheeky bastards, we’re not even in it.
Próvaí: It’s how she did it as well, because she came in that day and they were going on holiday like 20 minutes later, so it was a fly in visit to the studio and she just nailed it from the very start.
Mo Chara: Yeah, in and out like 10 minutes.
So, because I have actually been to Ireland and Belfast a couple times before, I wanted to know what your favorite pubs in Belfast are?
Chara: The Hawthorn Bar or Maddens. Maddens in the city center, it’s like on the corner, kind of out of the way if you don’t know where you’re going. Great pint of Guinness in there. The Hawthorn Bar in West Belfast, it’s one of the last [bars] that it’s a house, looks like a house kind of. It’s on a housing estate and it’s called the wee house. It only holds probably 30 people in there, it’s tiny, it doesn’t show up on Google maps or anything. It’s a great wee pub. It’s full of alcoholics but obviously I would trust an alcoholic’s judgment for pubs.
You did a U.S. tour last year, but is there anything you are excited to do this year while you are here?
Próvaí: [The tour] is on the East coast this time. Most of the time wherever we land in America we end up going into Irish bars because the people end up giving us free drink and food, which is dangerous when you’re on tour.
So, because I feel like you all are an inherently political group, and I wanted to ask you all a little about that. I know there has been a rise in anti-immigration protests in your home of Belfast, and you’ve talked a little bit about it recently but I wanted to give you all space here to talk a bit about it as well if you’d like.
Chara: It’s something, I thought the Irish would never be on this side of it, I just thought after years of being oppressed in our own country and then also it happening whenever we immigrated to England or even some places in America. Obviously, it ended up some fucking Irish Americans ended up being more conservative and right wing, and ended up being the ones trying to do the oppressing, which is a shame. It’s mostly been the Irish being oppressed in our history, and for us to now be on that side of the argument, like, for an Irish person to unironically say they’re against immigration is absurd. We have immigrated everywhere, it doesn’t matter what country you’re in. Like fucking streets in the Middle East named after fucking Irish people, like Bobby Sands Street in Iran. The Irish have been good, on the right side of history, but like, they’ve burned that fellas shop down in the Sandy Row there the other day, like an Asian supermarket, they burned his fucking shop down. Then came back the next day and burned it down again. This is like, their local shop, it’s in their community, he’s paying tax, [there’s] jobs in the area, I don’t understand their logic behind this. And all these people running about doing it are just sitting in their house… they’re contributing less to society than these people who have moved here to try and make a better life for themselves. And the thing is, whenever they’re all getting fucking steaming drunk and take to much cocaine someday and have a heart attack, it will be immigrants bringing them back to life in that hospital.
Próvaí: All these far-right fascists, they’re not representative of our communities in Ireland. They’re a minority, an unwelcome minority, these far-right fascists, and it’s a sad thing to see them on the streets. As [Chara] was saying, the people who look after you in the hospital, the people who feed you, you know, they’re from other countries. They’ve come here for a better life, and some have come just to flee war-torn areas, and you need to give them refuge and an opportunity to live in a society without any of those fears of being burned out of their homes or beaten off the streets.
Alright, thank you so much for your time, I’ll go ahead and wrap it up here and ask if there is anything you want the people of Louisville, Kentucky to know before they see you at Louder Than Life?
Chara: Ah, if you really want to know the band, uh… buy our merch [laughs]. If you want to save the Irish language go to kneecap.ie and buy our merch.
