INTERVIEW W/ KNEECAP: "We like being in that position where we can prove people wrong"!

One of the most culturally significant breakthrough acts of the last few years has been Belfast’s Hip-Hop trio KNEECAP. Unforgiving in their sound, lyricism and attitude, Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí demand your attention whether you like it or not. They've been making headlines constantly this year, suing the British government for illegally withholding funding, causing a stir with their outspoken support for Palestine at Coachella which led to them being dropped by their US booking agent and finally being pulled from certain UK festivals this summer due to Mo Chara being charged with a terror offence. To some their Punk spirited, anti-establishment heroes and to others they're insisting dangerous beliefs into their ever-growing fanbase. However, whichever way you look at it, they're cultural impact is impossible to ignore.

Last year we caught up with Mo Chara to forget about the headline madness for two seconds and chat about the lyrycisim that initially lay at the heart of the KNEECAP project, their debut album 'Fine Art' and their BAFTA-winning film.

Photo Credit: Peadar Ó Goill

Using a combination of Irish and English to weave in tongue-in-cheek satire together with heavy-hitting political angst, KNEECAP have quickly sprung up from the West Belfast squat where they first met into national stardom, playing Glastonbury Festival and earning praise from a whole host of industry tastemakers from the NME to Noel Gallagher. 

Their debut album ‘Fine Art’ encapsulates modern living in Northern Ireland while exploring a wide range of political and cultural frustrations, both past and present. However, the trio didn’t stop there… in true unconventional nature they followed this album up with the release of their own original film which features the likes of Jessica Reynolds and Michael Fassbender and has been screened in cinemas across the country met with rave reviews.

The standout theme across their album and self-titled film is language as the trio are initiating in a form of artistic activism to ‘save their mother tongue’. There has been a lot of talk about their decisions to Rap in their native Irish, yet Mo explained: “It's interesting that a lot of people ask why we decided to Rap in Irish because you’d never ask somebody in The Netherlands why they decided to Rap in dutch. I suppose in Ireland we do have a weird dynamic with the language but a lot of people don’t realise that there’s actually quite a big community of Irish speakers, especially of young people around my age in the cities.  I imagine a lot of people in Liverpool, even though there's a fucking massive Irish contingent there, wouldn't realise that those young Irish people in the city do actually socialise in Irish. Me and all my friends, we all speak Irish. It's just the way we communicate. We wanted to make music together and we all spoke Irish so it was just a natural kind of process - it wasn't some big decision to do it in Irish”.

Mo also commented that, although rapping in Irish was a natural occurrence, they do like the fact that the abrasiveness of the lyrical content might serve to dissolve false stereotypes of the language. “There are a lot of people outside of Ireland that think of it as a very pure and innocent kind of language, like a museum piece almost but if you ever go to Connemara or Gaeltacht and speak to the fishermen, they're all filthy cunts. But they’re talking about themselves and being honest, It's not just like pure shamrocks that everybody thinks it is”. 

However, the multi-lingual combination of both Irish and English doesn’t merely characterise their background and fill their music with a depth of authenticity, it also allows them greater lyrical and phonetic freedoms in rhyme, metaphor and cadence. 

“If you are doing something creative, to be able to draw on a completely different fucking dictionary is very helpful. I can't quite remember the fact but Irish has far more different sounds than most European languages so that is really helpful in Hip Hop having so many different sounds all in the one sentence. I’ve been listening to a lot of Arabic Hip-Hop at the minute for the same reason. It's almost like an instrument in itself, you know, it's almost like a drum kind of sound when you're using all the noises. So, yeah, it's great being able to draw on two languages. 

But again, that’s just kind of natural. There was the big rebirth of the language in Ireland a while back and when people decided to do music or art in Irish, like they felt the need to be strictly 100 percent every word has to be in the Irish language. Whereas, I think we're a bit more natural with it because even in the Gaeltacht areas that speak Irish only they throw English words in the same sentence. Plus, whenever you're in a society English is the predominant language, it's just going to feed into your own daily habits and language. So, I feel like we just naturally kind of jump between the two the way it is in real life”.  

These freedoms are evident throughout the record as the trio seamlessly switch between Irish and English, finding the language that fits the right phonetics and flow at any one time. Yet, the album also benefits from more creative freedoms in the form of collaborations, most notably with Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten and drummer Tom Coll. Mo explained how having Grian and Tom in the studio made them feel like “a proper group for the first time” and brought a more nostalgic vibe to the recording process.

“It was a great process. It just felt like an actual old school session from the sixties or seventies with bands actually collaborating in person rather than digitally as it’s done now most of the time. Realistically we wouldn't even have had to be in the same country as them to do that song. They could have just gone to a studio and then sent the files but there was something collaborative about everybody being in the same room and it felt like a wee moment of being old school. It also gave that extra freedom of moments like when Grian’s recording and in between takes, we were like ‘try this and try that’. It was a really nice moment and that was the kind of way we wanted it. We didn't want to just send files back and forth over We Transfer constantly”.

KNEECAP then took collaboration to a whole new level in the summer, working alongside Hollywood A-listers on their first ever film which was released this Summer following its premiere at Sundance Film Festival. Despite yet another head first ascent that was completely alien for the trio, Mo explained that they thrive when others are doubting them: “The fact that we imagined everybody was expecting us to be nervous kind of gave me this weird confidence. We like being in that situation where I can prove people wrong. The moment everyone was like ‘Oh fuck, they’e actually not nervous’ gave me some kind of strength”.

However, it wouldn’t quite be KNEECAP if there wasn’t some form of unapologetic mishap…it just so turned out that this came on the very first day of filming: “We were being so fucking healthy before the film, not drinking, training every day and eating healthy so we weren’t as fucking rotund. But then the night before the first day of filming, we all had to travel to Dundalk and stay in a hotel and we got pissed in the hotel lobby that night. They were the first drinks we’d had in like two months, so, when the first day of filming came we were all hungover as fuck so obviously the director was delighted about that. That first day of filming was the only day that the entire crew was there because they all wanted to come down and see how we were going to be on camera and judge how their next seven weeks were going to look like but I feel like we won them over pretty quickly, thankfully”.