KNEECAP

KNEECAP is Mo Chara, Moglai Bap, and DJ Provai, a Belfast hip-hop trio who rap primarily in Irish, make music about Irish identity and politics with a specificity and humor that is genuinely rare in any political art, and have become one of the most discussed acts in British and Irish music in the last two years.

Their self-titled debut album and the accompanying film, which was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival and later released to wide critical attention, established them as something more than a novelty. The film, which dramatizes the band’s origin story with the actual band members playing themselves, won awards and introduced KNEECAP to audiences who had never heard an Irish-language hip-hop record.

The political dimension of their work is inseparable from the musical dimension. Rapping in Irish is itself a political act in the context of Northern Ireland and the history of the language’s suppression. The content, dealing with colonial history, contemporary politics, and life in West Belfast, operates in a tradition of music that speaks directly to specific circumstances rather than seeking universal appeal.

What distinguishes KNEECAP from artists who are primarily political is that the music is genuinely good. The beats are interesting, the rhymes are sharp, and the humor, which is always present, doesn’t undercut the seriousness so much as make it more durable. You can’t maintain pure outrage for very long; you can maintain something that’s funny and angry at the same time indefinitely.

The second album FENIAN arrives May 1. They’re playing Lollapalooza this summer.