Pay attention, Kneecap are talking

Kneecap are the Irish-speaking rap trio who marry hedonistic abandon with rousing calls for solidarity. Now, a new docudrama sets their origin story against a backdrop of the fight for Irish language rights

In the summer of 2018, Kneecap were desperate. It was almost June, which marked the beginning of festival season. On tour, their rowdy rap bangers tore up venues and fields alike, but they needed fine-tuning ahead of release and their producer wasn’t available. “The guy was like, ‘I don’t have time to do it,’” Mo Chara recalls. “He lives in Dublin, and he’s like, ‘I don’t have time to get this all finalised and mastered before June. I have to do the back garden.’” 

But Kneecap are a force undeterred by excuses. “We were like, ‘If we get a bus to Dublin and dig your back garden, will you do it?’ And that’s true – we dug out his garden while he mastered all the music.” 

The trio – Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara and DJ Próvaí – are in an incongruously fancy hotel conference room. Three half-full pints and DJ Próvaí’s tricolour balaclava litter the table, while the tea and biscuits remain untouched. They are naturally compelling storytellers, and this comes through loud and clear in their music, which pairs winding tales of drunken hedonism with rousing calls for solidarity and rebellion. The lyrics are a blend of Irish and English, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t speak the former – the sincerity is felt in every word. 

That sincerity has allowed them to move between mediums, too. This summer brings Kneecap, a frenetic docudrama in which the band star as themselves, going by their real names: Naoise Ó Cairealláin (Móglaí Bap), Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh (Mo Chara) and JJ Ó Dochartaigh (DJ Próvaí). Powered by the defiant, fuck-you energy of films like Trainspotting, the band’s origin story is set against the backdrop of the fight for Irish language rights. 

In Kneecap’s semi-fictional lore, Liam is arrested and refuses to speak English, forcing the police to bring in a last-minute translator, JJ. With Naoise rounding out the group, the three form an unbreakable bond forged over booze, drugs and making beats in JJ’s garage. It’s also hilarious. The opening scene sets up the band as a divine myth: at Mo Chara’s christening, deep in the forest, the heavens open up and a blinding beam of light shines down from above, as if God has come to bless him – but it’s a surveilling British Army helicopter. 

When director Rich Peppiatt first saw Kneecap at a gig, he had a feeling they had a movie in them. “I was very conscious of the idea of being that person who comes in and takes someone’s story and doesn’t do anything with it,” Peppiatt tells us. Months later, the director pitched his idea of the film to the band. “I wanted to respect the fact they were allowing me to tell their story, which meant trying to be collaborative. Certainly, their success is based on the fact they’re hugely creative, and the idea to block that out felt stupid.” 

Music biopics often function as memorials, deifying late artists by cherry-picking events and moments from their many years of biography. It’s rare for a biopic to serve as an introduction to their subject, but Kneecap does just that, capturing the band’s breakthrough in near real time. Alongside the rise of the band, each of the trio have their own storyline: Naoise manages a fractured relationship with his Republican fugitive father, played by Michael Fassbender; Liam is clashing with the vindictive head of police; and JJ brings his past life as a schoolteacher into the narrative. 

Kneecap and Peppiatt workshopped the screenplay together, trading stories to gauge what needed a creative flourish. “Some of the most random shit in the film is actually the true shit,” Peppiatt says. “And really, the stuff that’s not true is the binding stuff to try and make the narrative work. When you’re talking about set pieces, a lot of it is true.” A lot of these “true shit” set pieces are corroborated by newspaper headlines – like the time they led a “Brits out!” chant at a pub visited by Prince William and Kate Middleton the day before, or when their song C.E.A.R.T.A. (Irish for “rights”) was banned by the Irish radio station RTÉ for its freewheeling references to sex and drugs. 

Having never acted before, the trio took classes to get comfortable. They played games and learned what it meant to get into the mind of their characters. One exercise involved staring into each other’s eyes for minutes at a time. Despite the strong bond between the three, this was almost unbearable. Peppiatt explains: “You have to say the first thing that comes into your head about them, and then they have to say it back to you…”

“Back to you,” Mo Chara cuts in without missing a beat. 

“Your moisturiser leaves a lot to be desired,” DJ Próvaí directs at Peppiatt, still in the game. 

“You shouldn’t have to look anybody in the eyes for five minutes,” Mo Chara concludes.

Mo Chara says they planned to “stay on the straight and narrow” before filming. The trio didn’t drink a drop of alcohol for two months, sticking to “training and good shit”. Then, the night before the first day of filming in Dundalk, they fell at the final hurdle. “We had to travel and stay in this hotel, and we got pissed. We were so hungover after being such good boys for two months,” he says, while DJ Próvaí giggles. 

The band knew there was an enormous risk involved in making the film. They were rappers who had never acted before – what if they couldn’t do it? The ramifications could be embarrassing at best. “If the movie turns out to be awful it’s gonna heavily affect our music,” Móglaí Bap says. “If we make a song, we don’t have to put it out,” Mo Chara says, “but there’s fucking 12 funders involved in a film.” 

Everyone on board seemed to be aware of the risk, too – on the first day of shooting, everyone turned up whether they were required to be there or not. Kneecap and Peppiatt had the sense they were being monitored. “I think there was a bit of suspicion,” the director admits. “Is it going to be a joke? These boys aren’t going to act and it’s going to be a shit show.” And yet, the boys proved everyone wrong. Kneecap have an infectious energy that works just as well on screen as it does on stage. “There was an ‘ahh’ of relief after that first day,” Móglaí Bap remembers. “It would’ve been an awkward seven weeks if we were really shit actors.” 

When we meet right before the film’s UK premiere, at Sundance’s sister festival in London, it’s still early days in a full-throttle summer for the band that will take them on a run of music and film festivals, including Glastonbury. While their Irish rap has crashed into UK hearts, the trio had no idea if the US would be as open to them. In America, the Irish language is misrepresented as, says Móglaí Bap, “English in a funny accent.”

But when Kneecap premiered at the Utah edition of Sundance in January, they were struck by how well the film was landing with Americans, and particularly with Black Americans. The film went on to win the festival’s Audience Award. “The history of oppression is something they connect with,” Peppiatt says. “Having to forge their own identity out of that, and try to protect their identity in a world that is trying to eradicate…”

“In a world where they’re trying to…” Móglaí Bap picks up the thread, pausing to find the right word. “… Homogenise everything. You have people from Indigenous cultures and minority languages around Europe that the film has resonated with. I think that is the overall message of the movie: people reclaiming their language, which inherently goes back to identity. Language, identity and culture are all intertwined.”

“Storytelling is part of Irish culture and always has been,” Mo Chara says. “Irish is an oral tradition,” Móglaí Bap continues. “The only way that Irish history and mythology was passed down was orally. I think that’s why it’s important for us to have that intertwined with our music.” 

It’s telling that this summer, they’re taking legal action against the British government after a £15,000 arts funding grant was blocked by the then Conservative Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, claiming that the grant was blocked on grounds of nationality and political opinion. It’s an all too salient example of the covert censorship and erasure they are bristling against. “This is an attack on artistic culture, an attack on the Good Friday Agreement and an attack on us and our way of expressing ourselves,” DJ Próvaí said at a hearing in June. 

Kneecap – despite being subversive, unfiltered and defiantly punk – have never had lofty aspirations to change the world. Still, they’re conscious of the effect they’re having. “When you speak a minority language, it’s a very powerful thing,” Mo Chara adds. “It’ll take a lot more than us to save a language.” That may be true. But on stage, on screen and in the courts, Kneecap will be heard.