AAA<\/p>\n
Before I sit down to chat with Kneecap, their publicist tells me, \u201cwe\u2019ll need to get a sense of the themes and topics you\u2019d like to cover and have those approved by management prior\u201d.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the sort of move that has become all too common in the world of celebrity interviews, and it\u2019s as annoying as hell. But in the case of the hip-hop trio from Northern Ireland, it\u2019s frankly baffling. Their entire persona is founded upon speaking their minds and not giving a toss if they offend people in the process.<\/p>\n
I first met the lads \u2013 rappers Mo Chara (real name Liam \u00d3g \u00d3 Hannaidh) and M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap (Naoise \u00d3 Caireall\u00e1in) and producer DJ Pr\u00f3va\u00ed (JJ \u00d3 Dochartaigh) \u2013 in the offices of Frontier Touring in March 2025, when they were in Australia<\/a> for a series of shows that included Golden Plains, a free gig at Melbourne\u2019s Federation Square, and a run of small club shows (at one of which the head of a statue of King George V famously made a guest appearance<\/a> on stage).<\/p>\n In the year since, the band have rapidly gone from niche act to one of the most visible on the planet precisely because they say what they think, without fear or favour. In short, Kneecap have blown up by blowing off.<\/p>\n So, why the sudden concern?<\/p>\n \u201cThere is an added layer of legality informing what they can and cannot speak about,\u201d the PR explains in an email. Ah, that there is.<\/p>\n The band have been strong supporters of the Palestinian cause, and harsh critics of the Israeli government\u2019s military campaign in Gaza, and that has made them the target of relentless attacks from some quarters. They have been investigated by British police over comments made on stage at Glastonbury<\/a>, faced calls for their US visas to be revoked over text projected on screen at Coachella and, most seriously, faced charges of supporting a terror organisation<\/a> after Mo Chara picked up and brandished a Hezbollah flag that had been tossed onstage at a London gig in November 2024.<\/p>\n But by the time we speak, a UK appeal court has decided that charge will not proceed. The case was first thrown out on a technicality in September 2025; the latest decision, handed down on March 12, should mark the end of a matter that has cast a very real pall over the trio\u2019s ascendancy for the past year.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think they can go anywhere [with the charges],\u201d says Mo Chara. \u201cObviously, there is a massive relief there now that we can kind of move on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we\u2019ll go for it this time,\u201d says M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap. \u201cWe might take them to court this time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause look at me, Karl, I can\u2019t sleep anymore,\u201d Mo Chara continues. \u201cI think there might be a lawsuit. I\u2019m pissing myself in bed and stuff, you know, with the stress.\u201d<\/p>\n They are, obviously, joking. \u201cA sense of fun and humour is a big part of how Irish people process things,\u201d says M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap. \u201cWhether it\u2019s something small or something dramatic, humour has always been a way for us to deal with the past.\u201d<\/p>\n But speaking to the boys \u2013 DJ Pr\u00f3va\u00ed isn\u2019t present for the interview \u2013 it\u2019s clear that the legal drama and the endless attention of the tabloid media in the UK have been genuinely exhausting. For a start, it put the brakes on their hectic touring schedule, just when momentum dictated it was time to spread the Irish-language gospel far and wide.<\/p>\n Contrary to much reporting, though, they insist they have not actually been banned from the US, Canada, or anywhere else.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never been turned down for a visa because we haven\u2019t applied for anything,\u201d says Mo Chara. \u201cSo now this is over and done with, we can apply for visas again, including for Australia. We\u2019ll be there soon, hopefully. Same with America and all these other places \u2013 we just made the decision that it was in our interest not to apply right now.\u201d<\/p>\n The crescendo around the band \u2013 the attempted kneecapping of Kneecap, if you will \u2013 peaked last UK summer. \u201cIt was chaotic,\u201d says M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap. \u201cWe were in the studio [recording new album Fenian, their third] for seven weeks, and during that seven weeks we had the court case, so we had to leave the safe space of the studio, going out to the paparazzi and getting dragged about on camera, and then we did Wembley Arena, our biggest gig outside Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n Amidst the chaos, the studio sessions with producer Dan Carey \u201cprovided us a space where we could kind of forget about the outside world\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cHe brought some maturity and complexity to the sound,\u201d says Mo Chara. \u201cThat was important to us.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the Irish language, and with hip-hop in general, unless you\u2019re being extremely braggadocious all the time it can almost border on a parody act,\u201d he continues. \u201cAnd I feel like now, with us being established, we wanted this album to be a lot more mature and musical. So Dan was perfect. It was our simplicity mixed with his complexity that has meshed together, and we just found that sweet spot where it was still authentically Kneecap but also a big level up.\u201d<\/p>\n There are still the big bangers on Fenian \u2013 not least on the title track with its stadium-ready chorus of FE-FE-FE-FE-FEN-IAN \u2013 but there\u2019s much musing, too, on the events of the past year.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery day in the news me and Kneecap are not the story, a genocide is happening,\u201d they sing on Carnival (well, that\u2019s the English translation of what they sing in Gaelic). \u201cDistraction is the mission \u2026 history will remember, you pieces of shit, and you\u2019ll never be forgiven.\u201d<\/p>\n Elsewhere, on Irish Goodbye, M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap sings of and to his mother, who took her own life.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen life gave you lemons It\u2019s a song full of rage and pain, but with little of the braggadocious swagger Mo Chara mentions. Did you feel exposed writing a track like that?<\/p>\n \u201cIt is more exposed, but it feels comforting because I get messages from people who relate to it,\u201d says M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap. \u201cThat type of death can feel very isolating. Especially in the north \u2013 and around the world, I suppose \u2013 it\u2019s still taboo, you don\u2019t really hear about people\u2019s stories. So the exposure of it actually makes me feel a bit more relatable to people, a bit more understood.\u201d<\/p>\n On Liar\u2019s Tale, they sing about the exhaustion of being constantly in the public eye, of always waving the flag (banned or not).<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sick of always being switched on Is that a genuine feeling you\u2019re expressing there?<\/p>\n \u201cThe character in this song is exaggerating his frustration, I suppose,\u201d says M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap. \u201cIt\u2019s a frustration, but I wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I look at Harry Styles or whatever, he doesn\u2019t talk about politics, he just does music, and in one way that seems like the ideal thing to do because it\u2019d be stress free. But in reality, being from where we come from, this is just the way we\u2019re brought up. There\u2019s a long tradition of artists in Ireland using their platforms to talk about apartheid in South Africa or the Catholic Church, anything.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, in an ideal world, we\u2019d just be talking about music. But we just feel it\u2019s part of our duty. So in this character, in that song, yeah, I suppose it\u2019s exhaustion, but at the same time, it\u2019s just the way it is, and we\u2019re happy to take that.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article Do you generally write as characters? Is that how you see what you\u2019re doing, creating a character who\u2019s got the voice in that track, and then you move on to a different one?<\/p>\n \u201cWell, kind of,\u201d M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap says. \u201cEvery character is an exaggeration of that emotion, an amplified version of reality in a sense. But it\u2019s entertainment as well, so you\u2019re blending those things together. That\u2019s why we have these stage names. That\u2019s part of the Kneecap show.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is an exaggeration of yourself, but to say it\u2019s a character would be doing it a slight disservice,\u201d Mo Chara offers. \u201cObviously, you are performing, but you are doing an extreme version of yourself that has no inhibitions, and maybe it\u2019s more direct. But in interviews if we\u2019re talking about something serious, we\u2019re obviously not playing too much of a character. I think there\u2019s a fine line there, and sometimes you have to switch.\u201d<\/p>\n Kneecap have made a fine art of straddling the line between truth and character (indeed caricature). And nowhere is it more perfectly realised than in their semi-fictionalised biopic Kneecap<\/a> (2024), which played such a crucial role in elevating the band from Belfast cult faves to global stars.<\/p>\n \u00d3 Hannaidh and \u00d3 Caireall\u00e1in met at an Irish-language school (O Dochartaigh was a teacher), and the Kneecap project grew out of their belief that keeping Gaelic on life support wasn\u2019t enough \u2013 it needed to be alive, evolving, part of the youth culture of the cities as much as the preferred tongue of old-time fishermen and farmers in the Gaeltacht provinces.<\/p>\n \u201cBut as soon as the movie was released, we realised just how much of an international story language and cultural struggle against colonialism is,\u201d says Mo Chara. \u201cWe had messages from people from Aboriginal Australia, Native Americans, people from around the world who had seen the movie and it really struck a chord with them. And that\u2019s when we realised that Kneecap was more than just an Irish story, that Kneecap and the movie was very much an international story and something that connected oppressed cultures around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Kneecap is also very much about the craic, though, and you can still hear it on the new album, on songs like Headcase and Smugglers and Scholars and Fenian and Liars Tale. But the fun often comes wrapped in a protest banner.<\/p>\n The band\u2019s name comes from IRA slang, as does DJ Pr\u00f3va\u00ed\u2018s name (Mo Chara means \u201cmy friend\u201d in Gaelic; M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap references The Jungle Book\u2019s Mowgli and an Irish word for head, a throwback to a haircut from \u00d3 Caireall\u00e1in\u2019s childhood). And if the iconography, language and themes often hark back to the bad old days of The Troubles, the band makes absolutely no apology for that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI think maybe the older generation are still a wee bit touchy with it, but the younger generation, whether you like it or not, humour and comedy is going to break these boundaries,\u201d says Mo Chara.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I see somebody doing a skit taking the piss out of Republicans I find it f–king hilarious,\u201d he adds. \u201cI think we don\u2019t give people that we disagree with enough credit. Like, everybody likes a joke, do you know what I mean? And I think because we\u2019ve had such a culture of silence in Belfast for so long, there is such a stigma.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are Republican, we do believe in a United Ireland, but it doesn\u2019t mean I couldn\u2019t sit and have a drink with someone who opposes that belief. And the best way to create this dialogue is through humour.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/787427ed90025e114718f0a613b1c34d8fb5ef0b.jpeg\")
The band took a moment to check the oil when they visited Melbourne last March. Penny Stephens<\/p>\n![\"\u201cHumour](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/14729d815a82b2a950dc4cca2b6a33e16a535269.jpeg\")
\u201cHumour is a big part of how Irish people process things\u201d, says M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap.<\/p>\n![\"Kneecap](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4195042433a3b8c67b3c28fefc305abe34d5291a.jpeg\")
Kneecap in a 2026 publicity shot: (l-r) Mo Chara, DJ Pr\u00f3va\u00ed, M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap.Tom Beard<\/p>\n![\"Mo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/f8fb970950b23d3915cc7f55a941322410c8a7ff.jpeg\")
Mo Chara leaves Woolwich Crown Court, London, on September 26, 2025, where he had faced charges of supporting a terrorist organisation. Neil P. Mockford\/Getty<\/p>\n
You squeezed them in your open wounds
I miss you every fucking day.\u201d<\/p>\n
How come it\u2019s always on me
To be sorting everything.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/5868a11b3b0fe62f309a5c639ba7fec0875cab10.jpeg\")
A scene from Kneecap, the movie, in which the three bandmates played semi-fictionalised versions of themselves.<\/p>\n![\"King](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/8e4adfed95a148c2665eb8c4e1dc95a8a6908f170ea87bbc83d91372d2525869.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0ad403067fe8cf22729246a9b11604088bd16ac5.jpeg\")
The head stolen from a statue of King George V appeared onstage at a Kneecap gig in\u00a0Melbourne last March.Ian Laidlaw<\/p>\n
![\"April](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774639932_942_35702b4541842c7f71dfe3ae583d5921ef68351a.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n