The legal charges against Mo Chara (real name Liam \u00d3g \u00d3 hAnnaidh) \u2013 predicated on claims that he waved a Hezbollah flag onstage during a gig \u2013 were dismissed by a judge last year before the case made it to trial. \u201cThis entire process was never about me, never about any threat to the public and never about terrorism… it was always about Palestine,\u201d the rapper said last month, when the government lost its appeal. Unsurprisingly, there\u2019s been no changing course: on Fenian, the group are as full-throated in their support of Palestine as they are damning about Keir Starmer\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiars Tale\u201d, the album\u2019s lead single, is the most caustic and memorable example of this, calling out the UK prime minister in the most un-minced of words. \u201cNah f*** Keir Starmer\/ Netanyahu\u2019s bitch and genocide armer\/ Better off as compost for farmers,\u201d they rap, over a thumping, synth-heavy beat. The critique keeps coming: \u201cYou\u2019re just a Tory, dressed in Labour clothing\/ Never seen a c*** so boring, with a resting face of loathing.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"DJ](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/KneeFenian-Pic.jpeg\")
DJ Pr\u00f3va\u00ed, M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap, and Mo Chara of ‘Kneecap’ (Tom Beard)<\/p>\n
If you can believe it, Fenian does suggest a certain maturation on the trio\u2019s part. And not just the musical side of things \u2013 though this too has evolved, with producer Dan Carey doing a good job of evoking and tweaking the group\u2019s established mode of snappy, propulsive, hip-hop. But there\u2019s a deepening of themes, an awareness of the power behind provocation. Thanks in part to the legal battle, Kneecap have become one of the music industry\u2019s most visible figureheads of the pro-Palestine movement, and it\u2019s not a responsibility they seem to take lightly. \u201cPalestine\u201d takes an appropriately sober tone to its exploration of solidarity between the Irish and those on the West Bank, bringing in Ramallah-based rapper Fawzi for a fluid guest verse (another language in the mix.)<\/p>\n
Album closer \u201cIrish Goodbye\u201d is another venture into delicate tonal territory, addressing the death by suicide of M\u00f3gla\u00ed Bap\u2019s mother in 2020. It\u2019s a potent track, one that emphasises just how much range this group are capable of. Even when they\u2019re rapping about substance abuse \u2013 fear not, Fenian has plenty of that too \u2013 there\u2019s often a kind of jaded ambivalence that pushes it beyond some of their earlier work. \u201cCocaine Hill\u201d is twitchy and unsettled, with haunting lead chorus vocals from Lankum\u2019s Radie Peat that interpolate John Martyn\u2019s 1967 song \u201cCocaine\u201d. It\u2019s a far shout from something like 2018\u2019s (admittedly hilarious) \u201cYour Sniffer Dogs Are S**te\u201d \u2013 essentially an elevated novelty song.<\/p>\n
Fenian is an immensely enjoyable record. Chara and Bap have a great natural sense of flow, able to syncopate phrases in a way to ensure the punchlines hit. At times, it feels like a throwback to a bygone era of hip-hop \u2013 both in the particulars of their rhythms and the production of the beats they work with. But it\u2019s a throwback, too, exhuming not just the sound of classic rap but its raw political fury. At 14 tracks, it\u2019s a touch long \u2013 but boring? Not for a second.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-548010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}