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Belfast rappers Kneecap on stunts, drugs and Kemi Badenoch: ‘We don’t discriminate who we piss off’

Their riotous music is uniting young people in Northern Ireland and reviving the Irish language. The punk-rap trio talk about raving, working with Toddla T – and enraging politicians

After a beautifully argued section from Mo Chara, about how the British will only be able to deal with their colonial history if they tackle it as openly as the Germans did after the second world war, he says: “But the Brits just wanna hide their past, because they feel too guilty,” and makes a fists-to-the-eyes cry-baby face. They did drama lessons for six weeks – ‘staring into each other’s eyes, which was strange, but we loved it in the end’ Through their very existence, Kneecap are often seen as political, not only by unionists in Ireland’s North, but by the UK government (Kemi Badenoch’s Department for Business and Trade recently intervened to stop them receiving an arts grant, of which, more later). We’re part of this first group of young people in an urban setting in Belfast to really speak Irish together socially They also sample BBC radio host Stephen Nolan (“he’s the worst”), a huge figure in Ireland’s North, discussing their PSNI jeep fire mural.

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