“Did we say anything bad?”
That’s the last thing Liam Óg “Mo Chara” Ó Hannaidh utters on a Zoom call from New York’s Tribeca Festival. He’s addressing his group Kneecap’s publicist, who, one imagines, gets that question from them a lot. The Belfast hip-hop trio — rappers Mo Chara and Naoise “Móglaí Bap” Ó Cairealláin alongside JJ “DJ Próvaí” Ó Dochartaigh — carry themselves a bit like chaos agents, with a gleeful sense that they’re getting away with something. They refer to Tribeca founder Robert De Niro as “the guy from Shark Tale” while making a diarrhea joke (at their own expense, not De Niro’s); blast Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, calling it “poverty porn” (“He should be f—ing embarrassed,” says Mo Chara); and talk proudly about creating Irish translations for party drugs like cocaine (“snaoisín”) and MDMA (“3CAG”).
That provocative bent is also baked into the music on Kneecap’s debut album, Fine Art, a wild, rave-inspired explosion of beats and language that is simultaneously assaultive and welcoming — like Licensed to Ill–era Beastie Boys, M.I.A., and Rage Against the Machine thrown in a blender, but also including the blender for good measure. And speaking of language, Kneecap’s lyrics switch back and forth between English and Irish, the latter playing a central role in the band’s politics.
Even their invention of drug names is backed by a rock-solid linguistic and cultural defense. “I wouldn’t just do all this stuff just for fun,” says Móglaí Bap. “I think it’s very important for a language to evolve in that manner. It’s gonna evolve into a language of the city. Drugs and youth culture is something young people talk about. So there should be these words in Irish.”
Sarah Ellis
Furthering that mission, the three-piece co-wrote and star in an upcoming eponymous feature film presenting a fictionalized version of their origin story that’s like a cross between A Hard Day’s Night, Straight Outta Compton, 24 Hour Party People, 8 Mile, and The Commitments, with a touch of Pussy Riot thrown in. Kneecap, which also boasts a quietly fierce performance from Michael Fassbender as Móglaí Bap’s missing father, won the NEXT Audience Award this year at Sundance, where Sony Pictures Classics scooped it up in the festival’s first big sale. It is far, far better than any movie resting on the shoulders of a rap group moonlighting as first-time actors and screenwriters could ever hope to be.
As they unveil the new trailer for the film exclusively to Entertainment Weekly, Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí talk drugs, death threats, and why they’re more like BTS than you’d think.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How is the film festival circuit treating you guys?
MO CHARA: It’s great. It’s a bottomless pit of money. We’re f—in’ $550 a night in this hotel. Absolutely rinsed the minibar on Sony’s card.
MÓGLAÍ BAP: Yeah, we get a room each. It’s really fancy.
MO CHARA: We wank in peace.
How is hanging around film people different from hanging around music people?
MO CHARA: [Actors are] a lot more insecure.
MÓGLAÍ BAP: [laughs] Yeah.
MO CHARA: They’re a lot more touchy-feely. The actors are all a bit grabby.
DJ PRÓVAÍ: They like you, son.
When you’re at festivals like Sundance and Tribeca, are people surprised to learn that Kneecap is a real group, like a reverse Blair Witch situation?
MÓGLAÍ BAP: [chuckles] Yeah, there was a comment someone made… What was it again? “I was watching the Kneecap movie, and I thought, ‘These actors are really good rappers.'” When it’s actually that these rappers are very good actors. So it happens quite often that people don’t know who the f— we are. And they’re still kind of surprised that we’re a real band after the film.
MO CHARA: I forget sometimes.
MÓGLAÍ BAP: It’s very unusual for a band to have a movie before they die of a heroin overdose or whatever.
MO CHARA: Or their first album.
Isn’t it a bit of a swing to make a movie before Kneecap is a household name, or before you’ve even built up substantial buzz?
MÓGLAÍ BAP: Yeah, doing the movie could have been a massive risk because if it was shite, then it would be very detrimental to our music careers. Thankfully, we did acting classes for six months, and we would, like, stare in each other’s eyes every week as one of the exercises for learning how to act. It’s quite a weird experience to stare into someone’s eyes, even if you’re very good friends.
DJ PRÓVAÍ: I think it was a massive risk as well for the funders and the people behind the film, because they were basically taking a blind punt on people who’ve never acted before.
MÓGLAÍ BAP: But a bigger risk for us because everyone else will move on and do the next one, but we’ll still be Kneecap after all this.
MO CHARA: We could’ve very easily been known as that band that were going places and done a really s— film and then nobody listens to them again.
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Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
How do you deal with the fact that many of the people you’re trying to reach don’t understand a good chunk of your lyrics?
MÓGLAÍ BAP: We never really thought the music would make it out of Ireland. We didn’t really care that much about it because we were just doing something we loved. But now we’re seeing… I’m not sure if this is the last few years, but since we started, there’s definitely been a shift in how people consume music. We’ve seen bands like BTS, the Korean band who sold out Wembley two nights, with thousands and thousands of people. Most people there don’t speak Korean.
DJ PRÓVAÍ: And the live shows are so high-energy, it doesn’t matter if you understand the [lyrics] or not. People just listen to the beats and the music. They’re just there for a good time and f—ing let loose.
If I had to guess which acts you’d compare yourselves to, BTS would not be high on the list.
MÓGLAÍ BAP: Before they join the army, against their will. I think it’s interesting, though, because you see a band like BTS playing a majority monolingual country where everyone speaks English. In England, most people speak one language, if you’re a white English person. There’s loads of stuff out there happening all over the world, and I think people don’t care as much about the language because Spotify is the most popular music streaming platform. I listen to music in f—ing Arabic or f—ing Spanish and French and Italian and English. It all just pops up in my Spotify. I don’t know what I’m listening to. All the languages of the world just pop up, so…
Sarah Ellis
You definitely seem to have met resistance from Unionists [who favor U.K. rule of Northern Ireland]. But have you found any friction with Republicans [who favor reunification of Ireland with the North of Ireland]? Because you have a subplot in the movie about Radical Republicans Against Drugs — in which they threaten Kneecap with violence — that makes it seem like you might.
MO CHARA: Sure, we get death threats from both sides.
MÓGLAÍ BAP: They haven’t seen that part of the movie yet, but I’d imagine they won’t be very happy because they don’t really come off intelligent.
MO CHARA: They’re the wee goofballs in the film. But they’re renowned for being a bit more serious.
DJ PRÓVAÍ: They’re a lot more serious in real life.
MÓGLAÍ BAP: Well, that’s the thing about goofy people. They act serious because deep down they’re actually stupid. So I think that’s kinda what we were touching on.
MO CHARA: Well, if you haven’t been shot now, you’re definitely getting shot after that comment.
MÓGLAÍ BAP: Well, if one of us gets shot, the f—in’ PR we’ll get off that! If one of us gets kneecapped…
MO CHARA: The director [Rich Peppiatt] will be f—in’ loving it. The Kneecap film’s gonna go global.
MÓGLAÍ BAP: But yeah, at the start we had a lot of backlash from both sides. And not only dissident Republicans — like conservative Irish speakers as well, who thought we were bastardizing the language and were absolutely appalled that we would talk about sex in the Irish language. We were talking about drugs. And they were like, no, we can’t be doing this s—, and people would complain and also write big Facebook posts.
But I think they’ve seen how young people are into the music, and if they’re not gonna listen to us, they’re just gonna listen to f—ing Megan Thee Stallion. Or Cardi B. They’re all getting their c–ks wet. I mean, it’s all out there anyway. So why not have it in Irish?
Fine Art is out June 14. Kneecap hits theaters Aug. 2. Watch the new trailer for it above.