Kneecap's very funny, deadly serious new album tackles mental health issues, too much booze, drugs, sectarianism and the thrill of a good night out
Anyone for a lock-in? West Belfast rap trio Kneecap sure are on this scuzzy, hilarious and dangerous journey into Nighttown Belfast. It’s a mad hubbub of Irish and English, hip hop and trad, house music and punk that never lets up on energy levels and the pursuit of good clean devilment.
Jump around? You’ll do that and more.
Like A Grand Don’t Come For Free by The Streets, Fine Art is a concept album of sorts - we are ushered into the imaginary world of The Rutz, a buzzy late-night bar somewhere in Belfast where the porter doesn’t stop flowing and Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí are up until the sun peeks out over Cave Hill.
With the sheer swaggering hometown pride of The Beastie Boys, the lyrical chutzpah of Eminem and maybe a hint of Wu Tang’s gothic villainy, Kneecap embrace Belfast in all its beauty and ugliness.
And for a bunch of self-proclaimed "lowlife scum", their level of musical and lyrical sophistication is pretty wonderful. Opener 3CAG starts with the thump of a bodhran, before mystical, windswept pipes and the keening vocals of Lankum’s Radie Peat create a Celtic Twilight vibe; you’d be hard-pressed to find a more infectious bass line than the deep groove of Better Way to Live, with Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten laying down flat Dublinese; and when Ibh Fiacha Linne samples 808 State’s classic banger Cübik, you may ask can a collaboration with fellow Northern Irish act Bicep be far away?
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Elsewhere, Sick In The Head is a super dark journey to the point of obliteration that rides a decidedly old-school hip-hop groove and sees the trio trade stream of consciousness raps over warped electronica and clattering drums.
Kneecap have long rumbled something that still seems to elude the old men up on the hill in Stormont - that young people on both sides of a riven community face the same struggles and have the same wants and needs. The trio’s debut 2017 single C.E.A.R.T.A. (Rights) has become an anthem for both Unionists and Nationalists and Kneecap are as ever equal opportunities offenders willing to piss off "both sides" in a tribal turf war. In a city that deploys such self-mocking terminology as "Peace Walls", Kneecap’s message is clear; feck sectarianism - let’s dance.
Indeed, Parful (which has some of the unhinged energy of Dizzee Rascal’s Bonkers) samples liberally from Dancing on Narrow Ground, a documentary celebrating the cross-community rave culture of nineties Belfast.
Speaking and rapping in an oft neglected and even demonised language, Kneecap describe a new Northern Ireland and channel their frustration, boredom and anger into articulate and very funny raps about everyday life. As Mo Chara has observed, "We’re Irish speakers living in an urban area, the first or second generation to be born in the city. Traditionally it’s a rural language after colonialism pushed it out west towards the sea. We wanted to bring the Irish language into the modern era by incorporating aspects of youth culture into it."
And like all the great hip hop albums, Fine Art is strung together with a series of skits and intermissions recorded by the band and friends, including DJ Annie Mac. Manchán Magan (who previously recorded an Irish language version of C.E.A.R.T.A.) bridges the chasm between ancient and modern when he pops up as an F-bomb dropping druid on the fantastic Drug Dealing Pagans, and there’s a deftly used sample of broadcaster Stephen Nolan taking a supercilious attitude to a Kneecap poster featuring a PSNI jeep in flames.
Not since the heady early nineties days of wayward Dublin crew Scary Eire has an Irish hip-hop act sounded so vital and energetic. This glorious, unlovely sprawl is out of control and its coming right at you.
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
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