Kneecap: “Politics is part of the conversation” in the “salt of the earth” West Belfast

The latest episode of Origin Stories on Apple Music sees host Matt Wilkinson travel to the heart of West Belfast with Irish-language rap trio Kneecap. In a series that has already explored the roots of artists like Aitch in Manchester and Mahalia in Leicester, Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí return to the very streets that forged their provocative identity.

Reflecting on their upbringing, the group describes a community “steeped in history” from The Troubles. “It’s obviously very working class and what you have is a lot of people here who grew up in poverty,” the band notes, adding that such environments “breed the best kind of people,” whom they describe as the “salt of the earth.” For Kneecap, their activism isn’t an artistic choice but a geographical inevitability: “Politics is part of the conversation when you go to the pubs. It’s not like we go out of our way to talk about politics, it’s just the common conversation around here.”

The episode revisits Hawthorn Street, where the group recorded their breakthrough track ‘C.E.A.R.T.A’ in a “hazy attic.” What began as a “bad business model”—rapping in a language with only 80,000 daily speakers—became a movement. The trio recalls “upcycling” old Irish words and creating new slang to represent a “new identity of young people speaking Irish in the city.”

The group’s formation was inextricably linked to the 2017 Irish Language Act protests. Their debut single was inspired by a night spent in the “clinker” after a run-in with police during a protest. When the track was subsequently banned from the radio, the resulting controversy fueled their rise. “Outraged politicians were doing [our PR] for us,” they reflect. Today, that local defiance has translated into global success, with their award-winning film connecting with indigenous communities worldwide. As they put it, “even if Kneecap didn’t work, we knew someone else would come along and finish the job for us.”