KNEECAP at Liverpool’s O2 Academy – Saturday 18th September 2021.

For those of you that haven’t heard of KNEECAP yet, they are a bilingual Hip-Hop outfit from west Belfast, and they’re here tonight in Liverpool playing the third show of their ‘What’s The Story Moaning Tory’ tour. The trio of lads consists of 2 MCs, Mo Chara, and Moglai Bap plus beats man, DJ Provai. The lads combine rapping in Irish with singing in English and they offer a voice to their community of Irish language speakers living in NI, in the 21st century, speaking about language and other cultural rights. KNEECAP have had a spectacular rise and have gained some notoriety in the media pages, not too dissimilar to the Beastie Boys when they first started out in the mid ’80s, (who remembers their gig here in ’87?), I think this group has a similar vibe.

After watching Liverpool rapper Koj warm up the crowd nicely, the tension builds, and eventually, our 3 lads enter the arena to great cheer and excitement. The trio rip through  their hits including ‘C.E.A.T.R.E‘ and ‘H.O.O.D.’ but it’s ‘Get Your Brits Out‘ and ‘Fenian Cunts‘ that are the crowd favourites tonight along with a new song ‘Guilty Conscience.’ It doesn’t matter if half the crowd doesn’t understand the words tonight, the energy of this group is infectious and it spreads through the crowd like a virus. Buckfast is sprayed everywhere and the lads enter the audience, “crowd surfing” spectacularly, especially DJ Provai wearing his tri-colour balaclava, I can’t imagine how hot he must be in this mass of sweaty revellers. Moglai Bap tells the crowd that they are game as a badger while Mo Chara tells us that they hate a lot of people but they love us cunts and tells us that we’re the best looking audience on the tour so far. The lads work the crowd brilliantly and have them in the palm of their hands and this concert is a raucous animalistic punk show, more like a rave or a big drunken party than a regular gig. But KNEECAP doesn’t just fight for their right to party, this band also has a social conscience and a message, it’s amazing watching them combine these 2 things tonight and the guys certainly pull it off.

NSG spoke to the lads this week for a feature we did with them and we also said hello tonight and I have to say that these 3 lads along with their manager Dan are 1 of the friendliest groups that we’ve met recently, nothing is too much trouble for them. We wish these fellas nothing but continued success and I’d advise everyone to catch them very soon at a live venue near you.