If you haven’t been keeping up with Kneecap, the West Belfast group’s new single “The Recap” will catch you up to date. Of course, you may need an Irish translator, but that’s also a Kneecap staple. In the fictionalized origin storyKneecap, the group meets when Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh) is arrested and refuses to speak English, requiring an Irish translator in the form of DJ Provai (J J Ó Dochartaigh). In a case of life imitating art, Ó hAnnaidh reportedly requested to speak Irish in his trial on terrorism charges. According to Kneecap’s manager Daniel Lambert, the court magistrate said they’d been unable to find a translator and asked if anyone knows of one. “The entire public gallery laugh and all point at DJ Próvaí (JJ) at the same time,” he wrote on Twitter/X.
All to say: art and politics (and humor) have been inextricably intertwined for Kneecap from the beginning. “The Recap,” which features drum & bass artist Mozey, is a good example of this. The song taunts U.K. politician Kemi Badenoch, who as business and trade minister withdrew an arts grant awarded to Kneecap in 2023. The group brought a discrimination case against the U.K. government and won, donating the proceeds to Belfast community groups. “Get me Kemi’s money and give her my thanks/We’ll call it reparations Badenoch ya wank,” they rap on the new song (Badenoch has also made controversial comments that the U.K.’s wealth today doesn’t come from colonialism, which is tied up in the slave trade and conversation about reparations). The song gloats: “Tried to take my money but I came and collected it back.”
Though the fight over the grant occurred in 2024, the group’s rivalry with Badenoch continues. Now leader of the Conservative Party, Badenoch has called to ban the airing of Kneecap’s Glastonbury Festival set: “As a publicly funded platform, the BBC should not be rewarding extremism,” she wrote on Twitter/X. Labour Party leader and current Prime Minister Keir Starmer also told The Sunthat it would not be “appropriate” for the group to play Glastonbury, where they are scheduled to perform this coming Saturday.
Mo Chara currently stands accused of waving a Hezbollah flag in November 2024, which resurfaced and triggered a terrorism charge in May 2025. The band has denied the accusations while remaining steadfast in their vocal support of Palestinian freedom. “You know what’s ‘not appropriate’ Keir?! Arming a fucking genocide…,” Kneecap wrote on social media in response to the Prime Minister’s words. “Fuck The Sun and solidarity with Palestine Action.” (Ahead of the first hearing for the terrorism case, the group spread posters throughout London reading “More Blacks, More Dogs, More Irish, Mo Chara,” a twist on the kind of discriminatory signs found around the country in the 1950s.) “The Recap” reserves its snark primarily for the conservative Tories; it ends with a spoken-word outro which says, “Good effort, Kemi. Hard lines in the elections,” a reference to her party’s losses in the local elections held earlier this year. The track concludes, “Onwards and upwards. Free Palestine.” You can listen to “The Recap” below.
