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Here the News Letter looks at the history of the group.

The reason for the renewed interest in Kneecap is that a semi-autobiographical movie has been produced about them using some £1.5m of public money.

The self-titled movie premiered at the prestigious US Sundance Film Festival on January 18 to overwhelmingly rave reviews, accompanied by puff pieces in the media, including the BBC.

Whilst journalists writing about Kneecap typically note that the group are “controversial”, the specific reasons for this are often either omitted or are reduced to one-or-two well-known examples such as their “RUC not welcome” mural in west Belfast.

Whenever criticism is put to the group, its members usually argue that they have been misunderstood.

– THE GROUP’S EMERGENCE –

Kneecap first surfaced in 2017 with a single called CEARTA (meaning "rights" in Irish).

One of the group's two murals in west Belfast, complete with balaclava logo

The group’s website describes them as “frighteningly articulate”.

Among the song’s verses are these (according to an Irish-to-English translation on the website Lyricstranslate.org):

"F**k me, I didn't see the b*****ds coming / A black car hidden on the hill and them inside / No chance at all they'll get my bag of MD / Because I have a party tonight and the RUC aren't welcome";

"Mici Mire and us were taken on the way / Because I gave the dirty Garda a smack... / And we'll continue on until every tear is finished / Legal grass in f**king United Ireland".

This song appeared on their first EP called 3CAG (a reference to the drug MDMA) which was released in 2018.

The group's members are Mo Chara (real name Liam Og O hAnnaidh, a surname which is typically Anglicised to Hanna), Moglai Bap (Naoise O Caireallain, usually Anglicised as Carolan), and DJ Provai (JJ O Dochartaigh, usually Anglicised as O’Doherty).

Mo Chara, according to BBC journalist Matt Fox, was once detained by the PSNI for spraypainting the word ‘rights’ in Irish but “refused to speak English to police, and was held as they waited for a translator”.

Mogali Bap ran a sound recording / music publishing venture called Fite Fuaite Ltd (which appears to mean something akin to “woven”) in west Belfast while still a student. Set up in 2016, it dissolved two years later.

He says he used to be a gambling addict and wrote a play about it, Minimal Human Contact, in 2022.

DJ Provai (pronounced “Provie”, like the term for the Provisional IRA) always appears wearing a balaclava in the colours of the Irish tricolour.

According to an interview in the New York Times, DJ Provai said he used to be an Irish teacher but quit in 2020 “after his school objected to a Kneecap video in which an anti-British slogan – ‘Brits out’ – appears drawn on his buttocks”.

Last year Rolling Stone magazine reported that the trio were aged 23 (Mo Chara), 29 (Mogali Bap), and 35 (DJ Provai), respectively.

This means all were born either close to or after the period when the ceasefires took effect in 1994, leading to the Good Friday Agreement a few years later.

Good Friday Agreement at 25: How death toll from Troubles violence changed in Northern Ireland after 1998 deal

– ‘RUC NOT WELCOME’ –

On the surface Kneecap look similar to another rap outfit called The Rubberbandits, hailing from Limerick: they are both trios, they speak Irish, they rap a lot about drugs, and the Rubberbandits' DJ also wears a mask.

However The Rubberbandits’ work is much less political and is marked throughout by nonsensical surrealism – like their song “Up Da Ra”, which has been seen as satirising historically-confused republicans (the song begins: "For over three hundred years the British Army have oppressed the Irish people / It all started with the Great Potato Famine of 1916..." and ends by claiming Kofi Annan and Michelle Pfeiffer are in the IRA).

Republicanism is one of the central themes of Kneecap's music (they refer to themselves as “republican hoods” and their fans as "fenians") as well as hostility to the police (whom they call the RUC, despite the RUC having disbanded in 2001, when they were children).

The promo material for one of the group's songs, "HOOD", features Mogali Bap holding a hurling stick studded with nails next to a policeman who has been tied to a chair.

The lyrics include: "‘Nois cúpla ceist (now a couple of questions): Do ya want it in your chest? / Or your knees or your head? / DJ Provai has the lead / You can beg, you can plead, you can tell us what we need / You can change your name / But you’re all the f**kin’ same."

• In 2019 the group appeared at The Empire Music Hall in Belfast, a day after Prince William and Kate had visited the venue.

From the stage, they started a chant of "get the Brits out". Kneecap later claimed on Twitter that the chant "was about Brexit".

• A week later, the Irish website University Times reported that Kneecap had been removed from the stage at University College Dublin after chants of the IRA slogan "tiocfaidh ar la" from the crowd.

Kneecap tweeted out: “Hahahhaha we were f**ked off the stage hahha f**k me.”

• The same year, one of the group's promo posters for their "farewell to the union tour" featured then PM Boris Johnson and DUP leader Arlene Foster on top of a bonfire (as a girl, Baroness Foster was onboard a schoolbus when it was bombed by the IRA and saw her father shot in the head by the IRA at their family home).

• In 2022 the group unveiled a mural of a burning PSNI Land Rover in west Belfast alongside the words "RUC not welcome" in Irish.

In response to criticism of this, the group tweeted out: "We didn’t burn a police Land Rover, we painted one. Some people are more worried about a piece of art than the effigies of real politicians hanging off bonfires. We don’t want to be fighting or advocating violence. We want people to be thinking."

• Another mural was unveiled by the group a year later saying "England get out of Ireland", with the group's balaclava logo next to it.

At the second unveiling, people in the crowd began to chant "up the Ra", to which one of the group jokingly responded "I didn't start that!" to much laughter.

• In 2023 Kneecap appeared alongside Gerry Adams, the former Sinn Fein president who denies having been a member of the IRA, in a video promoting the group's performance at the Feile An Phobail.

– ‘THE QUEEN OVERSAW DEATHS OF MILLIONS’ –

The group is also very prolific on Twitter. Past tweets include:

"We say foc the queen agus tiocfaidh ar la" (July 14, 2018);

"RUC scum" (in reference to an article about Gardai at a housing protest in Dublin, September 11, 2018);

"Mon out and support the March for an Irish language Act while the 6 county state is on its last legs" (May 11, 2022);

"They tried to outlaw our schools, restrict funding and even label us terrorists but it's all a little late now for them tricks. Yesterday we had 17k legends on the streets for Irish language rights. Acht anois. Join your local Irish class and smash the state xx" (May 22, 2022);

(Each year, millions of pounds is spent by both the UK and Irish governments on teaching and promoting the Irish language in Northern Ireland, and according to the 2021 census Irish is the "main language" of about 6,000 people, or 0.3% of the population.)

"We don't discriminate when it comes to old folk, but we wouldn't lick cream off her [the Queen]. As head of the British Army she oversaw dozens of wars and deaths of millions. Belfast to Baghdad, Libya to the Malvinas. There's a thousand crimes behind the crown...” (September 8, 2022);

"British media telling an Irish person to educate themselves on history is laughable. Your state is guilty of incalculably more violence pursuing imperialism around the world than anything the IRA or other groups did resisting it. You won't hear that in your schools" (in response to criticism of the Irish women's football team for chanting 'up the Ra', October 12, 2022);

"The city walls of Derry lit up again tonight in the colours of Palestine. Wherever and whenever you see occupation forces or colonialism resist it by every means necessary. Free Palestine" (October 30, 2023);

"They tried to bury us but they didn't know we were seeds" (a quote from IRA man Bobby Sands, November 19, 2023);

"Tomorrow we team up with the anti-monarchy Twitter, Black Twitter Irish Twitter, Scousers Twitter and Celtic Twitter. United front against the king" (tweet accompanied by a picture of a guillotine, May 5, 2023, the day before the coronation);

"Gaeilge for Prods. Here’s a few sentences for you to use in July. ‘Bhe me as mo cheann ar snaois bhan ag an tine chanamha’ – ‘I was off my head on cocaine at the bonfire… I was as lit as a bonfire... I fell off the bonfire’” (September 23, 2023, the year after 37-year-old father-of-two John Steele fell off a bonfire in Larne and died)

“We only need to be lucky once (winking face)” (January 22, 2024. This is a reference to the statement the IRA issued in the wake of the Brighton bombing which killed five people; Kneecap’s tweet was a response to negative coverage in the Mail Online)

In total the IRA killed well over 1,700 people (with the biggest single group of victims being civilians), making it by far the bloodiest participant in the Troubles. More details here:

Just the facts: As pro-IRA chanting spreads across Ireland here are the hard numbers behind the IRA's insurrection

Troubles victims activist rounds on media for 'efforts to mainstream' west Belfast rap trio Kneecap who are known for violent republican iconography

– WE WILL NEVER COMMENT TO YOUR ‘PAPER’ SAYS MANAGER –

The News Letter had put some of the recent heavy criticism of the group – as reported in The Times and The Mail Online – to its manager, Daniel Lambert, who is a former Irish diplomat.

Kneecap: Who are Belfast's republican Irish language rap trio and why are they labelled controversial? A breakdown of the group's background, lyrics and antics

– THE GROUP’S EMERGENCE –

– ‘RUC NOT WELCOME’ –

– ‘THE QUEEN OVERSAW DEATHS OF MILLIONS’ –

– WE WILL NEVER COMMENT TO YOUR ‘PAPER’ SAYS MANAGER –