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“Your Arms Too Short to Box With God”. The US rapper Lakim Shabazz once made a song out of this wise remark. And even three decades later you should know who you are looking for.
The Irish rap-rap-rap-Raver Kneecap, to whom their festival bookings of the summer as well as in this country, are obviously overestimating themselves. They play at highly commercial US live events such as “Coachella”, where they made prepotent anti-Israel-Relame. They drop Neuköllner demo slogans, because of the USA funded by the USA.
And now you are surprised that the summer deals will be terminated in rows, especially since your agenda is now long of “incidents”.
Why KNEECAP defend its point of view
The band manager defends it that he calls the criticism of the “Coachella” appearance “moral hysteria”. “If someone feels injured by the truth, it is his right,” he said in the Irish broadcaster RTé1. “But it is really important to say the truth, and luckily the boys are not afraid to do that.
And further: “You have the courage and the conviction to stand up for the right thing if you consider that you will come in a post-conflict company. You are ready to do so, even if it could harm your career.”
At the latest after the biopic about its early phase, the trio (two rappers, a DJ) has achieved a certain fame in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. The 2024 film is a kind of West Belfaster “Trainpotting”, a riotous portrait of a riotous band. Kneecap represent party-compatible IRA positions, i.e. Northern Ireland finally out of UK. Otherwise you are in an upper body -free rave rap. Fully on the bell.
Because of their use of Irish idiom as a pop language and the award at the BAFTA Award, I have so far been quite proud of the young clearers in Ireland.
“The only good Tory is a dead tory. Kill your local MP”
That has now tipped. As can be found in the “Irish Times”, even government agencies (“Taoisach”) asked the rappers to “urgently clarify” alleged statements by band members about the support of Hamas and Hisbollah and the murder of conservative Tory MP. The politician Micheál Martin commented on the video that the group shows at a concert in November 2023 and on which a band member chanted: “The only good Tory is a dead tory. Kill your local deputy”.
So far, this has been a “underground” or political pop randals like at the time at the Compton Gangstern NWA
But Kneecap gave them too far into the mainstream and are therefore under observation of a wider debate. After the UK Festival in Cornwall “Eden Seasons” has already canceled them, the renowned slot is also on the brink in Glastonbury. There is already a shift in Germany. A band in the cooling pool.
KNECAP ran into a pop-political mine field with an uncompromising handicap
The urgent explanation of KNEACAP, in which it is said that they “neither support Hamas nor the Hisbollah and have never done so”-also postponed-also in view of the now impending fees. Just like the announcement, the recordings of “The only good Tory is a dead Tory”, his “torn out of context”. They apologize for the pain that they have inflicted on the families of the (real) murdered MP Jo Cox and Sir David Amess.
Kneecap ran into a pop-political minefield with an uncompromising handicap. Nobody forbids them their attitude and opinion, but they have known that they take place in a commercial festival and concert system that has been paying attention to “diversity”, “awareness” and compensation for a long time. If you want to continue to be anti-Semitic or cop killer, you have to count on counterfeiting.