From Keir Starmer calling for the band to be pulled from Glastonbury to playing to a crowd of 45,000 at Finsbury Park, this past year has certainly been an eventful one for the Irish hip-hop band KNEECAP. The only thing missing? New music.

However, almost a year after the release of their album ‘Fine Art’, KNEECAP come out with the single ‘THE RECAP’ and a music video to boot.

The aptly named track recounts some of their achievements and controversies over the last year, cutting between images of the band performing to Mo Chara smiling and raising his fist before entering court. The music video commemorates these moments, standing firm and showing these are things the band is proud of, despite what the media and Westminster alike have to say.

The music video opens on a fast roll of images of the band drinking Guinness in a pub with a heady bassline to match. These images of the band are quickly swamped by some of the many headlines the band has received within the last year, one reading ‘rapper in court over use of flag’.

The drums kick in with the flash of the band's logo, a balaclava. This inclusion of the logo coming right after an onslaught of newspaper clippings stings of irony after KNEECAP have again found themselves making headlines due to being banned from advertising with the same balaclava imagery on the London Underground. 

Throughout the rest of the video, a cartoon DJ Próvaí wreaks havoc on statues of historical British figures, leaving behind rewritten plaques in his wake. DJ Próvaí’s version of Queen Victoria’s plaque reads: ‘A MILLION IRISH DEAD UNDER HER REIGN / HER CROWN FED ON BLOOD AND SILENCE’. Being an Irish band that raps almost exclusively in Gaeilge, they have used their voices to not only expose Britain’s colonial history with Ireland but its colonial present due to its complicity in fueling the Genocide of the Palestinian people

In one of the video's final images, a group of Palestinian men spray paint a mural for KNEECAP in the Aida refugee camp in occupied Palestine. Their mural depicts the Palestinian and Irish flags united together through the green of their flags, represented by a Molotov cocktail with KNEECAP’s infamous ski mask image on it. The striking image of the two flags merging symbolises the true nature of solidarity between two countries that know what it is to be occupied.

Chants of “Free Palestine!” conclude the music video as a camera pans across a sea of Palestinian flags at their Glastonbury show before it cuts to black. If there was any clarification of where KNEECAP stands, this music video is KNEECAP's unequivocal response. Creating a visual documentation of their past year, KNEECAP remain steadfast in their support for Palestine and make art out of the headlines that say they should do otherwise. 

Ella Wilson-Coates

Image: Joshua Mulholland

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