Kneecap at Wide Awake London 2025

They started the show with the exact same three slides that, after their Coachella set, made the US government go into witch-hunting mode to revoke their work visas. They’ve started an international furor about their on-stage discourse. They have a court case in June. They’re as anti-police as they’ve ever been. If you’d come to a Kneecap show expecting polite banter, I imagine you’d be the kind of person to walk into a mosh pit, confused about all the free space so close to the front. This isn’t a spectator show. Involvement is key.

In Brockwell Park, as in the Colorado Desert, the three slides were welcomed with cheers of recognition and support from flag-waving, balaclava-wearing fans, who had already spent the whole day visually, audibly, full-bodily representing the political alignment of an energetic, subversive, incredibly diverse festival. Kneecap headlining was the final statement.

Jumping headfirst into IT’S BEEN AGES “since we made the front pages”, the Irish rap trio looked as unphased as ever. In black tracksuits, DJ Próvaí with his iconic balaclava covering his face, they tackled the sea of people like opening a floodgate. To a backdrop of political caricatures, lyrics and newspapers, the band let loose to their unique bilingual wordplay.

The juggling of playfulness and sobriety was obvious: you were as likely to hear “Open up the pit!” as “Does anybody know a good lawyer?” Their lyrics vary from laugh-out-loud contrasts like “Tiocfaidh ár lá get the Brits out lad! A one way ticket, please, I’ve lost my bus pass” – shouted with the desperate energy of someone who’ll fight you for it – to the punch-to-the-gut violence brewed between different social groups, unemployment, the dark side of partying. Joined on stage by Jelani Blackman for the song Harrow Road (with such lyrics as “If I get stabbed, 1 to 10, how bad will it sting?”) you’re never allowed to forget that this music stems from centuries-old hurt. “We never thought we’d play this in London”.

But while a heavy political discourse was ongoing (“We’re here and we don’t need to worry about bombs falling from the fucking sky”), the party – light-hearted, effervescent – was also fierce. The amount of fans rapping along in English and Irish was staggering, the age range gave me pause (with mothers brought along by their adult children and elderly couples partying as hard as any of us youngsters), the moshpits were relentless. The night before, they had played a secret show only advertised to fans on their WhatsApp group (story goes it was sold out in 90 seconds), where they also debuted their latest single RECAP, and the energy that had been built up at the 100 Club could now overspill to the thousands and thousands dancing at Wide Awake. DJ Próvaí jumped into the final mosh pit and somehow also made it out.

An ongoing source of wholesome good humour was their interactions with the BSL interpreters on the side of the stage. When they first became aware of them, Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara both stopped and stared at the fast signing happening. After a fist-bump and a shoutout, the whole show was peppered with questions of “how do you say ___ in sign language?”. By the end, all 20,000 of us could sign Free Palestine and at least three curse words.

You’d walk out of a show like this with one of two or maybe both revelations. One: this is the most anarchic club music you’ll be likely to hear this decade, if you’re of more gentile inclinations and have always stayed away from trouble. Two: when art, protest and fun collide, whatever protective ideological barriers you have are suddenly jackhammered down. Just like gratitude and fear are two feelings that find it hard to coexist, when you’re having a good time moshing into people of whose political alignments you have very little clue, it’s pretty hard to hate them. The exhilaration and adrenaline of the show takes over and you might find yourself listening to strangers like you never have before.

As the band themselves highlighted several times, what a privilege we all had in our freedom to gather on a warm May night, to hug our friends and sing as loud as we could together. It was an event-in-an-event, riotously proclaiming the immense joy that we could be there – safe and happy, listening to music – while at the same time holding on to the civil duty we have to fight back against injustice and corruption. Fun is often a gateway into serious things, a muscle relaxer. Before you know it, you’ve walked 50 miles in protest to the tune of Get Your Brits Out. Whatever gets you moving – it’s what our right to assemble is all about.