It’s almost surprising that a hip-hop band from the perennially troubled, still-British province of Northern Ireland hasn’t emerged until now: It’s the right kind of place. Admittedly, “race,” in the 21st-century meaning of the word, is not a major consideration on the island of Ireland, despite some discomfort with recent immigration from Eastern Europe, Syria, North Africa and elsewhere. Belfast and Dublin still don’t possess the kind of high-friction cultural ferment found in London, Paris or Berlin, and Ireland’s best-known musical exports can clearly be classified along the spectrum that includes rock, pop, folk and punk: Van Morrison, U2, Sinéad O’Connor, the Pogues.
Indeed, if there’s a track that defines pop music in Northern Ireland before the rise of the Irish-language hip-hop trio Kneecap — now the focus of international controversy and incoherent Fox News attacks after their Coachella performance on April 18 — it would be the exquisite punk-pop single “Teenage Kicks” by the Undertones, released in 1978 during the worst years of the vicious low-intensity civil conflict known as the Troubles.
