Every era has an album that comes along and takes the temperature of the streets. In 1971, following the aftermath of America’s turbulent 1960s, Sly and the Family Stone gave us There’s a Riot Goin’ On.
Overseas In urban England, particularly London, the mid 1970s cast light on a new lost generation of hopeless youth stifled by institutionalized poverty, political unrest, chronic unemployment and labour strife, all mirrored by the Sex Pistols and their 1977 punk manifesto Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.
At the height of the Cold War between two super powers the United States and the Soviet Union, British punk royalty The Clash poked their nose into the politics of South America with their unprecedented 1980 triple album Sandinista!
The burgeoning political awareness of the rap and hip hop cultures of the 1980s blossomed into full fruition with Public Enemy’s powerful statement Fear of a Black Planet in 1990.
The West Coast of America saw kids casting aside the artificiality of 80s synth pop culture to rock again. Coined “grunge” this latest wave of rock n roll was led by poster boy 27 Club Member Kurt Cobain and his Nirvana crew with their 1991 album Nevermind.
Ushering in The Aughts, the first decade of a new century, next generation American punk rockers Green Day had their say on the state of the union with American Idiot in 2004.
Ever present centuries old racial injustice, death by driving while black, Black Lives Matter and pushback against an imagined post racial era in wake of the first Black president are all reflected in The Teens decade 2014 album Black Messiah by D’Angelo and the Vanguard, To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015 by Kendrick Lamar and The Underside of Power in 2017 by Algiers.
And like these eras before, our current decade, The new 20s, is not without its detractors.
True to the legacy of what has come before, Northern Ireland’s west Belfast based hip hop trio Kneecap eerily rap in their native tongue, the Irish Gaelic language, about what life’s like in their neck of the sector, ruffling feathers along the way.
Their latest sophomore album, Fine Art, follows the award winning comedic drama feature film, eponymously named after the band itself, based on their struggles growing up in sectarian Northern Ireland.
Someone once said: as an artist, you’re not doing your job right unless you’re pissing someone off.
Kneecap are most definitely pissing people off, bless their Irish souls.