Native Irish forays into the world of rap and hip-hop have not, so far, been noted for their success.

While there are avid fans of the genre in this part of the world – especially in the more down-at-heel estates, where pasty-faced youths can be seen high-fiving and N-wording one another every day, decked out in shiny NBA merchandise – homegrown exponents of the genre tend to have a hard time being taken seriously.
The pattern might yet be broken by maverick Kilkenny agitator Kevin Spratt, who has stirred up considerable controversy with the song ‘Dirty Cunts’ – a withering excoriation of Bertie Ahern, Mary Harney, Michael McDowell and extending to the shower of tossers that pass themselves off as an Opposition.
Spratt – by his own admission “obsessive about politics, philosophy, literature, music, crates of ale and most importantly, hurling” – has wisely chosen to operate under the Captain Moonlight moniker. Inevitably, the furore over ‘Dirty Cunts’ has earned some handy publicity, though the respective press offices of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the PD’s pointedly refused to comment on the subject. Meanwhile a Labour Party spokesman responded with the presumably ironic but good humoured endorsement “Fair play to Captain Moonlight. What a song! I’m surprised he didn’t enter it for Eurovision. It would have been a surefire winner.”
Mr. Moonlight himself is dismissive of the kerfuffle, although he does make the point that it focuses attention on the increasing acceptability of the ‘C’-word. Once strictly verboten, the term has now (as with the ‘F’-word) to a very large extent shed any offensive connotations and come to be appreciated as a versatile, expressive, colourful mainstay of the English lexicon. Or that’s hte way he sees it, anyway.
“It’s in the vocabulary,” he says, “it’s a part of everyday discourse. I can understand that certain sections of the population still have hang-ups about it, basically because it’s originally a term for female genitalia. So it’s okay to call someone a ‘prick’, but ‘cunt’ is unacceptable? Come on, get over it. All conversation is intended to provoke some reaction, and I suppose I knew there’d be some fuss over it.”
He points out that the noun ‘cunt’ is an equal-opportunities insult, applicable equally to men and women. Nor is its usage necessarily derogatory: one might refer to one’s mate as “a sound cunt” or even “one of the nicest cunts you could ever meet”.
As Johnny Rotten pointed out at the time of the Never Mind The Bollocks controversy: “Who has the right to tell us what words we can and cannot use? I thought the whole point was that we were humans and had created this wonderful thing called language.” And indeed, anything that offends the precious sensibilities of politically-correct linguistic fascists has to be a good thing.
Overall Captain Moonlight’s 15-track debut, Agroculture Part One, is a blistering, ideologically-driven, blackly humorous opus. Belligerent and defiantly insurrectionist, the rest of the album is in similarly unforgiving vein, obviously influenced by founding fathers DMC and NWA, but delivered throughout in a mellifluous Kilkenny accent you couldn’t cut with a knife. The Captain cites Public Enemy, Marx, Nietchzke and Kilkenny hurling boss Brian Cody as seminal influences, and the results are utterly intriguing. As he puts it: “No bozo alpha-male posturing, no chauvinism, no racism. No ism’s at all, except nihilism.”
Agroculture Part One marks out its creator as one to watch, a trailblazing satirical revolutionary, kicking relentlessly against the pricks, and indeed, the cunts. Don’t expect to hear it on RTÉ daytime radio any time soon, but this guy is a visionary (and hopefully a prophet, in view of his declaration that Dublin will win a hurling All-Ireland within the next 10 years). Keep an eye on him.b