A quick overview of rappers from southern Russia suggests the existence of some regional traits. Joking about their distance from primetime swagger, these young musicians adopt a special tone for quiet towns.
Fresh hip-hop collaborations have appeared this week, all the way from Vilnius to Magadan. What connects them, oddly enough, is a desire to escape the grand scale of their enterprise. Lyricism and gratitude come to the fore.
For all the musical inspiration that Russian rap takes from a US heritage, things are very different when it comes to lyrics. We offer three examples of new recordings from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Regular gatherings of young hip-hop producers in Minsk help to show the local resonance of that style. From various people and places around the capital, a worldview takes shape that's far from primetime swagger.
As Western genres of songwriting travel eastwards, they take with them all manner of assumptions and stereotypes. Those same markers, however, are often treated very differently by the time they reach Slavic soil.
Three projects from three cities all make use of a Western rap heritage in order to fashion a locally relevant worldview. Those same local contexts, however, turn the raison d'être of any such narratives into something very different.
All three of these projects toy with elements of nostalgia or even tawdry, overtly commercial music-making. Nonetheless, somewhere beneath the irony, self-mockery, and sarcasm, a lyrical sprit endures.
New recordings from Dowdy (Samara) and Vtgnike (Moscow) are linked by their views on patriotism. What, in other words, should Russian dance music sound like in a land pummeled by ideology and cynical business?
New songs, texts, and instrumentals by these artists all concern an interplay of anonymity and elitism. They investigate the thin line between standoffishness and the public's total unawareness...
Last summer we took a look at the work of Flu GI from the Moscow suburb of Lobnya, followed by their side-project Terra Fantastica in December. Seemingly alternating between these two outfits, Nikita Kouznetsov has now swung his attention back to the former: Flu GI have a brand new album for the...
