Some lyrical publications from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Penza are full this week of boyish memories. All these performers hope to preserve pre-adult enthusiasm and naivety from subsequent disappointment.
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.
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.
New hip-hop recordings from Samara and St Petersburg show a high degree of faith in sentiment and stargazing. An equally recent project from Moscow, though, implies that optimism and escapist fantasies will slowly fade away...
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.
The "Free Crates" organization is establishing an impressive list of Russian and Ukrainian beatmakers. Many of these musicians come from small towns: the staff at Free Crates turn that apparent setback into a philosophical benefit.
From Orenburg, close to the Kazakhstan border, comes a collection of instrumental hip-hop from JGorsh. That spatial distance is then viewed in biographical terms by St Petersburg's Morning Records. Childhood memories are cherished...
