Translated material
Rap in Russian and Chechen
2H Company. "Psychosurgeons" ("Bullfinches")
Russian rap is raising its head and becoming so good and original that it’s as if it’s no longer Russian, but downright real. Several releases of the “conversational genre” that appeared this year confirm that the trend is developing and going in different directions. To the maxim of my colleague, professional brawler Nikolai Fandeev, “our pop is much better than our rock,” we can now add that our rap is better than all our pop-rock combined. Moreover, Russian-language rap also influences the same genre among national minorities.2H Company. "Psychosurgeons" ("Bullfinches")
A wonderful group - angry, prickly, nervous. In my opinion, conceptually this is closest to the New York underground rapper Mos Def, more precisely, to the song I Against I, which he recorded with Massive Attack. 2H Company has everything exactly like that - caustic text in a prickly electronic design, and this design was created by the advanced electronic group “Christmas Tree Toys”. So what’s pleasantly surprising is the quality of production of all this, in addition to the intellectually caustic texts about science fiction, video games and a neutered cat, whose “balls... made it difficult to maintain the style of decoration of our apartment, its growing internal comfort, eating up my money more and more every year. “Oh, I see,” the cat answered. Then pull out my claws, otherwise I’ll inadvertently damage the furniture. No sooner said than done. One more movement, closer to the idyll.” And after talking with the cat about hygiene, the hero goes to war, then becomes a crazy spy, then generally goes on a “trip”. Although it seems that he never returned from it.
"Bricks." "Tsar's Album" (Gala Records)
The next, already sixth album from the St. Petersburg quartet. The sound is live guitar, as before, but now “Bricks” have become more musical and much better recorded (I remember how they recorded an album in the lo-fi style at home, and it was impossible to listen to). The guys are already quite skilled, stylistically diverse: slow songs, hard core, mid-tempo things. Against such a background, you can “read” anything. They were once compared to the Beastie Boys (at first the Bricks were also a trio), but it is better to find a parallel with Eminem: irony, reflection and ridicule of the party.
The album begins with a distance with deliberate imbecility: “Men produce, and women give birth, warriors fight, and suppliers supply. Every step is described, from birth to grave. Why complicate things? The amoeba spoke." Another song depicts the life of a professional wedding general: “Today is the so-called going out. I will walk in the dark all night like a goose. At least it’s okay - I’ll get enough... I don’t care about all this “arenbia”. It is unlikely to be clear to a fashionable sheep; It’s unlikely that any sheep will understand my brilliant speech with applause at the end... We need to hang out, business is business - all I need is a fur coat to cover my naked body... I’m gloomy, and, as a rule, I’m good at selling for free table." Further, there would be some love lyrics, of course, but where would we be without that.
Anzor. Grozny Rap. (Zona Records/"Mystery of Sound")
A unique thing - the first rap album in the world in the Chechen language, from the city of Grozny, Chechnya itself. Anzor (who was discovered in Grozny a couple of years ago by TV journalist Andrei Loshak) recorded the album in Moscow, at a friend’s apartment. For a year and a half, the authors tinkered with the material, which can now be called a high-quality rap product. It sounds very good, but you wouldn't realize right away that it was recorded at home using a Macintosh and ProTools. But still - home-recording, damn it. The songs are about the worldview of a resident in Chechnya, “read out” in the artist’s native language, a language whose sound surprisingly resembles French. The booklet contains texts with English interlinear translations. Although everything is clear from the names of the tracks - like Tyordu (“Enough”), Gerz Bali Dyal (“We got enough of the weapon”), Nohchi (“Chechnya”), Yokhin ghal (“Destroyed city”), Kho kher vyallya (“You have gone crazy") or Tesh khanah vez? (“Who to believe?”).
At first, “Rap from Grozny” was released by exotic-hungry Latvians (Riga label Zona Records), but soon it was re-released here by the major “Mystery of Sound”. How Anzor came to rap and why he came to rap is a mystery. “No one here knew anything except Decl,” he admits. But somewhere he still managed to find pirated cassettes with “classics of the genre”: Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Public Enemy. I didn’t understand what the black boys were singing about, but I “caught up” that in this form you can talk about anything, and in your native language.