Dislike and poverty

The rapper Skriptonite released, perhaps, the best Russian -speaking album of the year. Tell us what is good

On December 16, a rapper Skriptonite - a native of Kazakhstan Adil Zabelov - suddenly released a double album "Uroboros": 80 minutes of songs about evil streets, poverty, misfortune, glory and wealth. Significant records rarely come out at the end of the year, but scripts always violated the rules of the industry - and won. Dalilov himself said that after the release of Uroboros, for two to three years he would stop engaging in hip-hop. Medusa editor Alexander Gorbachev explains how scriptitis has become one of the most striking Russian -speaking musicians in recent years - and how you can interpret its new album.

In November 2015, the Russian rap game rolled over twice. First, the album of Oximiron "Gorgorod" was released. On the same day, the “House with normal phenomena” was announced - the first record of the promising rapper Scriptonite from the Kazakh city of Pavlodar; She came out, as was said, ten days later. Looking back, it is not without reason to assume that it was in these two weeks that the final triumph of Russian hip-hop was formed and fixed as the most lively and profitable local music-a genre that was considered a subculture for too long, simply replaced the rest of the culture. Roughly speaking, Oximiron proved to everyone that rap in Russian could be great poetry. Skriptonite proved that he can be great music.

The two mentioned albums are related not only by the fact that they appeared almost simultaneously-but also what happened next to their authors: having broken the industry, Miron Fedorov and Adil Littlement to some extent broke themselves. Oximiron continues to exist in the luggage of Gorgorod so far; The fact that for all formal successes this is very reminiscent of a creative crisis, I already wrote . Skriptonite promised to release the second part of the “house” the day after the first; then in January ; then in May 2016; Then in May 2017. When the “holiday on 36 Street”, the chronicles of random sexual relations and round-the-clock parties, nevertheless came out (and eventually became the most popular Russian-speaking album from published in 2017), the artist said that this is “the wrong album”, but “he” will be released in the fall. Autumn occurred at the end of December: scripts without warning, published a two-part OPUS “Uroboros” on Saturday-and immediately stated that he was tying with hip-hop for the next three years. The circle closed, the snake bit itself by the tail, the songs of the scriptonite in two years made an exciting path from the mud to the riches and back to the mud.

For the Russian rap, Adil Porilov is the hero at the same time paradoxical and exemplary. Let's start with paradoxes. Skriptonite is one of those who make the stupid word “Russian -speaking” in the conversation; The person who sends the Russian hip-hop to new territories is Kazakh. Rap is, as it is customary to think, about the words, but to make out what scripts read is often incredibly difficult; His innovative reading method consists in the fact that he chews the words to complete unrecognizability; An perhaps the most powerful moment of the whole album “Uroboros”-a three-minute infernal sob for a pipe and Karpenter’s some key in the song “Innature”-is generally almost impossible to understand without a cheat sheet: only a hysterical word “drill” is being included in the ears. There are other reasons for bewilderment: the rap is traditionally peremptorously and openly expresses about the state, the “system”-and these songs are the existence of any social structures, except for nuclear (family, flock) are simply ignored. In the end, the scriptitis in the most outlandish way is treating the traditional topics of hip-hop: money, women, parties and other attributes of success and superiority make up the main matter of his songs-but this is dark matter. If you do not briefly describe what kind of music it is for the music, it will probably turn out like this: these are endlessly gloomy songs about endless fun.

All this is so - and yet scriptonitis can not be called a stranger in his clearing. Yes, it is unhealthy, well, after all, there are many other first persons of modern Russian rap people: there are more people: in Oximiron, there are more London than St. Petersburg; "Caspian cargo" - from Baku; Max Korzh - from Minsk; Commercial triumph of Jah Calib-from Alma-Ata. Yes, he is indifferent to the policy in about any of its aspects - but after all, to almost everyone else ; This is oximiron with its multi -party - anomaly. Yes, the children of the skeleton in the scriptonite inevitably turn into hell, but self-eating and a hangover are very Russian, and he is also not the only one here.

As it seems, the nearest analogue of scriptonitis is Oleg LSP , also, by the way, non -named, from Belarus; Actually, these are two main competitors in the struggle for the conditional title of the most interesting musician in the Russian hip-hop. And the one and the other think of songs in the manner of operas: they play parties in roles, surround the main topic with branches and reservations, equip rap as a comprehensive genre that incorporates all possible expressive means (in the case of a scripton, this is a Noise, a trip-hop, and blues, and that only not). And the one and the other put their lyrical heroes - if you like, themselves - to the very bottom of reality; They find their soul under the cork of the bottle, under the dress of a stranger, under a pack of crazy money - and turn it inside out. The main difference here is in emotional roles: if LSP is a romantic intellectual, which all the time staggering between cynicism and vulnerability, then scriptitis is a yard alpha male, an indifferent playboy, which is turning from his own indifference. Maxim Semelak in his book about the Leningrad group remarkably discusses about the polarity of Russian rock, where on one side there are cords with its naturalistic joviality, and on the other - about all the rest with their painful reflection. In a scriptitis, who, of course, is as much hero rock and roll as Emsi (and performs with a rock band at concerts), it is interesting that he acts on both of these poles at the same time. It is made of meat, and this meat hurts.

Comparisons are always the main temptation and the main trouble of musical criticism. There were already too many of them in this text - and one could continue to rush to names. Remember, say, Kanye West, who, like a scriptitis, is much larger than a composer than a poet; In the end, the ascetic minor power of the individual moments of the second part of the “Uroboros” (it is called “Mirrors”) typologically resembles the “Yeezus” plate. Or, for example, Kendrick Lamar is a genius from slums, which also differs incredibly plastic work with the phonet of the tongue, due to which sometimes the most inconsistent words rhyme.

The nuance is that these comparisons will be not so much inaccurate as they are not soleless. The fact that at the “Uroboros” is primarily thrown into the ears is the total absence of references, quotes, references, paraphrases; In general, there is any dialogue with someone except himself. It is made of meat, it is precisely what: Scheeptite is a pure organica, a sound that is not mediated by additional cultural mediators, which exists as a phenomenon of nature (it is characteristic that about all the interviews of the artist are reduced to attempts to explain to the interlocutor that he, in general, does not think too much about his work; the song “Interview” seems to be partly about it). This is music, which sounds as much as it smells - then, sex, alcohol, drugs, bonfire. These are songs that I want to describe more likely verbs than adjectives: they knit, load, throw up, grind, whip, whimper with a scream “Boanding!” In the work of the same name. How correctly they yell: “We are without intellectuals, dirty animals” - in the “Uroboros” there is an incredible charm of savagery.

And in a sense, it seems absolutely logical that the most organic person in the Russian rap recorded an album about poverty.

“Uroboros” is divided into two parts: the first, “Street 36” - about the roots, the base, their own; The second, “mirrors”, about what strives to tear from these roots. Each has its own harshose and its own aspects of stunning power (on the “mirrors” it is primarily a symphony of anxious wind “About the lucky” and the closing saga “Last night”), but the first for history is perhaps more important. The Russian rap has long learned to embody the middle class life into great art (see “ Cast ” or the same “Caspian cargo”), but people living behind the poverty - of which only in Russia are more than 20 million, remained almost invisible to him. Skriptonite, the poet of the city of Pavlodar and the native village of Leninsky (the album is clearly no coincided with the Independence Day of Kazakhstan), gives them a voice: in “Street 36” there are many moments that cannot be played and composed. First of all, it is “ butter ” and “position”-a strikingly subtle statement about credit slavery-but in one way or another this topic determines all the songs and highlights traditional hip-hop motifs in a new way: say, banditry is not so much a measure of steepness as a way to avoid vegetation; And all the same glory, sex and other temptations of star life entail not only overwork, but also shame. In a sense, it is also an answer to all questions about politics: scriptitis sings and reads for people who are primarily surviving; for a society that is not before being civilian; And for himself, who cannot and does not want to forget them.

And, since we started talking about the economy, then the Uroboros, it turns out, is the songs of the subsistence minimum. In the sense of the word “subsistence”, which implies the latest lines of the album: “Let the music save your life.” Skriptonite is definitely not the same person whose promises should be believed, but if he really tied it with hip-hop for the next three years, it's okay: this minimum is enough for the genre for a long time.

Alexander Gorbachev