The enemy of the state

Ivan Dreshmin is 21 years old. He is from Ufa, like Yura DDT. He has three words on his face - “Numb” , “Hate” and “Love” . He, better known as rapper Face , calls himself the voice of a generation-and in general does not exaggerate. Thousands of teenagers at the age of 14-18 gather in his concerts in the non -metic Russian cities, and it is still unknown how much remains at home, because they are forbidden by parents. His hits from VKontakte are not what you would like to see in the player of your child.

The new Face album “Paths” in a couple of days collected more than 14,000 reposts and 1.3 million listening to VKontakte. And this is not a puberty bravado and an obscene teenage lyrics, which are used to hear from Face and other representatives of the so -called new school of Russian rap. “Ways are inaccessible” is an attempt to direct and tough conversation about modern Russia and that it does not suit a young man in it. “My country is one large zone,” says Anfan Terriebl from VKontakte and further, rhyme “Russia” and “powerlessness”, denounces hypocritical clergy, corrupt servants of the law and indifferent to the whole crowd. And the “police, the RUVD and the Ministry of Internal Affairs” directly sends to x **. Fans and cheaters of the artist (and all the rap community) are amazed at the acute of statements, but more because they sound from the lips of a person, most known by songs with punchlains “She eats my x **, like a burger” and “I am e ** l your bitch”. Now he reads:

I see people in my eyes one powerlessness.
Here the victim is to blame if it is raped.
Stupidity, rudeness, theft - power in their hands.
Freedom of speech here is a pancreas; This is Russia.

In the Russian rap (as in Russian rock music) there is no established tradition of political freedom and social criticism. Our rappers do not like pamphlets, preferring foggy parables to them. Even the most sharp in the tongue and not climbing in the pocket of them say that rap is not journalism. In 1998, the Pioneers of the Russian rap Bad Balance Anarchist shouted “Fuck Da Politicians ” , but it is noteworthy-the whole song is strictly in English. In the Putin era, Russian rappers were configured to power indifferently or loyalist, or even strove to break out in patriotic feelings - Timati and the wards of his label Black Star were especially successful in this. Of course, there were sorties to the territory of critical statements about Russian life: Basta - “Sun is not visible” , Husky - “Seventh of October” , dezl - “traffic jams, construction, dirt” , noize mc - “Jordan” , “caste” - “scrapers” and a whole conceptual album of Oxxym I Ron “Gorgorod”. But neither the place nor the time are indicated in any of these songs - they are written in an ezopian language. Russian rap prefers fiction. No one dared to expose himself to a dissenting-the state’s principled enemy in the image and likeness of the American classics of hip-hop Public Enemy . Rapers are adults and know how this can end in Russia: for example, a wave of mass media and cancellations of concerts at the request of various state authorities, through which we had to go through, for example, Noize MC , which accidentally appeared in the center of the scandal around his speech in Lviv . The most problematic of our rappers in the eyes of the internal security organs is perhaps the city romantic Guf, who has repeatedly been detained on suspicion of drug storage.

“I am the enemy of the state, my language is true,” says Face on the new mini-album, and this is not such a surprise as it seems at first glance. Ivan Dremin, who, in his own words, distinguishes only three names in Russian music - “Cinema”, “King and the Jester” and “Civil Defense” - punk from the Russian rap. His scandalous hits from VKontakte are slaps in the face of social taste and morality, their texts should not be perceived literally. Punk, as Egor Letov bequeathed, "should always be against it." Face riots riot primarily against the false conventions and norms of the adult world, in which an unspoken rule was formed-about the Russian reality either well or in any way. His protest is a protest of the young who declared himself on March 26, “a riot of schoolchildren” , who briefly shook the Russian socio-political life for a long time. As well as young people baptized by the propaganda channels of “shkolota”, Face does not have political views or sympathy. He is dissatisfied with everyone and everyone - both the system, the opposition, and the shirnarms, which are deeply purple. His February call to fans not to go to the presidential election, after which he joined Twitter-driving with Navalny , is widely known. But the voice of the generation feels the request of his audience - schoolchildren and students from VKontakte really want to talk about what adults prefer to be silent about. Two main lines on the new Face album - “On the news, everything is the same: everyone is happy in Russia. But if you are silent, then do not worry: we will say. " Let them talk.