The words of the boys

As a chanson revived in Russian -language music of recent years

The two most striking videos of the beginning of 2024 are the torn charts of the metaphysical chanson of the “smoke” Itsyk Tsyper and the video about the Baby Melo crime, which mother takes from the special receiver (there is no 15 years old). Such music does not pass by the Russian authorities: so, at their request, on February 2, YouTube blocked the clip for the song “Dump” in the Russian Federation.

All last year, the “Caspian Cargo” and Gio Piki sounded “on the white” group from Russian cars. And at the end of 2023, everyone discussed the “Word of the kid”-a series about the Tatarstan crime at the end of the Soviet system. Chanson-aesthetics literally occupied the Russian pop science-specially for Novaya Gazeta Europe, music critic Nikolai Ovchinnikov (“Vois”) tells how this happened and why there is nothing wrong with that.

This text can be read to the music. The Nevoshanson playlist, which is mentioned in the text, will find the link .

“I'm a gangste! I am a gangste, ”the 15-year-old guy yells into the cell, shouting his mother. She, in turn, scolds the main moralist of Russian music to Ekaterina Mizulin and invites her to lag behind the musicians and go to a psychotherapist.

Gangste's name is Goga Meladze, aka Baby Melo. One of his main hits "Capital" begins with the phrase "fucking, man, we will kill you fuck, I tell you." In his other big hit Who is Melo? The line is repeated: “He shouted to us:“ the farm of the suit, ”but the conceptual [homosexual],” - it means that the hero’s substance in the concepts in the zone is not a thief, but “lowered”. What is the time? “Time to fuck a person,” Melo answers us in another Banger. An angry and adhesive line is repeated 42 times.

"I stole and will steal." Baby Melo and aggressive boy rap

Melo has long attracted the attention of Mizulina with his propaganda of a criminal lifestyle - not a daring age, shouting and spitting into a microphone, he screamed so that anyone would hear. Here Mizulina reacted. “Baby Melo and his friends (Hood Rich Luka, Young Kaluga, XZOL and others) are a real teenage gang. They promote drugs, make interethnic discord and insult the Russians and Slavs as a whole, demonstrate weapons in social networks, shoot right in the apartment and shoot on video, dashing without rights, ”Mizulina, more than the youngest in her telegram channel.

And the video with Meladze and his mother was shot near the special cost for minors - the rapper was taken from the concert allegedly for obscene region.

Melo’s father, businessman Amiran Meladze, said that the “dozens” of the police were constantly hanging on Bekstage and in the dressing room and only waited for someone to say a swearing word from the stage.

Goga Meladze is a boy from a good family with income. His father claims that his son was engaged in the theater studio, got used to the role of a rapper. But even if this is the image (the sources of the author of the text confirm this theory), then very attractive. Meladze was taken away from the crowded Petersburg Giant Hall. At Yandex Music - more than 300 thousand listeners over the past month. To the tops like Oximiron or the Caspian Cargo group, he is far from, but it seems that this is only the beginning, and the problems with the law will only add a gog of popularity.

And this is a great occasion to talk about how in 2023 the Russian-speaking hip-hop-and pop music as a whole-again, on the one hand, became, street, aggressive and kid, on the other, sincere and holding roots. Well, that is, merged with chanson. So much so that even Morgenstern decided to play with a truly Russian genre (unsuccessfully).

Baby Melo is far from the first who, “contrary to the law”, erected “life” in his songs to the Absolute. Russian -speaking rap, in principle, has never been particularly about law -abiding. Only recently they began to talk about this louder and angrier. Another hero of the publications Mizulina-Scally Milano-was one of the best in the genre of scam-rape genre , the gross hip-hop about how to deceive suckers. One of his best tracks was called “159” - in honor of the article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for fraud. Scully did not hesitate to tell how he was deceiving for the money of producers, and explain directly in the tracks about the creation of PayPal to withdraw the “nasty”.

The 2023rd was the year of the rise of an aggressive street raP. In addition to Baby Melo, this, for example, is a young Kaluga (aka Mikhail Kalugin, “he must earn more than yesterday - this is a race,” he proclaims in his hit Jeep) or the association “52”. Or the performer of Icegergert: in his most famous video, the child goes to the KGB hoodie, and he yells: “He stole, steal and steal. I will steal, I will steal! " - Sunses, hands themselves reach for a baseball bat. There are a lot of dirt.

Aggression streams like blood after a knife to the artery. The music of the new Russian-speaking hip-hop is one big scene of the fight from the "Word of the Boander."

The matter is the war and the general bitterness? Partly. While the 15-year-old Baby Melo shouts that now “the time to fuck a person”, the other 15-year-old-Adam Kadyrov- does it in reality.

On the other hand, all this was quite organic and could happen without war. The Russian -speaking rap was stagnated five years ago. It accumulated a lot of rough, unpleasant energy. She found a way out when the path was cleared: past stars either left, or fell silent, or darkened. So those who climb into the pocket did not climb onto the word, but behind the gloss.

Rap chansonization went on the other hand - more lyrical and close to the traditional format. And this happened before the war . And the reason, it seems, was a crisis in a traditional chanson.

"I remembered my guys young." "Caspian cargo", Gio Pika and post-Postshanson

In recent years, the Russian -speaking chanson has been dependent in development - people on specialized awards have not changed for years, the radio was not pleased with new names. From Stas Mikhailov to Elena Vaengi, from Mikhail Bublik to Lyubov Uspenskaya - all the same on the arena. The aesthetics of the genre seemed to many marginal. Rare flirts of pop and indie artists did not change the situation. Everything changed when rap musicians took up the chanson.

Probably the most striking were the Baku residents of the Caspian Cargo . They elegantly and beautifully described the life of thieves all the past ten years - and did it so famously that they collected respects and critics and colleagues on the stage like Oximiron . Their lines like “Have you watched the program“ Let's get married ”? So let's get married ” - forever among the main quotes of rap in Russian. But they were one of the few - now no longer.

When the Russian rap was finally ovarzhuishauit in the late 2010s, the “cargo” temporarily broke up to return with the most powerful mini-album “Caution, painted” in early 2023. There, they continued to weave from caustic rhymes and lines the story of the life of that part of the generation of zero-today, which did not get goodies at the festival of life and which "only the prosecutor's office and the military registration and enlistment office are needed." The main number of the album is “on White”-a duet with another rapper-Shansnonya Gio Piko, remake of the old hit of the “Sweet Dream” group “On the White Wedeous Wedeous Assetment”, published in 1990. After 33 years, these lines are again in the hit parades.

What is "on white"? The gross and weight pronounce the fate of those very “gangst” performed by fatalism (“as a child, it was easier to draw people with chalk to draw people, and I recalled Gyo Pika“ on a white and white bedspread of January, I recalled the young children with young children ”. By the strength of the emotional intensity “on white” - at the same time the best songs of the circle, and the great “lads, do not shoot at each other” Evgenia Kemerovsky. “On White” is a story about life as one large white path to death and eternal nonsense.

For a generation that is offered a choice in the form of a prison, police, army or PMC, is quite a hymn. Or a funeral march - how to look.

The figure of Gio Piki is also interesting here. Like the participants of the Caspian cargo, this musician of Georgian origin, who lived in Syktyvkar, was not directly related to crime, but the thieves' culture was close enough to be absorbed and poured into a wide audience, it is best to tell this release of the “absorption” about the biography of the musician: look, only spoiled - only spoiled.

Gio Pika became famous for the song about the Black Dolphin, a colony for life convicts, where "there is no call of the second - a messenger of freedom." The portrait of a correctional institution turned out to be no less vivid than a description of such places in the Mediazone or reports of Rus Sitting.

The most buzz for the public happened when the “Fontanchik with Dolphin” was remicked by the Kazakhstan producer Imanbek. Grammy winner turned the song into an ultimatic disco hit. He brought the kid to the dance floor - and you can’t drive him out of there. Where the dances are fast, there are slow dances - the duo of the Gio Piki and Kravts “where did you go” does not get out of the charts for more than a year. And this is a pure water Stasmikhailovsky chanson, only voiced by not a cheap synthesizer, but quite a topical hip-hop sanate. You will not be thoroughly.

"I walked around the room." Tsyba-tseper and chanson on the dance floor

This year, the kid is again on the dance floor. The main hit of January is the song "Smoke" Igor Tsyba. Or Itsyka Tsyper. A hoarse bald man, dressed like any hoarse bald man in your entrance, sings about how the smoke went around the room, enveloped the ceiling and well. All this is in a way (and played, about which below) is so easy that it becomes good for everyone.

The smoke, of course, is not entirely legal, but it inserts not childishly-the “smoke” in the charts overtook Aigel, and the eternal Anna Asti . Who is a tsyper is incomprehensible. “He is either from Odessa, either from Kazakhstan, or from St. Petersburg. Either safely married, or sitting with experience. Either he lives in the village, or not, ” writes the researcher of the Russian chanson Natasha Khomyakova.

But the main advantage of the “haze” is arranging. Instead of a classic synthesizer-three-chord chanson-elegant house. The rest of the hits of the chin (or the chizper) are approximately the same-hoarse purchases like “There are no zinki here, on the heart of an ice floe” on top of the house, then quite a modern hip-hop.

Probably, Ivan Kuchin, who was in the “king-father”, was interfering with a genre with a trip with a trip. And now it has become a common place. The chicken (or the tsyper) acts (or they act-we really do not know who is behind the project) by the same method as the Gio Pika, and the performer under the pseudonym Truit , and the heroes of the Black Tbilisi YouTube channel (five million people listen to “high thieves' music”, as at one time a calo-raP). We take a conservative genre, eternal topics and string them on an actual sound - you like both you and your bat.

"I explode for everyone who is not with us." Macan and new old traditional values

Slightly accurate from the point of view of arrangements, but no less dashing Macan acts from the point of view of chart successes. Andrei Kosolapov, the son of the director of social films by Kirill Kosolapov, reads a single-loving and traditional values ​​under a soft lyrical hip-hop. But the main characters here are roads and what is traveling along them:

“Ahead of seven hours of gas stations, bridges”, “Do you want a new Rolls-Royce, but grandmas are melting in your pocket”, “This traffic is nine points, but I overtook it”-through all these lines the person who named himself in honor of one of the models of Porsche explains.

Macan has a curious Instagram. There he is photographed against the background of cars, replete with kids quotes and confessed to love for God. If an evil rap is a marginal form of a new chanson, if songs like “Dyma” are a sincere conversation on the path, then Macan is in its pure form Stas Mikhailov . The same laconic, modestly dressed and believing in God, the road and beloved woman. A new solid glory for solid gentlemen. A year ago, when I wrote about Macan, I called it a more promising version of the shaman - this is how it turned out. While the performer of the song “I Russian” presses “nuclear buttons” and becomes the hero of the memes, Macan tears the chart without further ado and collects full halls. A smart Kremlin PR man would have long dragged him to Red Square.

And “smoke”, and “on white”, and the hits of Macan appeared after the outbreak of the war - but did she become a trigger for their birth? And yes, and no. On the one hand, the meadow is really cleared, the number of forbidden topics is growing, and in the songs of most new chart heroes there is nothing reprehensible - well, or they will apologize and be corrected like Scally Milano.

On the other hand, a request for such music was before the war. As Rap Critic Dania PornRep wrote back in January 2022, Russia “prefer alcohol, if possible, in its pure form, without overpayment for plastic sturgeons. All the same content about a prison, a heavy Russian share and grave fences in Barnaul love no less than in Birmingham, ”and a chanson is one of the few“ really distinctive sounds ”that we have. Like Latvian hits or a Balkan turbofol , chanson is not just music, but a lifestyle, the same life that has never gone anywhere. Khton from the district leaked into the public in Padik-Rap, then in love for panels.

And the average post -Soviet listener needed people who say with him that they all hurt. I’m not just talking about the “post -Soviet” one here. Still, the “Caspian cargo” from Baku, Hyo Pika has Georgian roots, and Misha Krupin, the most promising chanson project before the war, was the most promising chanson project. Now he sings in Ukrainian.

Meanwhile, his former producer Yuri Bardash-the one that came up with the group “Mushrooms”, dumped into Moscow, received Russian citizenship and is looking for chanson-talents in the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk region.

And the listeners and listeners of the neo -Sansonon are looking for the meaning of life. And they find him in not quite legal earnings, ultranasia, power masculine dominance, endless road, beautiful cars and the desire to organize a traditional heterosexual family.

What is good about that?

Neoshanson of the beginning of the 2020s is the answer to a long-formed request: I want something as traditional as possible in values, but so that it differs in sound from what parents loved, but they didn’t annoy them very much. Neoshanson in 2024 works much more for any popular unity than any official events on this subject.

You say: what's good about that? In Russia, against the backdrop of the war, from all the cracks, traditionalist aggressive masculine music climbs without any participation of power.

Firstly, the fact of the matter is that without any participation of power. Chanson as a genre has always been outside the law and did not recognize the Criminal Code. Faith in God did not imply faith in the ruler. It seems that the most important trend of Russian pop music this year exists in addition to the authorities. And she cannot do anything with him.

Secondly, Neoshanson-to some extent, is also a request for new names. People do not need Stas Mikhailov. Let it be replaced by at least Macan with the same exterior - but it will be another person. People want changes. And rest after them. In the end, the songs of the “Caspian cargo” come down to the fact that it would be nice to tie with a thieves life and enjoy the years that God left you.

Finally, Neoshanson shows in the best form the main song and cultural product of Bolshoi Russia. You can marginalize this music in smart publications as much as you like, but the publications will be closed - and the music will remain. A terribly sticking, okayly tailored - and telling about our country better than any sociology.

We are all a little gangste, that's enough to be shy.