| |
|
|
Russia meets Britain in the hip-hop of DJ Vadim
BY MICHAEL ALAN GOLDBERG
|
|
|
|
|
When last fall Mike Skinner, the British rapper who goes by the name Streets, released his debut album, Original Pirate Material (Atlantic), to critical acclaim, he didn’t show much faith in the American public’s willingness to embrace a rapper from the other side of the pond. "I can’t understand why anyone in America would want to get into it," he told an MTV interviewer, referring to the CD. "Americans are insular — they don’t need to go outside America for anything." And indeed, despite an intensive media push, Streets’ album disappeared faster then those weapons of mass destruction that Saddam stored in Iraq. It’s no secret that home-grown hip-hop is the rule in the US — Streets was an anomaly in that he was given a fighting chance by MTV, a number of music magazines, and even a few adventurous alternative radio stations. Yet even as the American hip-hop industry churns out gangsta hit after gangsta hit, some of the most innovative hip-hop is being produced beyond our shores. And though most international rappers still pay homage to hip-hop’s African-American roots, they don’t just mimic a Bronx accent anymore. Instead, the new breed draw on the messages of community, ethnic pride, and self-determination that hip-hop once stood for, and they use the form as a means of innovative expression, just as the original American rappers did 15 or 20 years ago. That’s not to say that real hip-hop has disappeared from these shores. True, detecting flaws in the mainstream is like shooting gangstas in a barrel. High-profile acts like 50 Cent, Jay-Z, Nelly, and Ja Rule are simply recycling the pimps ’n’ ’ho’s/guns ’n’ ice clichés. And the music has become trendier than a spring-fashion show: the producer of the moment gets all the work, and before long everyone’s single is set to the same basic groove — lately, it’s the Neptunes who’ve been providing those beats. There is an underground rap scene, but on recent albums, Black-Eyed Peas, the Roots, and Jurassic 5 have been all too willing to make æsthetic concessions to the mainstream. And digging deeper only gets you MCs engaged in the equally played-out game of taking sour-grapes shots at the chart-toppers. Worldwide, on the other hand, you’ll find crews who are experimenting with the latest drum ’n’ bass rhythms, unusual cadences, and a wide range of subject matter. One of the most dynamic of the new breed of European hip-hop auteurs spends most of his time tucked away in the outskirts of London (though he’s coming to T.T. the Bear’s Place next Friday). His name is Vadim Peare, though he goes by the nom-de-hip-hop of DJ Vadim, and he lived in St. Petersburg before moving to England at the age of three. Last year he dropped one of the best hip-hop albums in the world: U.S.S.R.: The Art of Listening (Ninja Tune). Although Vadim’s initial mid-’90s releases pegged him as the kind of abstract, experimental, pomo turntablist the Ninja Tune label is known for, The Art of Listening features a United Nations of rappers fleshing out his instrumental creations: Britain’s Phi Life Cypher and Demolition Man, Brazil’s Yarah Bravo, France’s TTC, Spain’s Mucho Mu, and the American underground rappers Vakill (from Molemen), Gift of Gab (from Blackalicious), and Slug (from Atmosphere). Vadim even enlists the services of Polish jazz-fusion singer Urszula Dudziak and members of Welsh rockers Super Furry Animals to fill out his tapestries of exotic instruments and clever beats. The result is intricate, inventive, and accessible. The album aims to embody everything that’s ever been great about hip-hop: purposeful rhymes, tight breakbeats, experimental production. And yet Vadim will be lucky if he sells 20,000 copies of any of his releases in the States. "All I can do is what I do, and hopefully people will gradually come around," he says over the phone from London. "It’s good to be doing shows in the US and demonstrating to people what kind of stuff goes on abroad. For me, music’s always been an international thing. I’m trying to bring lots of flavors into the pot. But you can’t force it on people, it’s just a matter of having them get it in their own time." Vadim does have one theory that may account for the difficulty Americans have had in accepting hip-hop from overseas, and it has to do with the American educational system. "In England, when you’re in school and you’re studying geography or urban history, you spend a lot of time looking at different cities around the world — Mexico City, Tokyo, New York — as well as London. But from what I’ve learned, in America, you tend to just study different American cities, like comparing the rise of Manhattan to the rise of St. Louis. So growing up in Europe, we generally have more of a world view, whereas in America the focus is predominantly the US, and your upbringing isn’t geared toward what goes on outside your own country. That kind of closed upbringing affects you a lot in terms of your later choices in life, like what books you read and what music you’re gonna listen to. So if you don’t really know any other world, you’re not gonna look for or care about anything else." And then there’s the language issue. It’s hard to appreciate, say, the militant anti-establishment vitriol of a crew from the Basque country when you can’t understand a single word. Same goes for listening to Rin or Boss MC, two potent Japanese rappers known for their work with legendary countryman DJ Krush. They could be railing against the war in Iraq or going on about a really good spicy tuna roll they had last Saturday. Cunning wordplay becomes a moot point. Still, you don’t always need a grasp of the language to feel the vibe and appreciate the flow, to savor the way vocal pacing, intonation, and accentuation add texture and beauty to the beats, the instrumentation, and the samples. "I think Spanish flows the most beautifully, definitely more than English," says Vadim. "I think Spanish hip-hop is more emotional, more fluid, more harmonic, more melodic, more everything. French and Portuguese are also very beautiful in that way. There’s just a certain flair to the language." You could suggest that since the words mainstream American hip-hop have become so banal, one doesn’t really need to understand them — but that’s not an argument that’s going to win over many American hip-hop heads. Another option would be to have foreign hip-hop crews translate their raps into English in order to make inroads in America, but that’s not likely to make anyone very happy. "One of my favorite groups is Silent Majority, who are based in Lausanne, Switzerland," says Australian writer Tony Mitchell, who edited the 2001 anthology Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA. "They rap in French, Spanish, English, Swahili, and Jamaican patois — all in the same track. But in order to market themselves in the US, they’d have to drop it all and do it just in English, and they’d lose what makes them special. And they won’t do that." Besides, even Vadim knows that simply translating raps into English isn’t going to ensure anyone a spot on the Billboard charts. "The system’s been completely programmed in America. The people who control the record labels now are just glorified accountants. They’ve been given a directive from the corporations that own them that they’ve got 50 million and they’ve gotta turn that into 100 million. Doesn’t matter how they do it, whether it’s a teen-pop band, a rapper, a member of the KKK, whatever. And then at the end of the year, they have the Grammys and pat themselves on the back over who made the biggest profit." Yet with the major labels bleeding money and losing their conglomerate backers, that system may finally be cracking. Which means that foreign hip-hoppers like Vadim might yet have a chance to make inroads in the US on their own terms. "That’d be nice," says Vadim. "I wish it would happen a bit faster." DJ Vadim performs at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square, next Friday, September 12; call (617) 492-BEAR.
|
