July 06, 2005
Hip-Hop's Ahab
By John Matson
Russian hip-hop is my Moby Dick.
From the first night I spent in the country, when I heard 2Pac’s “How Do U Want It?” in a touristy St. Petersburg pizzeria, I have been in pursuit of this great white cultural crossover.
A professor on the trip had mentioned offhand that Rostov is home to one of Russia’s biggest rap groups – a group I later identified as Kasta. Upon my arrival in Rostov, I began to ask around. What’s popular? What do kids listen to in the clubs? The first answer I got was exactly what I hoped to hear – “Rap.”
A Russian student later told me that while St. Petersburg is the capital of Russian rock music and Moscow is the center of show business, Rostov is known as the Russian capital of rap.
Could this be so? Could I have stumbled blindly onto Russia’s answer to the South Bronx, circa 1979? I decided to pursue the topic of Rostov, rap city, as a full-length reported piece.
The feedback I received in class did nothing to quell my enthusiasm. Several times my story was described by my professor as “incredibly easy.” Fellow students greeted my seeming good fortune with envious eye-rolls. Feeling confident, maybe even cocky, I set out to prove my thesis that Russians, and especially Rostovites, absolutely adore rap music.
My first step in confirming this seemingly rock-solid hunch was to hit the clubs. Dodging a tinted-out Hyundai blasting Dr. Dre’s “What’s the Difference?” I paid a hundred rubles to enter Lila, an underground club hosting something that was billed as West Clan: Rap Night.
What I found there was not the crest of an important cultural movement, but it was nevertheless astonishing: two teenage boys, one in an Adidas jacket, the other in camouflage and a Yankees cap, rapping onstage over pre-recorded beats from the DJ (really just a kid with a laptop, half-hunched over in a tiny cave that served as the DJ booth). A doe-eyed boy, no older than twelve, slouched against the back wall in a Kangol hat, smoking a cigarette.
Thirty to forty teenage boys and three or four teenage girls lounged around the club, smoking cigarettes and sipping sodas. Some of them danced, but most simply watched the energetic performance with half-interest. A couple next to me began smooching passionately. I began to feel incredibly old, incredibly American, and – most of all – incredibly conspicuous. (Floating amid a sea of baggy jeans and XXL t-shirts, for the first time in Russia my other-ness was evident from of the tightness of my jeans.)
Unable to summon the nerve to pull out my notepad, I took furious mental notes and swore that I would jot them down later. That Kinkade-esque sunset painting on the wall? Can’t forget that. Lila’s inexplicable tiki theme? Got it. The Yankee-cap rapper cooling down with a bottle of Mirinda between sets? Priceless.
Leaving the club later, literally smoked out of the subterranean hole, I was as confused by my feelings as I had been by the boys’ Russian rhymes. I was energized by the surrealism of what I found and disappointed that it didn’t fit my neatly formed expectations. I hadn’t found Russia’s own LL Cool J – I’d come across a sweaty bunch of kids having a party in what looked like someone’s basement rec room.
Still, as two quick blocks brought me back to Rostov’s main street and its monument to Lenin, I realized that this horde of boys – banded together on a Tuesday night to rhyme earnestly about breaking society’s norms and being an individual – was a more significant find than I could have possibly asked for. Besides, even Moby Dick was a minnow once.