By John Matson
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia – On an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday night in June, the entrance to the underground club Lila became a portal to another world.
Inside the smoke-filled club, just a few feet below the narrow Rostov street, stood two teenage boys, one in an Adidas jacket and the other in camouflage and a Yankees cap, declaring their independence.
As thirty to forty teenage boys and three or four teenage girls lounged around the club, smoking cigarettes and sipping sodas, the two boys rapped onstage – in Russian – over pre-recorded beats. Mostly, according to an interpreter, the boys rapped about friendship, individuality, and flaunting society’s rules. Providing the backbeat was 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. He would later take the stage to perform a song of his own, only after an older boy who had tried to deny him the microphone finally yielded to the sympathetic crowd.
Like all rap parties in Rostov, the southern Russian city of more than a million people, West Clan Rap Night, as this party was called, took place in a rock club. The party at Lila was a manifestation of a persistent hip-hop culture that has existed in Rostov for more than a decade, despite the total lack of rap radio and devoted hip-hop clubs.
The existence of the rap scene in Rostov is largely indebted to Kasta, a local group that formed in the mid-nineties and has remained prominent in the Russian rap world ever since. At MTV Russia’s last Russian Music Awards, Kasta won Best Rap Project for its video “Revnost,” meaning ‘jealousy.’
“Kasta is a pioneer of the hip-hop movement,” said Arno, 21, through an interpreter. For the last four years, Arno has performed in the local group Antanta with his partners Ivan and Nikita. “Now, the movement is developing very rapidly,” he said. “Rostov is one of the cities where rap is on a very high level.” Ivan, 20, boasted that Rostov is a better hip-hop city than Moscow or St. Petersburg.
“Rostov is the city with Kasta, and Kasta made this music popular,” said Alexei Kotellnikov, better known as Slam, who has hosted hip-hop parties in Rostov for the last five or so years. His current venue is Baba Luba, a rock and blues club in downtown Rostov. “When Kasta started throwing their rap parties, that’s when I started hosting my Rap Rounds,” as his parties are known, he said.
Kasta’s structure is loosely modeled on that of the Wu-Tang Clan, the legendary Staten Island rap group that consists of an inner circle of eight core members – nine before the death of rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard in November of 2004 – surrounded by a larger community of affiliated artists like Killah Priest, La The Darkman, and Cappadonna, all of whom used the Wu brand as a springboard to fame.
Similarly, Kasta at its core is comprised of three members (Khamil, Vlady, and Shym), while its community of associates, United Kasta, now includes 19 members.
At 26, Denis Ilyenko is an elder statesman of Rostov hip-hop. Better known as Electronic, he is a member of United Kasta, a longtime associate of Kasta’s principal members, and a frequent contributor to their albums. Dressed in a yellow collared shirt and a windbreaker, his sleepy brown eyes came alive when discussing the movement that he and his friends helped create and the group that inspired them.
During the interview, Electronic pulled down his sock to demonstrate a tattoo of the iconic Wu-Tang ‘W’ on his ankle. Originally, he said, Kasta was going to be called “Wu-Blood,” but the members decided that the proposed moniker was too silly.
“We always tended to East Coast rap,” Electronic said in explaining Kasta’s affinity for the Wu-Tang Clan and other East Coast artists, which are generally characterized by spare, hard beats. West Coast artists like 2Pac and Snoop Dogg, on the other hand, typically rhyme over slow-rolling, funk-based tracks. “We like hard beats, that tough sound,” he said. “The Cali sound, without that toughness, it’s just pop.”
By following in the footsteps of the Wu-Tang Clan and calling attention to their groundbreaking work, Kasta have made idols of Staten Island’s finest – Rostov now abounds with Wu-fanatics. Wu-Tang graffiti covers the entrance to an underground passageway, Slam hosted a “Wu-Night” at Baba Luba in June, and local record stores are filled with CDs from the Wu-Tang Clan and its members. (Even the ultra-rare soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s “Ghost Dog,” scored by Wu-Tang leader the RZA, is available in bootleg form at a downtown record store.)
“The Wu-Tang Clan is very popular in Rostov, and in all of Southern Russia, because of Kasta,” Slam said. Sergei Dron, 20, who raps under the alias Smart, said that “it was Kasta who made people listen to Wu-Tang. They were listening to it and promoting it to all the others.”
Unfortunately, Smart complained, the marketing machine for Russian rap is not what it should be – American groups like the Wu-Tang Clan tend to dominate the market. There is no rap radio in southern Russia, he said, and other mass media outlets tend to ignore Russian rap. “The only way to find about these groups is if someone gives you a CD, or if you go on the Internet and find it yourself,” Smart said. “All that people listen to is the videos they see on MTV, and all they see is Kasta,” he continued. “So, you can only gather a lot of people for Kasta concerts.”
Despite his relative success, Electronic voiced a similar complaint. On MTV Russia’s lone weekly rap video show, “The Center of Rhymes,” 70% of the videos played are by foreign artists, he estimated. “Rostov is the capital of pirated CDs,” Electronic said, adding that just about any album can be had for 100 rubles – about three US dollars. “Still,” he said, “You can find no more than ten albums of Russian hip-hop groups.”
“Show business has given us a bunch of BS,” Electronic said. “So we have to find underground ways to promote it ourselves. Right now, as a rap artist, you have practically no chance to make it,” he added. “Even if you go to Moscow… there’s got to be too many lucky coincidences.”
Still, there are plenty of individuals in Rostov, from enthusiastic teens to weary show-biz veterans, who carry on despite the relatively bleak prospects for fame and fortune. For most, it’s a passion that they simply cannot give up. “This is not business,” Slam said. “It’s based mostly on enthusiasm.” He paused for a moment to think of a similarly time-consuming and somewhat irrational activity before adding with a smile, “It’s like fishing!”
Return to the Homepage.