Planet Rap/the world turns HipHop
by Mike Antonucci,
Mercury News Popular Culture Writer
Published Sunday, October 4, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News

IF RAP is the music of America's hardest streets -- black kids' streets, taggers' streets, body-count streets -- then how do we account for Danish rap? Cuban rap? Russian rap?

Because make no mistake: The music and all its style, plus an attitude as American as the playgrounds and drive-bys of the Bronx and Compton, are major exports.

Rap has put down exotic, far-flung roots. They're rhyming in Rome. There are crews in New Zealand. Brave poets in Tanzania.

In ways both curious and profound, rap has become an international force, embraced by one youth culture after another as the musical equivalent of a primal scream.

Rap soon may be -- if it isn't already -- the global sound of agitation and defiance. It's part of a hip-hop mentality that transcends language and race. It's on the radio in Germany and Ghana, in Costa Rica, England and South Africa.

"Rap is a medium that gives you the possibility to express yourself even if you're a nobody," says Paola Zukar, executive editor of the Italian magazine Aelle. "It's extremely powerful communication for kids, for people, anywhere."

In some places, rap's appeal is inseparable from the broader infusion of everything hip-hop, including graffiti ("aerosol art"), break dancing and baggy pants.

In other places, rap is the vehicle for highly focused politics. One example: Rappers in Cuba are being assisted financially by an alliance of New York-based "resistance" activists known as Black August.

In all the places, though, life has been changed because somebody's words and beat -- maybe Tupac Shakur's, maybe Public Enemy's -- connected emotionally with people who didn't know a homey from a hottie. What people recognized was the voice of identity and self-respect.

For those who despise rap, it's like hearing that the universe is going "gangsta." And for those who believe rap is illiterate and non-musical, there's no surprise that it's easily spread. From those perspectives, rap's proliferation is the triumph of junk.

Junk or not -- with "not" being an opinion shared by numerous musicians and scholars -- it's undeniably provocative. Rap's antagonists hear an incitement to lewdness and violence; its defenders hear a raw aggression and elemental honesty that speaks to the disenfranchised, wherever they are.

That primitive, basic quality is part of what makes rap so accessible and adaptable. Although the music may be underrated technically, it reaches out on a highly instinctive level. One angry, solitary voice, in an unfamiliar language, can rouse the world.

David Badagnani, a Kent State University doctoral student in ethnomusicology, says every country in the world has some form of rhyming poetry, so rap is relatively familiar in that sense. But he also suggests there's another, more dynamic allure: rap's overall fierceness.

"Many other oppressed or minority peoples around the world have recognized a very strong parallel between their social situation and that of black Americans," says Badagnani, who has been keeping tabs on rap's dispersion. "Rap makes this parallel apparent through music. For them, it's about the feeling of being oppressed, personally or as a people, and using the music as a way of fighting back."

All this flows from the U.S. inner city, from the toughest streets. Because whatever the political or spiritual tether -- whatever the conditions that can make Ice Cube pertinent in France or Japan or Mexico -- rap comes from the American 'hood.

More than anything else, that's what distinguishes the international strength of rap from other music with world-altering appeal. In previous decades, rock music also made dramatic inroads in unlikely places, becoming a language for political dissidents even in the Soviet Union and China. But rap is branded by its origins.

"Any time people do rap in any foreign countries they have an acknowledged indebtedness to black-American culture," says Badagnani.

That's not to say rap hasn't been affected, right from its genesis, by non-black artists and cultures. Jamaican and Puerto Rican influences were at work in the "old-school" 1970s when the music was evolving, largely at informal gatherings, as party rap.

Ultimately, fans make up their own minds on whether rap is more "urban" than "Afrocentric," more multicultural than black. They decide if pop rap or lovers' rap is their rap. They decide when rap is staying "real" and when it has been commercially skinned.

In some countries, says Badagnani, some of the music has been turned into nothing more than "bubble-gum rap."

But overwhelmingly, at its essence, rap is "black noise." And that noise has been heard, loud and clear, in just about any place on a map where you might throw a dart. Here are some:

•  Tanzania: Three months ago, Joseph Mbilinyi, 26, left his job as a clerk for British Petroleum, hoping to make a full-time living as the rap artist 2 Proud.

  "I'm still fighting for that," he said recently from England, where he's visiting relatives. "I am able to buy some foods and make this trip at least."

  In the four years since he made his first single, 2 Proud has pushed the edge in an east African nation beset by rampant poverty and social tensions. Until 2 Proud came along, says one researcher, overtly political music was unknown in Tanzania.

  Thomas Gesthuizen, who lives in Holland and is writing his master's thesis on hip-hop in Tanzania, says 2 Proud's impact is epitomized by a song called "Hali halisi" (translated as "the real situation"), which blames politicians for obstructing social progress.

  "This song is unique," explains Gesthuizen by e-mail, "in that never before did any musician talk about politics in such direct way. Still, (2 Proud) gets good airplay on a well-respected commercial radio station (Radio One) and young and old know of him and his lyrics."

  For 2 Proud, who raps in Swahili, inspiration came from the United States by way of N.W.A (Niggaz Wit' Attitude), and 2Pac -- Tupac Shakur. The specific lyrics mattered much less than the intense sense of freedom.

  "What I liked from Tupac," says 2 Proud, "was his way of expressing himself without caring whether what he said was good or bad. It was the freedom to say anything.

  "Even though in my society we don't have gunshots, we don't say, `. . . you,' we have problems -- lack of employment, poor education, misusing of powers. I talk about what is happening."

  Albums by 2 Proud, who has begun re-dubbing himself Mr II, are readily available on cassette in Tanzania. Gesthuizen also is trying to get a CD released, perhaps internationally, that includes other Tanzanian rappers and African hip-hop artists.

  Check out the Web site Gesthuizen maintains at http://rumba-kali.www.cistron.nl. It includes audio of 2 Proud.

•  New Zealand: Record producer Darryl Thomson is half-Maori, the native New Zealand people victimized by 18th-century colonization and subsequent discrimination.

  Maoris are mostly part of an underclass, struggling with high rates of poverty, crime and illness. When Thomson discovered rap, he says, it was the "first time I'd heard of oppression that was similar to ours on the other side of the world."

  In school, says Thomson, he learned about Martin Luther King Jr. Through rap, he observes, he learned about Malcolm X. When he was 16, Thomson heard a track called "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. At that moment, a creative bond was forged over a distance of more than 8,000 miles.

  Flash was no less than one of rap's DJ inventors in the Bronx, a New York City borough, in the early 1970s. Moreover, "The Message" has been credited by some with giving hip-hop a defining role in articulating black outrage.

  When it reached Thomson, he heard music that spoke to him without any racial limitation. "The Message" became one of the catalysts for his career, inspiring him to start writing rap songs that carried the political message of Pacific Islander minorities.

  "Our message," says Thomson, now 32, "is to know the truth: know that we are dying, that we are disappearing off the face of the earth."

  Thomson became the turntable artist for Upper Hutt Posse, the first broadly successful New Zealand rap crew. Their first single was "E tu" -- Maori for "Stand Up" -- and the group rose to symbolize a radical stance.

  "We were incorporating things like swearing, going-for-the-throat material -- pointing fingers at the beast, the enemy, the government, the system. No one liked that, not even the people on our side," says Thomson.

  Consider the Upper Hutt Posse song "Whakakotahi." It includes a sound bite about global oppression from Louis Farrakhan, the controversial Nation of Islam leader.

  "He's pointing at the biggest beast of all: the American one," says Thomson. "He's not talking just to stir things up. He's saying things to save his people -- to save them from incarceration, from drug abuse, from dying."

  Kirsten Zemke-White, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Auckland, says rap is a clear measure of the country's racial, generational and political divides.

  "It dominates the singles charts," she says by e-mail, noting that "up to five of the Top 10 will be rap (followed closely by R&B), but hardly makes a dent in the album chart (two or three in the Top 50), showing that it is mostly kids, and the lower and working classes that like it."

  Thomson has a more basic explanation: Lots of the hit singles come from the United States with sexually explicit lyrics, accompanied by risque videos.

  Still, most locally produced rap music, says Zemke-White, is equivalent to a racial protest anthem that declares: "Brown is proud."

  Urban Pacifika Records, a New Zealand label, has a Web site imbued with that sentiment: http://members.tripod.com/~Phylpindex-2.html.

•  Denmark: Victor Holm, who lives in Copenhagen, calls himself Konscious-V and raps occasionally with a group that met over the Internet.

  Holm, who maintains a Web site devoted to rap in Denmark (http://www.rapspot.dk), says there's only one national radio station playing lots of rap. Rap also is heard on smaller stations, but no station is devoted solely to hip-hop.

  "That would be utterly impossible to imagine!" wrote Holm by e-mail. "The total number of `heads' or REAL hip-hop fans in Denmark doesn't exceed 3,000!"

  In line with that, says Holm, the average album sells only 3,000 to 4,000 copies (in a country with a population of a little over 5 million). But the music's influence also has to be measured by the numerous amateur crews that have formed throughout the country. Basically, says Holm, there are two types: groups that rap in Danish, looking for mainstream acceptance, and groups that often rap in English and have more of an underground appeal.

  "The English rapping acts are very concerned about `keeping it real' and staying true to themselves," says Holm, 22.

  A group called Den Gale Pose (also known as Madness 4 Real) is probably the country's most popular right now, says Holm. He describes their style as essentially party rap, with easy to understand lyrics that also are sometimes coarse and sexually explicit. In general, says Holm, Danish rap focuses mostly on microphone skills and having a good time.

  "We don't really rap about the ghetto life here," says Holm. "It's not like that here."

•  Cuba: In some hip-hop circles, Cuba is regarded as a test bed of "revolutionary consciousness," and, accordingly, as a country sympathetic to the political complaints of minorities around the world.

  The result is a certain sense of solidarity between political activists in the United States and community centers in Cuba. Hence the summer trip to a Havana rap concert by members of Black August, a New York-based alliance of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Students for Jericho (referring to the walls of Jericho) and Stress magazine, an urban lifestyles publication.

  In addition to bringing two performing groups, Dead Prez and Black Star, Black August donated equipment so that Cuban rappers could set up a modest recording studio. Moreover, the trip was a mission of support for Americans viewed by Black August as escaped "political prisoners" -- individuals who fled to Cuba because they allegedly were targeted by U.S. law enforcement for political reasons.

  "Our vision is to combine entertainment and consciousness," says Clyde Valentin, director of operations for Stress, which claims a circulation of about 75,000.

  Black August members believe that minority communities in the United States are "criminalized" -- unfairly targeted by police -- and that young men are singled out for systematic harassment. That theme runs deep in rap, so that a musical bond with young Cubans also represents the bond of a revolutionary cause.

  And it fits in as just another piece of an international hip-hop culture.

  "The global nature of rap makes perfect sense," says Valentin. "The common theme that everyone is embracing is the liberation of your expression -- power to tell your own story."

•  Italy: Zukar, the Aelle magazine editor and part-owner who lives in Milan, says young Italians have embraced the gamut of hip-hop culture enthusiastically. Break dancing remains very big in Italy, she says, as does spray painting ("aerosol art" or graffiti).

  Early 1980s movies, including "Wild Style" (1982), "Beat Street" (1984), "Breakin' " (1984), were highly influential. For a while, she says, rap was viewed almost exclusively as a vehicle for ideologically driven political statement. Groups such as Public Enemy caught the attention of left-wing "social centers" -- meeting places established illegally in abandoned buildings as hubs of political and artistic activity.

  Now, says Zukar, rap is more widely understood as a way to "communicate feelings, not just strictly political ideas." The feelings "connect to kids' lives, everyday reality and the desire to be heard and considered," she says.

  People who weren't "true" enough to the hip-hop spirit have moved on, reports Zukar. One example she points to is 99 Posse, a well-known group inspired by rap's peak Public Enemy-era in Italy. Today, says Zukar, 99 Posse is a drum-and-bass "jungle" group.

•  Colombia: Peter Wade, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Manchester in England, says there are many small rap crews operating locally and informally, without money, in Cali. The city has a population of almost 2 million, including a substantial number of "Afro-Colombians" -- descendants of African slaves who were brought to the South American country to mine gold in colonial times.

  As in New Zealand, rap seems to be most popular among the working-class young. While doing research in Colombia, Wade found fans for groups such as Public Enemy, Cypress Hill and the Fugees. But he also noted the popularity of Control Machete, a Mexican hip-hop trio from the industrial city of Monterrey.

  As for the amateur Colombian crews, "They all sing in Spanish with a fair sprinkling of slang which may be based on English words," says Wade by e-mail. "There are no bands which have any commercial presence, as far as I know."

  The lyrics of the country's barrio rappers can be extremely political, says Wade. The themes cover all the flash-point topics, says Wade, including "poverty, violence, racism, sexism (if they're women), drug abuse, etc."

  Mauricio Leiva, who maintains a Web site about Colombian hip-hop (http://members.tripod.com/~MOTH_2/index.
  html), says Colombian rappers are beginning to create a style that's less dependent on the influence of U.S. rappers. Leiva, who says rap has expanded greatly in the last two years, is in a group whose favorite U.S. artists are Wu Tang and Snoop Dogg.

  Tanzania, New Zealand, Denmark, Cuba, Italy and Colombia are examples of the expanse and depth of rap activity outside the United States. But they're just examples. Rap's trek around the world can be marked in myriad other ways as well.

  In the west African nation of Ghana, a half-dozen FM stations in the capital city of Accra play foreign and local rap. In Germany, there is a surge of Turkish rap from second- and third-generation children of immigrants in Berlin. In France, rappers have been fined by the courts for advocating violence against the police.

  There are even references on the Net to hip-hop in Tuva, a republic of the Russian Federation, located between western Mongolia and southern Siberia. It has been called one of the most remote regions on earth.

  Badagnani, the Kent State doctorate candidate, has been collecting press clippings on rap's growing reach. He has an article from the Village Voice about Swedish rap by the children of Hispanic immigrants; he has another from Source magazine about a Senegal group that raps in English, French and Wolof (the name and language of the country's largest tribal group).

  He also has reports of rap being held up as demon influence: A 1997 account from Sierra Leone, a strife-torn nation on the west coast of Africa, said the country was beset by gangs, including ones called "Bloods" and "Crips." A corresponding upsurge in youth crime was blamed on the influence of rap music and movies from the United States.

  Even within the United States, rap is the vehicle for nationalistic causes. Hawaiian sovereignty is a core issue for the group Sudden Rush, whose Web site, with audio, is http://www.nahenahe.net/sudden_rush/.

  And consider this chorus (more sung than rapped) that Badagnani quotes from a song by Litefoot, an American Indian rapper: "This land is our land, this land ain't your land, from California to the New York Island."

  Rap started almost 30 years ago. It has gone from crossing yards to hopping continents. It has moved from the New York asphalt to central Asia, Polynesia and Scandinavia. And it's found all the remaining angry corners here at home.

  Rap is from the streets. But it doesn't die there.