Russian rap (or Russian hip-hop) is a kind of musical genre that originated in the Soviet Union and continued its development in Russia in the early 90s. Unfortunately, the history of the development of Russian rap is relatively small. Although it is more than 20 years old, there is nothing to be proud of here.
Russian rap - what is it?
This is a fairly young and still developing musical direction. That is why the main problem of youth has not yet been eradicated in him - the tendency to imitate. The fact is that a kind of imitation of the original roots of hip-hop makes Russian rap at times ridiculous in appearance. It turns out something like a not entirely successful parody. Today, many people do not regard Russian rap at all as a promising and forward-looking direction in the music industry. This is, of course, very sad.
The history of the development of Russian rap
The first recitative appeared in the USSR in a city called Kuibyshev, which after a while was renamed Samara. It was there that in 1984 a DJ from a student disco called "Canon" Sasha Astrov, together with the "Hour Rush" group, recorded a kind of author's program, which lasted only 25 minutes, but instantly spread throughout the country.
The magnetic album with the simple title "Rap" then had a wild success throughout the Soviet Union. This composition was recorded under the direct influence of the albums of such musical groups as Captain Sensible and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five.
The second half of the 80s was marked by a new youth hobby - a break. Because of this, Russian hip-hop has received low popularity. The beginning of the 90s was marked by the emergence of the first Russian-speaking rap groups. The pinnacle of popularity at that time was taken by the shocking Bogdan Titomir with his group "Bachelor Party".
One of the very first rap releases in 1991 was the Bachelor Party's album, Sex Without a Break. A year later, another album of the same group, "Let's Talk About Sex", received scandalous fame. By the way, the compositions included in this album contained texts that were frank for those times. At the same time, the group "MD&C Pavlov" emerged, which represented a kind of underground form of Russian hip-hop. Unfortunately, this group was not destined to gain recognition.
In 1991, the first hip-hop festival called "RAPPIK" was opened. Since then, members of various hip-hop groups have organized their own festivals every year. It is curious that these festivals "spawned" such modern rap artists as "Casta", "Mary Jane", "Yu. G." and others.
Further, domestic hip-hop labels were opened, which were engaged in producing and recording young rap artists. The very first commercial group is the Legal Bizne $$ collective, which consisted of N'Pans'a and Legalize. The producer of this group was the shocking Vlad Valov (Master SheFF). In the future, he became the producer of the well-known rapper Detsla. By the way, DeTsl is still considered the most successful commercial rapper project in Russia.
Russian rap today
The domestic development of rap causes controversial assessments by critics, professionals and ordinary people. The fact is that Russian rap is intended to reflect only Russian traditions, which seems to be not bad, but at the same time it destroys the true charm and its zest of the original hip-hop. By the way, the most popular rap artists today are Guf, Basta and Stim.
