To locate oneself in a particular place, to espouse one’s connection with that place, and to define your identity in context of that place, is one of the most predominate themes in hip-hop. As Dr. Murray Forman notes, within the context of hip-hop “space and place” are never casually used as metaphorical language. Rather, “they are also deployed discursively as part of a much more complex project of identity formation and cultural critique.” (106). Further, the localities where rappers position themselves as their “hood” (short for neighborhood) quite literally defines their personalities and worldviews, in-turn shaping how they view themselves in opposition to the outside world. In short, they create a home-base, a place which they belong in order to define who they are and what they stand for. The following quote seems to summarize the importance of place in hip-hop,
“Individuals chart their course and navigate their lives around sites of reproducible intensity which, like ports in the storm, provide a position or location to anchor oneself, a mooring of relative security”
“The Hood Comes First: Race. Space. and Place in Rap Music and Hip Hop, 1978- 1996” 1997, 27.
Thus, when a rapper announces that they belong somewhere, that they represent a specific location through their music, and that they are considering themselves vocal representatives of their ‘ghetto’, a profession of locational pride and, “an empowering reaction to the shame of the ghetto” as Richard “Frosted” Shusterman states. This term is a charged term to use here, as the word ‘ghetto’ has for so long been a pejorative, a cloistered no-touch area where the supposedly ‘unclean’ leave away from polite, ‘clean’ society. But as that ‘clean’ society becomes ever more dirtier as communities across the globe continue diversifying (although stratifications are becoming equally as common), anyone’s neighborhood can be seen as a ‘ghetto’ if compared to the next level up. For those above you, your home is a ghetto, and for those below you their home is a ghetto. But the importance of place goes deeper than emancipation from shame, as connecting one’s rap identity to a location creates an intimate connection with the people who call that place home, not only giving the rapper an ethos of the elusive “authentic” but literally rooting their development and rap “persona” [note: persona vs. identity] in a tangible place. This then ‘authenticates’ the persona with the identity, making the off-stage ‘I’ the same as the on-stage ‘I’, a human being proud of their home. In more common thought, “Maintaining a connection to these “streets” is crucial for the perceived authenticity and relevance of artistic interventions as perceived by the respective community,” that’s to say “street consciousness” (Johannsen, 2019).
So what happens when Russian rap does it and what does it mean to root your identity in a location within a country where ‘location’ seems to be the least of your problems when it comes to hip-hop “authenticity”? In this blog post, I will look at the track “My Streets” by the Russian rap group Big Black Boots in order to understand how “street consciousness” (Keyes, 2004) is being conveyed through the track’s musical life. Piecing together the puzzle of how this group espouses their identarian connection to the streets of Moscow, I will attempt to more fully understand how locality is used in the creation of (Russian) hip-hop authenticity.
Musically
The track itself is unequivocally G-funk in its construction. Everything from the synth melodicism, female vocals which border on R’n’B, turn-tablism, funky bass guitar and motif, soft percussion, as well as the rhythmic-lyric rap flow, paints the track as “authentic” given the time period. At the time of the track’s release, the aesthetic evolution of rap was in the midst of an identity change, as rappers like Detsl, Seryoga, and Timati were shaking up the game with their more pop-party rap style alongside the growing trend of R’n’B-meets-rap during this time, while G-funk and gangster rap were becoming the ‘underground’ phenomena (the split wasn’t so obvious until the late 2000s to early 2010s). In any case, the way the music is formed reads as “authentic”, and while more research is needed to say if its G-funk aesthetics were indicating a locational awareness, it does stand to note that a strong majority of Russian rappers come from either St. Petersburg, Moscow, or Ufa, with many more coming from other locations across the southern hemisphere of Russia.
However, despite this missing piece, one can root this track in the hip-hop sound of the late 90s and early 2000s (i.e., G-funk, R’n’B, melodic gangster rap, smooth funk as opposed to party funk). The politics of place arise when taking into consideration where Big Black Boots were at the time. This song was released on their 2001 album “New Music,” although in 2000 the group was undergoing serious tension as the member Andy B had left the group, and DJ Slon had taken his spot. Thus, it was necessary to reaffirm the group’s “authenticity” in the wake of such upheaval, and thus the G-funk atmosphere reads as the group’s attempt to secure their “realness” amidst tenuous circumstances that could have spelt the end of the group’s popularity. Thus, aesthetics defined the group’s “realness” and as a result, was the group’s attempt to align themselves with the ‘streets’, ‘ghetto’, real life.
However, yet another interesting point arises, and that is the title of the album itself, “New Music.” One critic by the name of Alexei Eremenko had written in a particularly caustic way,
This is hardly new music. Vice versa. This is music that is already established and determined, made according to clear aesthetic criteria. If you are not able to perceive this aesthetic, then you will not find anything for yourself in what the BBBs do. Recitatives full of naive, barbaric pathos will seem ridiculous to you, music – banal and simple, image – too cheeky. But if you remember that this is the music of the street, cheerful street companies, it will become clear where, why and why BIG BLACK BOOTS came from and what they still had in mind” [bolds my own].
Zvuki.ru, 2007
This quote is incredible in its transparency, and its relationship to the present thesis on the politics of place. Eremenko notes that the music of the album is “hegemonic” (read: traditional) in its construction, yet he also admits that the group is purposefully doing this as to relate themselves to the “cheerful street companies” and the musical reality of the everyday rather than doing something inherently ‘new’ as the album’s name suggests. His review makes the aesthetic points that, “This disc is made with strict observance of all the canons of hip-hop style. It’s just archetypal.” Ergo, the track “My Streets” (as well as the grosser album) is the group’s attempt to validate their hip-hop existence, and secure their musical identity as “real”, “authentic”, of the people, crafted from the reality of the streets themselves. Thus, to be aesthetically “hegemonic” in this sense is to be aligned with an aesthetic place where the “real” hip-hop lives, and to be “anti-hegemonic” is to be anti-“real”, a state that would delineate Big Black Boot’s as outside the landscape of “authenticity.” They would uprooted, location-less, floating in a void of hip-hopness without a home or place of refuge, no “ghetto,” no hood, nothing. And at such a crucial time for the group’s career, this could not be played around with. The usage of “hegemonic” aesthetics gave Big Black Boots a home to call their own, and a place to locate their identity within, no matter how typical or mundane.
In Conclusion
In this post, I have attempted to answer the question, “How is the politics of place mediated in Big Black Boot’s track ‘My Streets'”, and “How is the locational politics manifested in Russian hip-hop culture?” As my reading of the track’s musical aesthetics has shown, one’s connection to place extends far deeper than actual geographical placement and can manifest through the concerted utilization of aesthetic genres as opposed to other ones, irregardless of their supposed antiquarian nature or “hegemonic” (read: traditional) identity. By using the genre of G-funk and R’n’B as the track’s aesthetic core, Big Black Boots succeeded in valorizing themselves as “real” rappers as opposed to pop-rappers like Detsl, Timati, and Seryoga, who were quickly defining a new generation and new ‘sound’ of Russian rap away from the one constructed in the 90s. The group positioned themselves as “authentic” by using the technique of turntablism, analogous with “Old School” rap (at this time it would have been the 90s), as well as fully embracing the G-funk style, whose uncomplicated lethargic (i.e., West Coast sedateness, think Snoop Dog) feeling was a strategic choice of self-valorization. The politics of place presents themselves in the attempted rooting of Big Black Boot’s in the aesthetic sphere of “authenticity” as espoused via the G-funk genre and the utilization of R’n’B singers and turntablism. While I originally had thought the politics of place is refined to text-based considerations, much like the dialectic of East vs. West Coast, so too in Russian do aesthetic localities present themselves, albeit in a less regional and more ambiguous modality (not all the time however!).
Symphonic Juncture 