In Hip-Hop culture, the improvisational-based, real-time rap “battle,” an event where rappers [or MCs, “master of ceremonies”] go head-to-head and attempt to one-up each other with their rhyming acumen, plays a vital role as the breeding ground for community development on an extremely intrinsic level. Summarized by Dr. Adam Bradley in his 2017 book “Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop” as a “verbal cutting contest” where rhythmic songsters wage war of syntax, displaying their on-the-spot proficiency in poetic versification, completely uninhibited by secondary editing or prefabricated intentions. Battle rappers are, as Bradley states, “celebrating themselves, dissing their opponents, and s**t-talking in every other possible way. This form of lyrical celebration of self and denigration of others can be puerile, but it can also be gratifying.”
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That juvenile pleasure is understood by Bradley as the foundation of a rapper’s external “swagger,” defined as their collective identity both in appearance and in flow, contributing to an idiosyncratic “coolness” which is inextricably tied to them and only them (Jacobson, 2009). However, rap battles and its ontological retinue know no ethnographic bounds and despite having been born within the marginalized, African-American communities of late 1970s/early-1980s America in the guise of linguistic banter-games like “the dozens” and “signifyin” (Mavima, 2016), the Hip-Hop phenomenon has spread all over the globe. From the international “Batalla de los Gallos,” the first organized rap competition for Puerto Rico, the “home of rap battles in the Spanish-speaking world,” to rap-battle leagues from nations abounding, e.g., France’s “Rap Contenders,” the Middle East’s “Arena,” Philippines “Fliptop,” the most prestigious of them all being the “Ultimate Rap League,” rap battles have subsequently become the artistic nexus of cultural solidarity and the collective recognition of talent over all else. Former Tanzanian rapper Hashim Rubanza expressing such sentiments,“if you got skills there is no discussion there. People like skills” (Kerr, 2014).
[Oxxxymiron vs. Slava KPSS in 2016]
However in Russia rap-battles, paralleling her classical variant (Taruskin, 1997), developed emulatively to Western modalities, using similar aesthetic and semantic devices to copy American artists. But the first rap-festivals in Russia, “Peak-91” (1991), “Rap Music” (1994), organized by original member of the group “Bad Balance” Vladimir Valov, and first rap-battles “Beat Battle” (2000) and “First MC Battle” (Semenova, 2018), began the process of realizing the full substantiation of a truly “Russian” Hip-Hop culture, in-part as well to the emergence of solely Russian-speaking rappers in the early 90s such as Mister Maloy and Decl (Frolova, 2015). But Frolova also points out that once Hip-Hop became a “public” genre, it became a “commercial” genre, thus rendering itself susceptible to capitalist corruption and vapid opportunism. Zoom forward 20+years to 2017, and Oxford-educated turned rapper Oxxxymiron would challenge loudmouth adversary Slava KPSS in one of the world’s most analyzed rap battles, everyone from state politicians to linguistic researcher’s rationalizing the contentious parleys. Yet beyond the cacophony of St. Petersburg a year prior there was another notable rap-battle called “Battle 9,” hosted in 2011 via Hip-Hop.ru, one of the first online public forums for all things Russian hip-hop. That’s where Russia’s controversial, Pushkianian Hip-Hopper comes in, namely Dmitry Kuznetsov or Husky, who jumpstarted his career through this involvement in the competition but who would later go onto denounce rap-battles for their Bacchanal treatment of the artform. “They are just spontaneous evil children and nothing else.” He participated in three of the ten rounds, being beaten by “Очередной MC” [otherwise known as Sega] in a 5:2 loss, in the process producing three songs, of which constitute the first tracks from Kuznetsov to be publicly available. Presented in a brief analysis of their musical aesthetics, textual semiotics, and contextual meaning in the greater epoch.
The first track, “Return of the Legend,” alludes to Russia’s imminent redemption from its destitute impoverishment by an Orphic hero, spoken in first and third-person, however Husky denoting himself as the vanguard of Russia’s revitalization. Using a stable, synth-instrumental ostinati melody supported by a traditional, syncopated boom-bap understructure, all partnered by Kuznetsov’s unfettered, lyrical suavity, the track radiates a 90s old-school demeanor. This isn’t surprising given that in several interviews (GQ, 2017: The Flow, 2016) he’s stated that his creative inspirations were derived from a motley of epochal sources including the amalgamous hip-hop/electronica genre of trip-hop and the niche sounds of seminal Western rappers like Three 6 Mafia, Lil Wayne, Drake and Kid Cudi. Despite having recorded this song when he was 18 years-old, two years after having moved to Moscow for study at Moscow State University, his indefatigable flow emits an aged intelligence far above his years, such a trait echoed in the track’s Parnassian genetics. In the text, Kuznetsov reflects his artistic mission of being the liberator of Russia’s enslaved neo-serfs, such an abject state described by Political Theorist Joel Kotkin as those who are “permanently marginalized” and “unlikely to move to a higher station.” Kuznetsov rebukes the Russian citizen’s predilection for passivity and squarely states that when enough of the citizenry have awoken and no longer wish to “endure politely,” only then will Russia actually taste freedom. As Russian Politico Andrei Kolesnikov had morosely said, “the middle class is simply not ready to struggle for change.”
[The official logo for Battle Nine in 2011]
The second track, “On the Streets of the Future,” continues Kuznetsov’s synth-fused, trip-hop infatuations, albeit this time taking its predominate influence from a mixture of mellowed-out, 90s G-funk hypnotism and the consonant naturality of 80s smooth-jazz minimalism. Further, a synth-vapored coolness reside abreast with repetitious, two-chord oscillations, while an easy, breakbeat bassline underscores the track’s somber intentions. The perfunctory, self-reflective tempic meter rides a bit slower compared to the previous track, but more importantly, Kuznetsov began to use more overt, intonational differentiations thus signalling a growing textual depth, heightened by a more robust auditory atmosphere. A master of poetic verbalism and spoken percussiveness, Kuznetsov’s “poetry-first/rap second” methodology renders his flow a self-contained, rhythmic instrument, his literary inspirations a motley on their own, ranging from Russian 19th-century classics like Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and Tolstoy to contemporary prose like Prilepin, Gigolashvili, and Rodionov. In a 2019 Esquire interview he states, “I'm one hundred percent text-centered, but I really like music...You get tired of music anyway, but the text is a memory.” In this track, Kuznetsov lays out Russia’s pitiful eschatology, her future being likened to a forgotten village complete with “rotting wood,” “greasy windows,” and rusty gates abandoned. Despite Kuznetsov’s gopnik appearance, the lexicons used are always rich in multi-dimensional references, the dilapidated village being likened to “absurd atavism,” discarded October Revolution posters signalling lost independence, and molding drainage ponds which once were places of sacred baptism now infested bogs. This is Husky’s Russia, the country where beauty came to die.
The third and final track, “Natural Accidents,” is the longest and most complex of Kuznetsov’s sonic trilogy. Clocking in at three times as long and more brazenly developing the digi-groove aesthetic, the track’s usage of a polychromed, Funkadelic-inspired melody which quickly melts into fully flushed, jazz-rock instrumentalism, bespeaks the rapper’s growth in his confidence over both structural cohesion and sonic layering. Unlike his later tracks, but entirely resonant with his other two rap-battle tracks, the track is built from a singular, reflexive beat comprised of a subconscious drum core, in-turn garnished with revolving layers of melodic atmospherics and percussive ostinati, this making a form out of what is essentially a 3+ minute, highly adorned monotony. What’s fascinating is that Kuznetsov is sampling a plurality of late 20th-century Rock and Hip-Hop genres along with their subgenres like the experimental contrivances of Psychedelia, the intricate formalities of Progressive Rock, the amorphous etherealisms of Space Rock, and especially the veracity of 90s Gangster Rap. On that note, the track features an ferocious, textural narrative where we come to learn how Kuznetsov psychologically became “Husky” through the oneirocritical reading of a particular dream where an Anaconda [Sega, his rap adversary] is ripped a part by a canine [Husky]. In characteristical rap-battle fashion, Kuznetsov asserts his imperial “freestyling” capabilities through a complexly woven fabric of rhetorical idioms, personal epithets, and nationalistic declarations. However, in the Huskian fashion inserting his existential, post-human ideology into the mix with cynical lines like “Sega, do you believe in God? If yes, then in vain, the guy. God drives a Ferrari with Buryat numbers.” He may have lost but the production quality paired with the exquisite poeticism definitely put him on the map!
[Young Husky via Starpri.ru]
To conclude, I want to return to Kuznetsov’s 2016 Village interview, where he professed his disinterest in “becoming” a battle-rapper despite his literal start in Hip-Hop being solely because he participated in a rap battle. He writes, “I had the opportunity to become a battle rapper...But there you are surrounded by drunk schoolchildren who drank a little beer, and now they seem to be feeling a little bit bad. So I quickly got out of there - I could not stand the aggression of the mother's villains [...].” This radical shift in perspective may seem dissimilar to only five years prior, but during those years Kuznetsov developed his raison d’etre, that being to become a paragon of the 21st-century neo-Scriabinist, capable of leading the wanton, Russian citizenry to self-liberation through intrepid prosody appealing to no one but its author. Following a crypto-currency fundraiser about the allegorical tale of “Ax-Porridge,” posted on Instagram was a prophetic statement of Kuznetsov’s artistic doctrine, “The artist himself defines his most important task in art as "defining the secret dark dominant of a human (and especially Russian) being.”
Disclosing the Dostoevskian magnitude of the human consciousness and the uncomfortable truths of living as a human being. That is why Kuznetsov can no longer be involved in rap-battles and coincidentally part of the reason why the linguist Oxxxymiron lost his 2016 rap-battle against Slava KPSS (Fadeev, 2017). While rap-battles may hold a significant place in Russian culture, with a historical presence spanning close to 30 years, they are places where the mind is not allowed to be an [A]rtist, but rather an artist, the difference being the depth of meaning laced between every morpheme and every phoneme within them, not to mention the censorial restrictions dictating what can be said and not said (Для нас, 2017). As Frolova points out, the role of conscious rapper [rappers with sociopolitical intentions] is not to directly gain fame or notoriety, but instead to make a point. “The work of politicized authors...does not hide from anyone, but does not flaunt.” Husky has made his point loud and clear, he works for no one but himself and will do what he likes.
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Sources
Bradley, A., 2009. Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop. Civitas Books.
ДЛЯ НАС. 2017. Как к нам пришел рэп-батл. [online].
Frolova, E., 2015. Rap as Form of Sociocultural Reflection of Contemporary Russian Culture. Journal of Philosophy and Cultural Studies, pp.3-52.
Kerr, D., 2021. Performing the self: Rappers, Urban Space and Identity in Dar es Salaam. Ph.D. University of Birmingham
Jacobson, Ginger L., "Realness and Hoodness: Authenticity in Hip Hop as Discussed by Adolescent Fans" (2009). Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Journal of Hip Hop Studies, 2021. Bigger By the Dozens: The Prevalence of Afro-Based Tradition in Battle Rap. [online] 3(1).
Taruskin, D., 1997. Defining Russia Musically. Princeton.
Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research, 2021. Psychophysiological Aspects of Aggression and Laughter in the Contemporary Culture of Russian Battle. 10(7), pp.1873-1875.
Maxim Fadeem. "I get asked a lot." Instagram, August 14th, 2017.
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