Cursory Analysis of "12" by Morgenshtern

As we are all aware, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has shocked the world round.

Not only has Ukraine and Russia suffered immensely, but the picturesque idea of world peace and geopolitical confraternity has been all but crushed as NATO and certain choice countries prick and prod in somewhat good-meaning but still ill-formed manners. In the Russian Hip-Hop sphere, much has been thrown up into the air in the past five years, really ever since 2018 with (the self-labeled) Anti-Rap campaign, where bottom-up forces from the territories in western Russia began to strongly rebel against Hip-Hop artists, leading to the Duma's intervention which (to no one's surprise) solved quite literally nothing. Numerous rappers have come out with statements (see my last post for a combined article listing some) and several more have made their views known in the past couple of days (see the posts on @russkirapreview).

However, I find it interesting that the emigre musician Morgenshtern (Aliser Tagirovich Morgenshtern), who left the country back in January for Dubai due to the threat of imprisonment over the claim of illegal drug trafficking on the (now banned) app Instagram, has recently released a new song that depicts the braggadocious and uber-hedonist rapper in an extremely different light, one that has been brewing ever since his departure from Russia. With the title "12" referring to Alisher's younger brother's turning 12, the song paints an abysmal picture of a hyper-inflated Russia with an army that has been coerced into fighting a meaningless war and useless responses from onlookers.

In this post, I'll briefly talk about the track's musical life, the track's text, and the music-video associated with the track, as each have interesting features that present sociopolitical subject matter in a novel way. Via mainstream aesthetics, he directly challenges mainstream thinking, interrogating what so many have taken for granted by using the very 'thing' itself!

Musical Life

Firstly, the track is unlike anything that Alisher has released to date. Much more sedate and texturally simplified, the track's musical life primarily sits in the mid-range and bubbles up here and there by the usage of electronic and digital augmentations. The whole song uses a minor hue, specifically A minor. Why is that important? Because most rap songs utilize A minor when talking about introspective, somber, or dejected subject matter. Traditionally, the symbolism of A minor (at least according to the accounts of Helmholtz, Charpentier, and Schubart) denotes piousness and plaintiveness. Some of the best-known works in this key include Beethoven's "Für Elise" (Bagatelle in A minor), Chopin's Op. 19 (Bolero), Clara Schumann's Op. 7 (Piano Concerto), Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 3, and Gustav Mahler's "Tragische" Symphony No. 6. Thus, this track follows in a long succession of music that imbues the purpose of the music into the very construction of the music itself.

Further, in arguing for its "Russianness" a bit (although the fascinating part is that its Russianness is not really found in the musical rather than the general ethos and textual life more) the emphasis on the A minor (which is the mode of Aeolian, although the range is very small in the song) could indicate the Russian proclivity for modalism. A prime example of Aeolian mode in Russian music can be heard in the Antiphone of Grechaninov's Liturgy of St John Chrystostom (1898) Here, the A minor is starkly evident as a minor v/V before moving into the tonic key of G major. As you can see, although but one example, the very music key Alisher is using is 'Russian.'

Textual Life

As is typical with rap texts, there are countless allusions and references to life situations, political and social events, snarky rebuttals, and obscenities which poke fun at PC politeness. However, the texts take on a sophistication that I have not yet seen in Morgenshtern, and while some could argue that the usage of the word 'bitch' in reference to his wife, emphasis on material wealth and affluency is nothing empty posturing of a Russian delinquent, I would push back and argue for the opposite. Even from the first reference, "get the fuck out of here, you fucking motherfuckers!," a direct quotation from Dmitry Gordon's Feb. 28th interview with Dozhd Television where explicitly told Russian troops that their lives are being squandered, to the very last one, a reference to Oxxxymiron's 2015 track "То густо, то пусто" where it's admitted that money does provide some type of happiness but such things must be willingly let go at the time of death, Morgenshtern shows that he belongs both inside and outside Russian Hip-Hop. Despite being in two different houses, I think that Oxxxymiron and Morgenshtern are not entirely separate artists and instead are two sides of one coin.

Video Life

The entire video takes place in a dimly-lit garage of some kind, which features a roughed-up taxi in the foreground, suited men with balaclavas, and protestors in the background waving signs with peace-related imagery. The camera then pans over to a bright-yellow sports car with Morgenshtern sitting in the front-seat, shirtless, and sporting a nose-ring and other pieces of jewelry. This provides rich subtextual material to the lyric's narrative, the utter chaos of contemporary Russia and the climate that has befallen his country and that of Ukraine, along with his current living condition and his self-consciousness to his own affluence. Interspersed among his lines, which are translated into English and put at the bottom of the screen (a new addition for Morgenshtern and evidence that the message here is of the utmost importance for viewers of a non-Russian audience to understand) are characters such as:

1. A vandal spray-painting NO on the car as he talks about him still being afraid when he sees a cop in Dubai

2. Sxually-provocative females when he speaks of feminine infidelity [this alludes to the rumor that his marriage has begun to break-down and a divorce on the horizon]

3. A mother and a son frantically running in fear, with the mother being shot by an unknown assailant, when speaking about his brother and mother's immigration to Spain after Morgenshtern was effectively exiled in 2021.

4. A crowd of fans surrounding the car when he speaks of the finality of death and the discarding of all worldly possessions when the time finally comes to die.

One of the strongest visuals is the yellow sportscar covered in red blood with Morgenshtern looking onwards in a dazed, almost reclusive, mind. That is the Russian mindset, the realization of the banality of those things which we are told we should value while having to face the reality of our death each day by having to live again.

An incredible piece of musical-visual art from Morgenshtern, perhaps his best thus far.

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