Russian Hip-Hop history is full of groups and names who sprung up, achieved popularity incredibly quickly, and yet died away almost as quickly once the aesthetic tides had turned in a different direction. Or because of the sheer difficulty of staying abreast with the times, returned to the underground from which many of them first began. A third direction exists, and that is to disperse, and while many groups don't and simply take hiatuses from public performance yet still release music (Project Konstanta a good example), the vast majority do. And to punctuate it further, Academic discussions on Russian Hip-Hop usually miss out on many seminal moments and albums, not because they are unimportant but because in the grand scheme their presence is but a blip on the greater continuum of Hip-Hop history. But it's vital that Scholars interested in Russian Hip-Hop peer into the untold stories, the narratives and events that set the stage for contemporary artists like Husky, Maywave$, Timati, Oxxxymiron, Pharaoh, Morgenshtern, and the popular names commonly cited in literature. In this blog post, I'll be talking about one of those names, specifically the funk-rock-rap fusion group Sixtynine (2002-2006), led by the ex-rocker Vis Vitalis and once though to be a star-in-the-making only to quickly faze out, this group helped define Russian Hip-Hop in its "second wave" (2000-2009) and bring their "red rap" to ever larger audiences.
History of Sixtynine Pt. 1
In the 2000s, Hip-Hop in Russia had become commercialized, no longer the underground phenomenon it once was during the first-half of the 90s, and certainly no longer "Russian" in any capacity, although one can argue if Russian Hip-Hop has ever been "Russian." Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, although by Perestroika more realistically, rock and its comrades had significantly depreciated in societal strength, as the youth had begun looking elsewhere for their counterculturalist hunger, having been inundated with Western culture as a result of the 1980s Olympics, and then again by the 12th Annual Festival of Youth and Students in 1985. As the relaxing of Soviet restrictions in the 1980s introduced a plurality of subcultural styles into the country like New-Wave, neo-romantics, rockabilly, hardcore, techno, rave, funk, skaters, and breakers, Hip-Hop culture would begin its cultural rise (Kompost).
However, for rock musician (then freelancer) Vis Vitaly the Russian Hippie movement was his cup-of-tea, one fold of the grosser late-Soviet "informal" Sistema culture (Feyh, 2012) and closely connected with rock culture. He began his musical career in the early 90s in the neo-Bard style, of which the scene proper had died out at least 10 years prior with the death of Vladimir Vysostky in 1980 although by the 90s it had begun resurfacing as a way to rediscover the Russian (late-Soviet) musical identity (Zabininfo.ru) Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, after more than 30+ years of Western mimesis, Russian popular music was finally able to explode outwards, and coupled with the freedoms that the Western capitalist model brings and Yeltsin's vigorously anti-Soviet (anti-‘imperial legacy' past) leadership, Hip-Hop's growth in Russia during the "lost decade" (1990-early 2000s) seems only inevitable.
As many pointed out, it was during this period (much like during the Petrine era and likewise with Catherine the Great) that Russia was now faced with the choice of either go East or West with their ideological thinking. The question of "Was Russia European" seemed the most pressing question of the day, and in many ways it remains just as contentious of a question than ever. What's fascinating is that by the late 80s, it was very clear that Gorbachov had lost control of his Socialism-qua-Democracy model. But more importantly, "This widespread hatred of the communist regime was legally allowed to be expressed, which led to mass movements for the end of communism" (Cummings, 2012).
In effect, the rise of Russian Hip-Hop culture was only brought about because novel modes of opposition were allowed to be shown publically, thus galvanizing normally submissive (or overly rock-saturated) youth to take up this new form of sociocultural protest. Just as Cummings notes that "without glasnost there would have been no perestroika," so too without perestroika there would be no Russian Hip-Hop. Flash to the late 90s to early 2000s, the "second-wave" of Russian Hip-Hop, and by this time Western commercial culture has taken Russian culture by storm. Second-wave "golden youth" and their stifling sociocultural influence had hijacked Hip-Hop culture (Jin, 2014). And after 10+ years of intense R&D, along with the WWW's public release in 1993, and the quick creation of domestic infrastructure like websites and forums, TV channels and radio, music videos, publications, venues, events, and social gatherings, access to Hip-Hop materials had never been so easy.
History of Sixtynine Pt. 2
It's a funny thing the lifespan of Sixtynine, as Scholars now note that Russian Hip-Hop became uncompromisingly politicized in the late 2000s (Denisova et H., 2019, Frolova, 2015), and everyone from lesser-known individuals like Pencil, 25/17, Frontline, and Triadi to bigger names like Basta and Noggano were making political commentaries on the state of Russian geopolitical and domestic affairs. If only they would've waited till then, who knows.
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