Kulam Medabrim al Arie's Thesis

Arie is writing a thesis on Israeli hip hop. If you want to read it, feel free. It's 80 pages and academic. If you want to know what he thinks, read the blog. And make comments. Cause if he didn't care what you thought, he wouldn't make this blog. For real.

Name:
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel

So I made aliyah. And I have a real job. I wonder why I still keep this blog.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Chapter 1

So in this chapter, I talk about hip hop. Except my thesis isn't about hip hop. What gives?
Yeah well, Israelis don't give a fuck what Tricia Rose has to say about hip hop's origins. Intertextual layering that expresses black identity of life in the ghetto in a transatlantic afrodiaspora? Word. Israelis probably just don't give a shit. What do they know? Hip hop is black music. Hip hop is sex. Hip hop is ghetto. Hip hop is gangs. Hip hop is protest. They know that it's done by black people. But they probably don't really understand its roots. So it really doesn't do me any good to look at hip hop's roots and say "Israelis use hip hop to express their own diasporic blah blah blah." cause that isn't how life works.
so why does it matter what happened in hip hop? cause I gotta know what happened to make the hip hop that Israelis know. or else how do I know what Israelis think of hip hop? and if i don't know what israelis think about hip hop, how will I know what it says about them?
So it starts with Kool Herc, who brings in stuff from Jamaica. And it evolves in the U.S.
And Jamaicans went to the England, so it evolves differently in England. And then they hear U.S. hip hop, and it evolves differently still.
And it evolves in France, in a way unique to the French. cause the french have been co-opting the same african-american rooted music (blues, jazz, r&b) for years. so they have a blue print for making hip hop.
And it hits Israel. And Israel has the influence of Britain. And they dig the dance scene. But they like hip hop also. So they run with it.
Nigel does it. He fails. Is Hop does it. They fail. Shabak does it. They sell 6000 records. Which isn't much, it's the equivalent of maybe 300,000 records in the U.S. But they're young, so they keep at it. And they go gold. And they go to Jamaica. And they get better. And Subliminal does it. And he gets big. And Hadag Nahash and Sagol 59 are doing it. And it gets bigger. And by 2004, it's real big. The bad news is that by 2005, it's already getting smaller. The good news is that the ones who are still in are getting better.
So Israel's got some hip hop. As they would say if hip hop actually did change Israel, "milah." But they don't. Cause hip hop didn't change Israel. Israel's been doing its own thing for 80 years or so. Just check out Chapter 2.

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