Recently I got a comment here from somebody saying that all these Indonesian hip hop artists were nothing but a bunch of rich kids with cigarette factory owning uncles paying for their cd's to come out, trying to act cool copy-catting Western hip hop artists you see on MTV.... If you watch Indonesian hip hop on Indonesian television I can surely understand one could get that impression, but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. It prompted me to post a lot of stuff that's been put out with a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and I still have quiet a few albums and unreleased tracks to post.... It's too bad that the person who wrote that comment didn't answer back when I answered his/her comment, I would be curious what this person thinks now....
In the English language newspaper The Jakarta Post of today there's a nice article of what I consider to be the finest hip hop act in Indonesia right now, EYEFEELSIX from Bandung. They are very good friends of mine and I always love to go to their shows, lot's of fun and great music....
Here's what's written in The Jakarta Post:
Eyefeelsix sets the record straight with ‘Pain Per Hate’
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sun, 09/18/2011 7:00 AM
It used to be that hip-hop and rap were ways to ‘stick it’ to the man.
Early practitioners of hip-hop held the conviction that the genre was a conduit by for African-Americans to channel their rage and frustration.
“Rap is CNN for black people, “Chuck D once said. The rapper, part of the hip-hop collective Public Enemy, was responsible for incendiary tracks such as “Fight the Power” and “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” — which perfectly captured the African-American rage in the Reagan era.
But long before Ice Cube started to find work in Hollywood and Flavor Flav donned that oversized clock for a VH1 reality television show, hip-hop and rap ceased to become a powerful political tool. Now the genre has become a vehicle for the fashion and entertainment industry to sell high-end clothing, expensive watches, fast cars and deodorant.
Indonesia’s hip-hop scene has long suffered from the same malady. For years, the genre has been associated with basketball and groups of teens performing awkward dance routines on the street.
Bandung-based Iwa K., who broke ground for rap in the country, shares the blame, thanks to MTV’s never-ending broadcast of a video of him rapping on a basketball court as people in the background shot hoops.
Recently, hip hop has been picked up by admen to sell motorcycles and drinks on local television.
But the most head-scratching development in domestic rap is the use of the genre by certain television personalities, including Pandji Pragiwaksono, hip-hop’s self-appointed savior, to drum up support for the country. He recently released a best-selling book titled NASIONAL.IS.ME. Rather than distancing himself from the establishment, Pandji has conveniently aligned with the powers that be.
There’s another cringe-inducing movement to indigenize rap by playing hip-hop tunes as a background for performers delivering rhymes in local languages, most prominently Javanese.
The preoccupation of Javanese hip-hop with the “special place” Javanese culture holds in the Indonesian context makes it easy to group this new movement with the chauvinist rap that Pandji and his crew promotes in Jakarta.
The only difference is that Javanese hip-hop performers, with their unquestioning support of the Yogyakarta monarchy, have settled for a smaller cultural and geographical confine.
Recent developments in local hip-hop have left socially — and politically — conscious, anti-establishment rap in a precarious position. Serious rap aficionados must go underground to find what’s left of the country’s serious hip-hop performers.
One of the few remaining performers is veteran Bandung collective Eyefeelsix, who released its album titled Pain Per Hate earlier this year.
Mainstream music scene might have failed to notice but serious fans know that Pain Per Hate is this year’s most politically-charged album. Artistically, it is clear the album is one of the best produced in the country’s music scene.
The nine tracks in the album are a powerful mix of old-school hip-hop beats, a heavy amount of turntable wizardry and feature some of the best heavy-metal guitar riffs sampled this year.
The album is a powerful soundscape backing what could be the most vulgar — and politically-charged — lines in hip-hop since legendary Bandung hip-hop collective Homicide folded in 2003.
But the most head-scratching development in domestic rap is the use of the genre by certain television personalities, including Pandji Pragiwaksono, hip-hop’s self-appointed savior, to drum up support for the country. He recently released a best-selling book titled NASIONAL.IS.ME. Rather than distancing himself from the establishment, Pandji has conveniently aligned with the powers that be.
There’s another cringe-inducing movement to indigenize rap by playing hip-hop tunes as a background for performers delivering rhymes in local languages, most prominently Javanese.
The preoccupation of Javanese hip-hop with the “special place” Javanese culture holds in the Indonesian context makes it easy to group this new movement with the chauvinist rap that Pandji and his crew promotes in Jakarta.
The only difference is that Javanese hip-hop performers, with their unquestioning support of the Yogyakarta monarchy, have settled for a smaller cultural and geographical confine.
Recent developments in local hip-hop have left socially — and politically — conscious, anti-establishment rap in a precarious position. Serious rap aficionados must go underground to find what’s left of the country’s serious hip-hop performers.
One of the few remaining performers is veteran Bandung collective Eyefeelsix, who released its album titled Pain Per Hate earlier this year.
Mainstream music scene might have failed to notice but serious fans know that Pain Per Hate is this year’s most politically-charged album. Artistically, it is clear the album is one of the best produced in the country’s music scene.
The nine tracks in the album are a powerful mix of old-school hip-hop beats, a heavy amount of turntable wizardry and feature some of the best heavy-metal guitar riffs sampled this year.
The album is a powerful soundscape backing what could be the most vulgar — and politically-charged — lines in hip-hop since legendary Bandung hip-hop collective Homicide folded in 2003.
But the most head-scratching development in domestic rap is the use of the genre by certain television personalities, including Pandji Pragiwaksono, hip-hop’s self-appointed savior, to drum up support for the country. He recently released a best-selling book titled NASIONAL.IS.ME. Rather than distancing himself from the establishment, Pandji has conveniently aligned with the powers that be.
There’s another cringe-inducing movement to indigenize rap by playing hip-hop tunes as a background for performers delivering rhymes in local languages, most prominently Javanese.
The preoccupation of Javanese hip-hop with the “special place” Javanese culture holds in the Indonesian context makes it easy to group this new movement with the chauvinist rap that Pandji and his crew promotes in Jakarta.
The only difference is that Javanese hip-hop performers, with their unquestioning support of the Yogyakarta monarchy, have settled for a smaller cultural and geographical confine.
Recent developments in local hip-hop have left socially — and politically — conscious, anti-establishment rap in a precarious position. Serious rap aficionados must go underground to find what’s left of the country’s serious hip-hop performers.
One of the few remaining performers is veteran Bandung collective Eyefeelsix, who released its album titled Pain Per Hate earlier this year.
Mainstream music scene might have failed to notice but serious fans know that Pain Per Hate is this year’s most politically-charged album. Artistically, it is clear the album is one of the best produced in the country’s music scene.
The nine tracks in the album are a powerful mix of old-school hip-hop beats, a heavy amount of turntable wizardry and feature some of the best heavy-metal guitar riffs sampled this year.
The album is a powerful soundscape backing what could be the most vulgar — and politically-charged — lines in hip-hop since legendary Bandung hip-hop collective Homicide folded in 2003.
In “Obituari”, a track originally written to dis jingoist rappers such Pandji, Eyefeelsix left no stone unturned by launching a broadside at the country’s political bigwigs and multinational corporations:
MC kolektor deodorant
Kotoran kuping sepadan
Kalian dan hip-hop adalah Newmont dan air pancuran
Era MC ringtone seperti kalian rela meng-oral para MD
Laten serupa Lapindo dan penyangkalan Bakrie
Dengan politik nasionalisme usang serupa Pandji
Taji sampah komentar blog
(MC deodorant collector
Just like dirt from your ears
You and hip-hop are like Newmont and clean water
An MC ringtone is like going down on MD
It stinks like Lapindo and Bakrie’s denial
With the arcane nationalism of man like Pandji
Like a crappy blog comment)
If this sounds like the politically-charged rhymes of Homicide, it’s because Ucok Homicide, also known as Morgue Vanguard, delivers some of guest verses in the composition. He is, after all, the band’s mentor and the album’s music director .
“The duo of Eyefeelsix is probably the last remaining MC who still has street cred. Their battle skills are without doubt some of the best. Their beat-making quality is unmistakably a representation of the Bandung scene,” Morgue Vanguard told The Jakarta Post recently.
Eyefeelsix MC Gaya Nugrah, a.ka. Soul Killa, makes no excuses for his objective to bring politics back into hip-hop. “If you ask me what we are trying to rebel against with our take on hip-hop, all we can say is that this is rebellion hip-hop. Life without rebellion is death and stupidity,” Gaya told the Post.
In a typical rebellious and independent style, the Eyefeelsix collective worked on the album for eighteen months, quite a long stretch when compared to the standard set by an industry that churns out pop hits once every few days. “We have to struggle to make a living and made time to record this album in between our daily chores,” Gaya said.
Given the sorry state of the local hip-hop scene, Eyefeelsix felt obliged to distance itself from the mainstream and decided to take up influence from other musical styles.
“Negeri Kutukan” (Cursed Country), one of the most punishing tracks in the album, sampled one of Slayer’s most legendary tracks, “South of Heaven”, while “Rajah” features traditional Sundanese karinding percussion instruments and guest vocals from Man Jasad, of the legendary brutal metal band Jasad.
“The local hip-hop scene has no strong roots. It’s too exclusive but too dumb to know about it. We relate more to people outside of the hip-hop scene. They make us feel at home,” Gaya said.
Once again, outsiders with little to do with the mainstream music industry have produced one of the best releases in the music scene.
Great post by the JAKARTAPOST, not their first one I might add, they were one of the few giving great praise to HOMICIDE's last album too a couple of years back.....
