Ukrainian Hip-Hop Is A Real Thing Now
By: Tony Solovjov
Tags: Hip Hop, Rap, Music, Culture, Ukraine

2. alyona alyona, Alina Pash and the new female narrative

Female rap is becoming more of a serious thing lately worldwide, and Ukraine is catching up with this trend as well. Though still being a fairly recent phenomenon, female rappers have already shaken the ground of the local landscape and created a space for new narratives to emerge. You can already see acts as diverse as FO SHO breaking through a glass ceiling and sharing their perspective on things. Their song XTRA is your traditional soul/RnB anthem to self-respect and self-appreciation.

FO SHO is, indeed, fun and exotic for a Ukrainian listener but on a global scale, they hardly bring anything new. It’s pretty much derivative and stale.

Luckily, there are two ladies who bring much needed local flavour to the old hip-hop tradition and make something unique and original out of it.

A bit more about them below.

A former nursery teacher, alyona alyona has just recently become a true sensation of Ukrainian rap. You can see stories about her being featured in international magazines — from Vogue to The Independent. And she, indeed, deserves all the praise and accolades she receives.

Alyona alyona is the epitome of meaningful rapping. She doesn’t sing about hoes, bitches or boobies; instead — her lyrics tackle the uneasy subjects of bullying, body image and self-confidence. Alyona masterfully uses Ukrainian language, which sometimes might come into sight as foreign or poorly-compatible with hip-hop, but in her delivery, this inference feels unsustainable.

My personal favourite track of her, “Вiдчиняй”, is an audacious enunciation of the new age — where the younger generation takes the lead and guides the country to a better future. Which feels slightly prophetic taking into account overwhelming political changes in Ukraine.

From Ukrainian “Open”

Other notable songs: Пушка, Якби я була не я and Рибки

Moving on, Alina Pash.

Alina Pash is definitely an artist more concerned with experimentation and less focused on her image integrity — sometimes to the degree that it’s really hard to understand who Alina Pash genuinely wants to be.

This year she released “Pintea” — a two-part album comprising of 20 songs and more than 50 minutes of listening time.

Ambitious, but not always warranted.

It’s even hard to disentangle the album into separate elements. There are so many current and trendy tricks present on the album it should definitely feel like a huge success, but, on the whole, the experience of listening to is kind of incoherent. I just can’t get rid of feelings that I heard all of that from some other artists.

Anyways, this is obviously a subjective observation of mine which cannot diminish the significance of Alina Pash for Ukrainian music.

Pash brings a unique and rich visual aesthetics informed by her Transcarpathian background. And, more importantly, she manages to combine the western tradition of hip hop and soul music with pure Ukrainian, and sometimes even Middle Eastern, folk motives —making some of her songs sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

From Ukrainian “Listen”

Other notable songs: Падло, Bosorkanya and Ocean

3. Digitalization and the rise of independent artists

This last point isn’t really about a separate trend— it’s rather something that informs everything that’s happening right now. The spread of the internet and the rise of social media have a lot to do with how new Ukriainain artists introduce their music to the local audience. And because the hip hop market here is relatively small and undeveloped, the threshold for reaching an interested audience is rather small. This allows good new projects to become popular in a relatively small period of time.

The above applies to many artists I’ve already mentioned here, but there are so many more new faces it would take another article to look at all of them. So here are a few of them you can keep your eyes on for now:

KALUSH — the group has only released one song, which, nevertheless, looks really promising. KALUSH represents the western part of Ukraine, and their distinct dialect and absolutely ineligible flow create an incredibly refreshing sound.

2. YOURA — the first solo project of a well-known Ukrainian record producer Yuriy Bardash. His album “Plan B” is a remarkably precise and relevant reflection of present-day — from its mechanic and robotic sound to the dynamic and steep narration of the problems not foreign to people in his homeland.

3. вышел покурить — a rather depressing teenage-rapper who rhymes about rather depressing teenage problems we’re all acquainted with; and I like it. It doesn’t matter that the subject of his attention is as old as the world itself — what matters is the rawness and candidness of this particular expression.

This is all I have for today. Enjoy and share. Lots of love.

P.S.

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