Global Noise Rap

Global noise

Not just black noise, hip-hop mondial

Multikulti, rhizomatic, syncretic, not just monochrome

A plant comin at you, growing like wildfire through the cracks and fissures

Of the homogenised cement of the so-called global music industry

Global noise all over the planet, indigenous vernaculars

MCs doin’ damage in their native language

From its origins in Jamaican sound systems and DJs toasting, exported to New York by Kool Herc Its multikulti manifestations with Latino graffiti writers and Puerto Rican and Filippino-American breakers taking it way outside the USA Into the Middle East, for example

Shehadin the Martyrs in Palestine saying it in anasheed, chanting to an Islamic beat

Ahlam from Morocco mixing beats in ’95 with Bill Laswell on ‘Acting Salaam’

Tribal bass dub with a parental advisory sticker: ‘Warning -contains messages from Arabs’, on the Barbarity label with Aisha Kandisha’s Jarring Effects

In Lod, Israel, TN Tamer Nafar the Arab Palestian rapper in the State of Israel, rhyming in Hebrew and Arab, Salaam Aleikum!

And Shabak keeping hip-hop alive in Israel, along with Booyaka, Subliminal and Israel’s Most Wanted

Aki Nawaz and Fundamental stirring it up against racist violence in the UK with ‘Dog Tribe’

And Hustlers HC and Asian Dub Foundation doin it for Inglan’ and Inglanistan

And the Sons of Hagar right here in Seattle, named after Abraham’s wife and Ishmael’s mother, rapping about polygamy in ‘Sistersss’ and about the Palestinian revolution

60 groups in Oran, 100 in Algiers, making Algeria the hip-hop leader of Arab nations and the Islamic world

MCs mixin and code switching in Arabic, French and English

MBS in Ouled El Bahja talkin about the daily war in Algeria Intik, De Men, Hamma, K2C, Darkman, Cause Toujours and K Libre on Algerap

Arab-French MCs fighting Islamophobia –

Saliha, ‘une fille rappeuse’, ‘une exclue, une petite Beurette’, with ‘Enfants du Ghetto’ and Siria Khan’s ‘La Main de Fatma’ on Rapattitude in 90 and 92

IAM’s pharaoism on the Planet Mars in Marseille, le cote obscur, and Yazid’s ‘Islam’ and ‘je suis l’Arabe’, Mafia Maghrebine, 113, K-Rime, Cause Toujours, Kery James, Clotaire K representing Beyrouth Ecouere – Gutted Beirut

French hip-hop, the second kingdom, second biggest hip-hop industry in the world

Where Islam is the second biggest religion, and banlieue hip-hoppers from Arab, African, Caribbean and Southern European origins turn the red white and blue into the black white and beur, enriching the language with verlan reverse slang, and veul, reverse reverse slang, where Arab bnecoems beur and beur becomes rebeu

Suprême NTM and Ministère Amer charged fined and suspended prison sentences for dissing the police

19 hip-hop artists joined forces for ’11 minutes 30 contre les lois raciste’ 11 minutes 30 seconds again the racist laws

Where hip-hop is an educational institution, in the land of La Haine and Le Pen, where Saian Supa Crew

Join hands through the darkness with DLT down in Aotearoa /New Zealand

MC Solaar, born in Dakar, setting the standard with his ‘radicool’ prose combat, a million seller, sowing the wind and reaping the tempo, a cliché in France now, but the only French rappeur to get through the US customs with Guru and Missy Elliot, even if Dee Nasty got there first

And hundreds of others following le flow – Assassin, Arsenik, ABS, Afrodiziac, Aktivist, Alliance Ethnik, Addis Posse, Alarme, Argotrip, Akhenaton – and that’s just the ‘a’s!

Inspiring Francophone hip-hoppers in Montréal – Dubmatique, crossing the axis from Dakar to Paris to Montréal, keepin it réal,

Along with female MCs in La Gamic, La Costellation

Shout outs for les femmes du hip-hop francais – Ste Srausz, Les Nubiennes, Siria Khan, Saliha, Unique and Résolument féminin, B Love, Princess Anies, Lady Laiste, the black mama of Zulu rap, and B Side, who started it back in ’82 with ‘Change de Beat’

Global shout outs to the small but growing feline nation of women in hip-hop: Michie Mee in Canada, Feven in Sweden, La Pina in Italy, Da Drill in Bulgaria, Sabrine Setlur aka Schwester S, Cora E, Meli’s Skills en Masse and Tic Tac Toe in Germany, MC Trey, Maya Jupiter and her sisters on Native Tongues in Sydney, Moana, Teremoana Rapley, Nemesis and Sheelaroc in Aotearoa, and many many more

Global noise, hip-hop mondial

Not just black noise

Multikulti, rhizomic, syncretic, not just monochrome

A plant comin at you, growing like wildfire through the cracks and fissures

Of the homogenised cement of the global music industry

Global noise all over the planet, indigenous vernaculars

MCs doin’ damage in their native language

Startin’ right in the USA, with the Hispanic causing panic -

Chicano Frost’s Calo and Spanglish, doin’ it for La Raza (rasa)

Ya Estuvo, blitzin’ the culos, inspiring Latino MCs all over South America

Like Claudio Yarto, MC of Calo in Mexico

Taught himself to rap from Frost’s tapes

Colombia’s rap cartel pushing up from under, la Pozze Latina in Chile, El Sindicao Argentino del hip-hop, Racionais MCs and Cambio Negra in Brazil, Terra Firma representing Brazil in Adelaide

Fidel Castro proclaiming rap music is the existing revolutionary voice of Cuba’s future, Orishas representing Cuba in Paris, SBS, Reyes de la Calle and many more at the Cuban National Hip-hop festival in Havana, Italian rappers switching to Latin lingos and regional dialects

After freestylin’ with Frost in Rome in 92

South African coloured rappers like Brasse Vannie Kaap, Brothers of the Cape

Sayin’ it in Afrikaans, English, xhosa, Arabic, ebonics and prison slang

Finding more to identify with in Latino hip-hop than the African American kind

So Cypress Hill claim they’re funky bilinguals?

Hey should take a few language lessons from Silent Majority, the funky multilinguals,

Macaronic rap, Lausanne on the map, rhymin’ is the art, part of a global thing

La majorité silencieuse, not just a pale copy of the USA

MCs code switching through French, Spanish, Swahili, English and Jamaican patois –

Dans une autre langue, in another language and another one

Hookin’ up with MC Carlos from Sens Unik:

‘OK!OK! El rap es Americano

But if American was yellow our music would be Chinese

Senor C does it in Spanish

And is proud of his Latin blood

Music is contagious and rhythm is a plant

That grows from New York to Martignan’

American Indian voices don’t seem to enter the US hip-hop equation

The pow wow hip-hop of Robbie Bee and the Boyz from the Rez,

Ebony warriors straight outta Albuquerque, hoka hoka hey!

Native American rap from Litefoot, signifying Sitting Bull on ‘A Good Day to Die’,

On a Mission with Frost, indigenising Woody Gythrie on ‘My Land’

Btaka Brown’s Cherokee Indian funk , WithOut Reservation, Caspar the Hopi reggae rapper

John Trudell - Graffiti Man’s sure got something’ to say,

Nation conscious rap, rockin’ the res, ranting and rolling

Zimbawe Legit, Dumi Right and Akim

The real brothers from the mother landed in the US in 1992

Rappin in Shona and Ndbele

Coined the phrase doin’ damage in our native language

Got a little help from DJ Shadow’s Legitimate Mix

Censoring their lyrics, and where are they now?

Back in Zimbabwe cos they dared to criticise

Lost tribal followers and bogus Afrocentricity

Positive Black Soul, straight outta Dakar in Senegal

Swutchin from English to French and Wolof,

Salaam to the real Nubians,

The brother men from another land known as the motherland

The new underprivileged party representing Djoko, Unity

Inspiring a whole new generation of Senegalese hip-hop

Da hop from Dakar with Bideew Bou Bess,

Wa BMG 44, Boul ‘n’ Bai and Kantiolis

Keepin it multilingual down there in Dakar

Global noise, hip-hop mondial

Not just black noise

Multikulti, rhizomic, syncretic, not just monochrome

A plant comin at you growing like wildfire through the cracks and tiny fissures

Of the homogenised cement of the so-called global music industry

Global noise all over the planet, indigenous vernaculars

MCs doin’ damage in their native language

Travelling the world over, from up in Greenland, Kalaalit hip-hoppers the Nuuk Posse sayin’ it in Greenlandish, Inuit, Danish and English, sampling whalesong and throatsong, mixing Public Enemy and trip hop Contesting the dominance of the Danish language, and Quarashi in Iceland

All the way down to Planet Cape Town, South Africa, the ghetto code of the Universal Souljaz, Prophets of Da City, Cape Crusaders re-releasing Nelson Mandela, Black Noize and Grave Diggers’ Productions

To Ranking T, raggamuffinement votre on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean,

And Da West Indies Krew doin it in kreyol, Brother Resistance coining rapso in Trinidad,

To Bad Balance, Raketa and Malshishniki in Russia, LiRoy, Molesta and more than 250 hip-hop releases in Poland,

Parazitii, B.U.G. Mafia, Akcent, La Famiglia, Maijuana, Racla, Da Hood Justice, more than 60 hip-hop artists in Romania, G Play and many more in Hungary, Goumeni Glavi, the Rubberheads, Misha Shamara, DJ Dido, Upsurt, Momshevski Sviat, Romanetza I Enchev, Igrachite, Dreben G, Pikaso, Spenz and Sniper Records in Bulgaria, where hip-hop is stealing the thunder from chalga and ethnopop

Rapmasters and JAR in the Czech Republic, Trosky in Slovakia, Lukas, Sindikatas and Skamp in Lithuania, with asides in French and English,

Skandalnavia Hip-hop, Tommy Tee, Warlocks and Diaz in Norway, Clemens and the Funk Flush in Denmark, Petter, the Latin Kings, Global Warming, Feven and many more in Sweden,

Papa Dee, the original black Viking, beating back Scandinavian skinheads

Finland - not all Bomfunk MCs and Darude – the second coming of Suomi hip-hop

Kwon’s multicultural dynasty, Fintelligens hooking Helsinki up with Petter and Peewee in Stockholm, Ritarikunta outta Turku, Avain, Seremoniamestari, Tulenkantajat, Skillsters, Ezkimo,

Doin’ it in Finnish but the hip-hop language is universal

Big up to Paleface The Pale Ontologist, the iconoclast, Finnish but sayin’ it in English, a Nordic parody of Eminem, blowing your house down, denouncing hip-hop as a punitive community, where not even old school heads are granted diplomatic immunity, tellin’ MCs to stop sayin’ the darndest things, and spittin’ self-possessed shit and start teaching, and Father Metro, and Giant Robot doin it in English too

7 (siete) Notas 7 Colores, Violadores del Verso, Solo los Solo, Hippaly in Spain,

El Payo Malo tellin’ us da donde venga with flamenco samples in Andaluz,

Negu Gorriak rapping Basque nationalism for the 90s

Black Company and Da Weasel’s Microcosmica, Casos de policia and Para noia in Portugal,

Osdorp Posse and Spookrijders doin’ it for Nederhop in Holland, Starflam Combattants surviving in French, Spanish and English in Belgium

The Cosirappteam in Slovenia, world championship skiers MCing ‘I Ski fast I ski slow’ in Slovenian and English in 94,

Dissed by Ali En, and followed by Klemen Klemen and Pijama

Street Explosion in Ljubliana 2000, with Blackout 00 and Megablast from Zagreb

The Ugly Leaders from Rijeka, Croatia, with DJ Pimp and Lyrical Maniac MC Condom X representing the war in Bosnia

Freundeskreis outta Stuttgart called hip-hop Esperanto

The philosophy of streetpoetry, a lingua franca

MC Miliano, soulguerillero, international linguist and lyricist

Hookin’ up with immigrants, a transnational underground culture

La langue d’amour die sprache der liebe the language of love

A transnational lingo defeating bankrupt cultures

Fast to learn and easy to understand

Advanced Chemistry started the immigrant hardcore in Germany

Italian, Ghanaian and Haitian Germans straight outa Heidelberg

Attacking racism with ‘Fremd im eigenen land’ foreign in my own country

And Turkish-German rappers Karakan, Erci E and Da Crime Posse showing the way with Cartel, Oriental hip-hop splashing down in Turkey, blitzing Krauts with Attitude like Die Fantastichen Vier

Texta in Austria, breaking down language barriers with Sprachbarrieren

Hip-hop in Italy started in English in 1990 with Italian Rap Attack – DJ Skizo in there with Radical Stuff, most of the others now long forgotten,

Except Frankie Hi NRG fighting da faida in Italian with a lone jew’s harp and a Frost sample of El Chicano’s ‘Viva La Tirado’

The social centres and the Rome militants - Onda Rossa Posse, Assalti Frontali, AK47

Papa Ricky and the Isola Posse All Stars at the Kantiere in Bologna

Almamegretta mixing Neapolitan song, dub and hip-hop in Sons of Hannibal, Attacking racism by tracing Italians’ descent from Africa

99 Posse and Possessione talking about the place where they live in Napoli dialect

Comitato and LHP at the Leoncavallo in Milano, Africa Unite and Mau Mau in Torino, South Posse in Calabria, Suoni Mudu and the Salento Posses doin’ it in Salento dialect, Sud Sound System inventing rappamuffin and tarantamuffin,

Nuovi Briganti in Messina, Sa Razza in Sardinian

Papa Ricky son of an opera singer, other posses sampling Rossini’s ‘Barber of Seville’

MCing started with recitativo in 17th century Italian opera

And the first ghetto was the Jewish quarter in Venice

So maybe hip-hop was originally Italian?

Hellenic hip-hop with TXC, Nebma, Active Member, Himiskoubria and the Terror X Crew sayin it in Greek London Posse defining UK hip-hop, Tricky, Massive Attack and Aspects on the Bristol tip, The Streets’ ‘Original Pirate Material’ straight outta Birmingham into London, sounding more like John Cooper Clarke than LL Cool J

Big Dada on the avant tip with cLOUDDEAD, Ty, Roots Manuva and TTC’s ‘Ceci n’est pas une disque’, remixing Foucault’s remix of Magritte’s ‘ceci n’est pas une pipe’

Y Tystion, straight outta Aberystwth, testifying in Welsh, doin’ it for cool Cymru (Kimru), denouncing New Britain and old lies, and Manau’s Panique Celtique bringing Celtic hip-hop to Breton and the top ten in the French charts

Global noise, hip-hop mondial

Not just black noise

Multikulti, rhizomic, syncretic, not just monochrome

A plant comin at you growing like wildfire through the cracks and tiny fissures

Of the homogenised cement-headed global music industry

Global noise all over the planet, indigenous vernaculars

MCs doin’ damage in their native language

Across to Asia with LMF, the Lazy Clan from Kowloon East Side, Hong Kong

9 tone Cantorap, a linguistic rubik’s cube,

Scratch rider world champion DJ Tommy on the decks, sampling Bruce Lee and dissing grass without roots, mixing thrash metal with Cantopop and Cantonese opera, representing street kid triads in housing estates – Respect 4 da Chopstick hip-hop!

Rock star Cui Jian’s raps on ‘Power to the Powerless’ attacking materialist idiots and the Hong Kong handover,

Paving the way for the Chinese MC Brothers in Beijing, sampling Nintendo and Nirvana, rappin in Mandarin, a language spoken by more people in the world than English

Khmer Rap by Khmer Rouge, pirated in Phnom Pheng, unbeknown to its author, Prach Ly the Cambodian American rapper from Long Beach, telling his tribe about the legacy of Pol Pot’s year zero, Laostha in Laos, Too Phat, Reefa, Naughtius Maximus and Poetic Ammo in Malaysia saying the world is yours with intellectual poetry, pop rap in English, and with Sheila Majid, sayin’ it in Malay,

Dick Lee the mad Chinaman, rapping in Singlish in Singapore with the Kopi Kat Klan,

Tao Saji started it in Korea, now MP’s 2000 master plan has taken it away, with Da Crew, Joosuc, Tequila Addicted, South Side Allstraz, Soul Chamber, and Tasha brilliant bilingual Korean-American Wonderwoman with Tiger JK from Drunken Tiger, combatting Ice Cube’s racism on ‘Black Korea’

And the Mountain Brothers, Styles, Peril-L and Chops from Penn State representing Asian-American hip-hop inscrutably

Along with the Seoul Brothers dissing ‘Yellow brothers and sisters fakin’ perpetratin’ like Barbie and Ken’ and refusing to perform novelty racist caricature shit jumping out of Chinese takeout boxes on Weird Al Yankovic’s ‘Rice Rice Baby’

And Yellow Peril, formed in response to racist violence in New Jersey, decrying ‘Asian sisters made into Hollywood hos’ by gweilos in Miss Saigon and the like

And Filipino hip-hop, Flip hop, not just Filippino-Americans like the Invisibl Scratch Piklz, but MCs sayin it in Tagalog, like the Ghetto Doggs collective,

And Sudden Rush’s Na Mele Paleoleo , True Hawaiin hip-hop

And Japan’s hardcore crews battling JRap with the Little Bird Nation and Schadarapa bridging the gap

Microphone Pager coming out of the Hokoten and Yoyogi Park, DJ Krush and B Fresh and K Dub Shine, Zeebra, Rhymester, Buddha Brand and BOSS the MC

ECD called it ‘a flame flying across the ocean’ from the USA, which ignited the fuel already there in Shibuya And Sheelaroc in Christchurch sharing the mic from New Zealand to Japan

Japanese hip-hop re-surfacing in Australasia with Dieske and Ryo in Two Dogs in Brisbane, making Australian hip-hop multicultural and multilingual

Wizdm,a South American Aussie with Brethren in Sydney, passing the spoon in ‘Pasa La Cuchara’, ‘Que passa Gough Whitlam, Ciao Pinochet’

And Ila Familia pa’ mi gente for their people in Sydney MCing in Spanish and Spanglish and English

Sleek the Elite bangin’ the mike for the children of the cedar, Lebanese –Australian hip-hop along with South West Syndicate,

Mass MC hooking up with global Italian hip-hop, and Et-Nik Tribe settling the score, romanicin’ the racist

And all the way back to Down Under by Law in 1988, Westside Posse becoming Sound Unlimited from the underside making it to a major label, and Def Wish Cast’s AUST down under coming upper defining Australian hip-hop

The Arrernte Desert Posse and Blakjustis rapping for Aboriginal women, passing it on to Native Rhyme Syndicate putting indigenous Australian hip-hop on the map,

Songlines passing through Brutha Black in SWS, Hip-hop a Place of Peace and Desert Rap, and Wire in Western Sydney with Trey and Maya Jupiter

Curse ov Dialect in Melbourne reincarnating rap from the dead, with ‘all cultures clashing’

Hou from Koolism in Canberra passing the kava bowl and the alali drum and the tapa cloth to MC Trey and King Kapisi, Pacific island Polynesian hip-hop following the rhymes ‘from the kingdom of Tonga to Western Samoa,

To Fiji, to the Cook Islands, to Tahiti to Aotearoa’

And Te Kupu in Upper Hutt Posse starting it in te reo Maori in 88, praising the warrior chiefs in Aotearoa with E Tu, finding the hip-hop whakapapa in Maoitangi, mixing patere with haka and waiata and karanga for the tangata whenua

Dam Native greeting the funk with their Mauri, and Iwi, DLT, Che Fu, MC Wiya, doin’ it in Maori language

The Dawn Raid Colective, P Money, Deceptikonz, Ill Semantics, Aotearoa hip-hop getting out to the masses,

And King Kapisi’s Samoan hip worldwide, inspiring Nesian Mystik’s N.Z.H.I.P.H.O.P

Aotearoan and Australasian hip-hop worldwide

Global hip-hop worldwide

Global noise, hip-hop mondial

Not just black noise

Multikulti, rhizomic, syncretic, not just monochrome

A plant comin at you growing like wildfire through the cracks and tiny fissures

Of the homogenised cement of the so-called global music industry

Global noise all over the planet, indigenous vernaculars

MCs doin’ damage in their native language

Indigenising hip-hop all over the world