Hello again!
Sorry for my absence from the thread I've been away from home for a couple of days. I just want to begin with to say thanks for the love. I've started this with really no expectations, so to get good feedback from people from a musical environment that I respect a lot really have been an nice experience that proceeds what I could have imagined. And I especially want to thank NotAllThere who chose to get high to my music. I don't think you get a nicer compliment than that.
About me doing something in English. It would be a very interesting and hard challenge. I would have to build up a lot of confidence for it though. Just me singing and rapping was kind of a big step in the sense that it's something that relatively recently started to explore. So no I wouldn't deem it as complete impossibility, especially since a situation has occurred where the people who that have the nicest thing to say about my music don't know what hell I'm saying. And have admit I am myself a little frustrated because I do put a lot effort into my lyrics.
At same time I agree with you LU_, it is very seldom successful to rap in something other than your first language. As you say some can really pull it of, but in many cases it comes off kind of silly. I think you really have to know a language to do something relevant with it and even if you do it is a big chance that a lot of what is your identity is probably will go away by adopting something that isn't yours. It is funny that you mentioned Petter, who I'm, as you, is not a big fan of. Before him we had a situation probably very similar to the one you describe in Croatia. Swedish rap where almost exclusively in English and rap that where in Swedish wasn't taken seriously. At the same time real Hip-hop in general was a something marginalized and not really accepted by the mainstream. When he came with his debut in 98 it changed the whole climate. Suddenly everybody wanted to rap in Swedish and hip-hop gained lot of more acceptance by the mainstream public as well the establishment. He managed to make it cool to rap in Swedish and probably by that made Hip-hop communicate with and whole new audience. I always have compared us to the Danish, who always have had an tradition of rapping in Danish, which I think NotAllThere can testify to. I always felt that they much earlier and in a more natural way incorporated Hip-hop as a part of they mainstream culture and that could at least partly have to do with their early embrace of their own language in hip-hop.
It was also interesting to hear some Croatian rap, which is completely new to me. If I compare it to contemporary Swedish Hip-hop it did feel as Americanized or maybe I'm just imaging to make a point. Anyway, around this time we had some producers that did a really a great job with the New York boom bap sound. As great as some of those production were and felt very close in quality to their American counterparts they probably didn't have much of an own identity. I think this maybe ties in in to the discussion about language as well as what we who listen to underground music could be looking for, as I think why I never got into lot of Swedish Hip-hop has to do with that I always felt that it some weird way it has been to focused trying in adopting the contemporary and popular American sounds. And as with language it probably loses it own fingerprints, which is what we who love the underground often demand of our music