When someone asks me, “do you like rap music?”, I’m never quite sure what to say. Do I try to clarify their question by saying “You mean those audio recordings of rhyming rhythmic monologues about killing, misogyny, drug deals, narcissism, sexual organs, racism, and egoistic persecution complexes?” To which the answer would be “Um…no.” Unfortunately, that’s what a lot of people think of when they think of rap, so if you say “Sure, I like rap” then you risk being pigeonholed as someone who hates women and thinks shooting people is a noble way to resolve a dispute. And if you’re white, you’ll be subject to the additional assumption that not only do you approve of these behaviors, but you do so by co-opting the values of an oppressed subculture. My actual answer to the original question is probably something like “Yeah, I like rap music. GOOD rap music”, going on to explain what a useless term “rap” is. Using information from the internet does nothing to clarify the issues at hand. Wikipedia has a dry description of rapping that suggests that “rap” may be etymologically derived from “repartee” and then goes on to talk about things like the early influence of The Memphis Jug Band, but the term “rap” redirects to “hip hop”. Which in my opinion muddles the definition beyond belief, since the page itself defines rap as being merely one of the four “key stylistic elements” of hip hop. Yeah. Whatever. There are also a lot of sites that attempt (and mostly fail) at meta-ironic humor based on “whitefying” the meaning of rap lyrics, like SnacksAndShit.com or Underground Hip Hop For Dummies . One example: Lyrics from Krizz Kaliko’s Get Cha Life Right – ” I ain’t trying to be Bill Gates, I’m trying to be the nigga Bill Gates hates.” Translation – “Here’s one goal which is impossible and another goal which is not that hard and wildly unambitious”. There’s a much more elaborate form of this in a special Intellectualize Rap forum on SomethingAwful.com, but the problem here is that if you had a deep enough knowledge of the songs being referenced, you probably wouldn’t find any of the Demotivator-style images funny. For the best laugh, you could try linkbait-tripe-posing-as-actual-content like EzineArticles.com’s Understanding Rap Music, which informs you straightaway – in self-unaware deadpan hilarity – that “Many rap songs are fast-paced. It can be tough to tell exactly what is being said“. Thank you, underpaid content-farm hack Val McQueen, for the insight. And then there’s the “Yahoo Answers” of rap lyrics, UnderstandRap.com, which takes easily-decipherable lyric snippets and deciphers them for you. Probably the only resource we found that was both informative and funny was Rapgenius’ ne feature The Rap Map, which offers extensively annotated Google Maps of rap. With a little tongue in cheek. Know of any good resources for useful or amusing rap facts?

I found the video below on this conservative Christian site, which explains how “This video goes to show you how dangerous the black’s music can be to white youth and how it brain washes them to use horrible curse words and run thoughts of drug use and murder into their properly raised minds”. Enjoy some a Capella Bitches Ain’t Shit, done up all nice an’ white girl:

For the record, that’s a satire site which has fooled numerous “real” news sources, including Huffington Post and NBC

This Rap Expert Demonstrates That ANYONE Can Freestyle

Google Maps Raps at Rap Genius

This is Lady Sov establishing her cred in 2005′s A Little Bit of Shhh by getting all Adidafied and rapping in a drainage ditch.

Yeah, 2009′s So Human is a straightup ripoff of the Cure’s Close to Me. But that’s okay. It works, and shows she can lighten up.

The video for I got You Dancin’ somehow feels like Lady Gaga went back to 1981 and hired Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ production team

In part one and two of our dip into desi music, we whimpered a lot about the overwhelming amount of material to explore. We’re still whimpering, but after a watching a LOT of video clips and listening to dozens of streams, we’ve reached a few conclusions, even if we have only scratched the surface of the larger desi market. One is that we’ll be doing a part IV. Another is that the best of the current releases are the ones that don’t pander to rap cultural inflections. If you think a rural white guy co-opting black urban culture is funny, you should see what happens when a British Indian guy tries it. As an example, an artist like ADH can turn out a fairly decent live groove like Tu Ni Jaandi and then turn around and produce a rapper-wannabe absurdity like Taubah Taubah. I mean, if I’m not mistaken, the fellow is wearing a “Members Only” jacket in that last video. In part II we mentioned the lack of terminology for desi genres. I’m classifying that one as “Pootyjab”. Along the same lines, ADH’s Kurri – while a cool groove – might’ve benefited from a little less autotune. The guy’s got a great voice, there’s no need to “Akon it up”. In what is nearly the inverse of this problem, you have white Euro swami-wannabes like Prem Joshua jamming around India in their old man ponytails and 70′s facial hair. I can’t help wondering if I might have actually liked a tune like Sharanay if I hadn’t seen the aging Euro-hippies playing it. All these little criticisms serve to point up what does work though, which is when the artists adhere to their own cultural strengths, which in the case of a lot of desi music is either an almost kitschy romantic eroticism, or a passionate and deeply expressive melodic and rhythmic sophistication. If the fusion they reach for is musical rather than visual, as in the case of an artist like Surinder Rattan – who fuses his Indian stylings with Two-Step Garage – the results can actually be gratifyingly original as with his chart-climber Tappe from 2006 (which strangely keeps reminding me of Stereo MC’s Elevate My Mind from the 90′s). So as we said, we’re still only scratching the surface here. We not only haven’t finished digging into the more diverse global desi market, we’ve omitted a huge segment of this market by focusing mostly on the “poppier” material, and especially the UK-influenced bhangra scene. We’re actually bringing in an “expert” on Part IV, in which we’ll explore both the complex distribution channels for this stuff, as well as the more classically-influenced material. Unfortunately, in spite of the wealth of material out there, even sites like Pitchfork.com don’t cover these genres; there’s just not enough money in a single niche to garner revenue-generating readership. For now though, if you’ve been enjoying the material we’ve already explored, you might want to check out sources like SimplyBhangra.com, the UK label Moviebox, and YouTube channels like Felonious Vindaloo. They’re all great launchpads to a mind-boggling world of bhangra.

Surinder Rattan’s “Tappe” fuses Two-Step Garage…

…and strangely keeps reminding me of Stereo MC’s Elevate My Mind:

Prem Joshua’s Paranay isn’t so bad if you close your eyes before you catch a glimpse of the aging Eurohippies that are playing it:

ADH can turn out a fairly decent live groove like Tu Ni Jaandi…

…and then suckerpunch you with some “Members Only” gangsta rap wannabe-ness like Taubah Taubah:

I’ll probably get shot for this (living in the shadow of Detroit as I do) but probably the quintessential example of this co-opting of cool that doesn’t work is Kidd Skilly’s “Bhangra Chick”. Yes, he’s from the “Big D”, but to my ears and eyes, this tune castrates itself trying to balance on the fence between bhangra and bad boy:

Brimful of Asha is desi? Who knew?

Panjabi MC slips a little tongue with “Snake Charmer”:

Notorious Jatt goes Urban-to-Turban with ” Marrey Dil Vaaliyan De’ “:

Punjabi By Nature’s “Jaan Punjabi”, with mystery rapper:

Panjabi MC’s “Beware”, with not so mysterious rapper Jay-Z:

Punjabi MC’s “Hogaya Sharabi” features a riff that’s been sampled and used in dozens other desi tunes.

The Internet can be a very dangerous place. Any of you who suffer – as I do – from the probably incurable malady known as Wikiphilia will know what I mean. You find an interesting video, article, or some other piece of pop cultural flotsam & jetsam, and before you know it, several hours are gone, and you know a lot about something that probably matters very little. This happened to me recently when I ran across the video Horizons by the Bay Area desi act Karmacy. The clip itself is – like a lot of desi songs and videos – a peculiar mix of brilliant and cheesy, at least when viewed with a more western eye. Yes, the guys in the video look sort of like they took a long lunch hour from their ad agency or tech startup jobs to do the shoot, but they’re rapping in five languages: English, Spanish, Hindi, Gujarati and Punjabi, and the song is actually is kind of hooky. In any case, the tune gave me flashbacks of 90′s club bhangra, and got me wondering if any kind of durable genre evolved out of it. The only artists I could remember by name from the era were Apache Indian, Diamond & Simon, and Bally Sagoo; a LOT of the music was remixes and mashups of traditional Indian music or Bollywood tunes, and kind of blurred together in the techno/rave haze of my memory. So my search was on, and… it was mind-numbingly frustrating! There’s an INCREDIBLE amount of desi pop music out there, but there are a few obstacles to finding the good stuff. First of all, there’s just SO MUCH to sift through. If you take all the style fusions that are possible with just the sources available on the Indian sub-continent, and combine that with the fact that the people from the area have moved all over the world, you begin to get the picture. There are two other obstacles to finding the best material; one is that the bulk of the niche content is posted online by desis themselves, so a lot of the text isn’t in English, and the other is that Google search results for Indian pop and desi-related terms are utterly “spammed out” by really pointless popup-infested sites with lots of content that just lists artists and songs, with no reviews. So I’ll be doing a part two (and maybe three!), but thought I’d get started with a couple of vids and useful links. First of all though, if you’ve never followed these genres in general, read up on Bollywood; it colors the background of almost all of the modern/urban pop variants. Then maybe take some time to read up on 80′s/90′s bhangra and other related genres. Then get up to speed with the last few years with articles like NPR’s Urban Desi: A Genre On The Rise, or the New York Times’ India’s New Partnership: Bollywood and Hip-Hop. If you’ve had your ears open the last few years, you’ve also probably heard of M.I.A., she definitely qualifies as a desi artist, but in my opinion is such a UK pop product like Robyn that I never thought of her plinky sample-based material as particularly representative. In any case, we’ll be back in part two with more artists and videos, but for now, below are a couple that struck my fancy for different reasons. If you have some suggestions for material to check out, please pass on the wisdom!

Panjabi MC – Mundian To Bach Ke
This tune has been resampled a LOT by other artists, and should sound a little familiar…

AR Rahman

One artist I was getting into a bit while I searched was AR Rahman. I think the two clips below are from the same movie from 1995 called Humse Hai Muqabala. This first one, Urvasi Urvasi, is actually a pretty cool tune. The video is a bit nutty, but has some great dancing in it, if you can blast through your assumption that all Bollywood dancing is the same. Some of the moves are downright Michael Jackson, but cooler.

Urvasi Urvasi By AR Rahman

Another one by AR Rhaman. I don’t even know what this one is called; it seems to be from the same film as the clip above, but it takes the nutty quotient to the next level. Fun.

Some of these videos feature the colorful costuming and dance moves of Bollywood, but with a saucier hip-hop/rap flavored vibe…

I’ve never been a big fan of most straight up American rap; I guess when I’ve got a Glock on me or I just got drunk or had sex, I just don’t think it’s something to build a song around. And then add insult to injury by not even bothering with a melody. Which is why I originally got into French rap, especially artists like Assassin or MC Solaar. French was made for rap; with its guttural vowels, you can sound kind of angry no matter what you’re saying. And the music had the added benefit that I didn’t have to care what was being said, I don’t speak French. I love stuff like Daddy Yankee and the artists on collections like Putumayo’s Arabic Groove for the same reason. Great jams, and no banal, self-aggrandizing lyrics (at least that I can understand) to distract me. Which is why I was ecstatic when – while I was actually looking for some good Desi or Indian Hip Hop – I got totally sidetracked and discovered the joys of Hungarian Hip Hop. The Fun began with Funktasztikus (aka Interfunk or Funk’n'Stein), and his insane speed rapping in Próbálj meg lassan beszélni. Coming on like a crank-fueled Eminem, it’s amazing his teeth don’t fly out, given their overall condition. After a little research (and a lot of Google Translate) I found a few other Hungarian artists like Ganxsta Zolee. Zolee looks like some American guy you might run into in a redneck bar, and in videos like A szerb határ felé, well, he kind of acts like one. If you find breasts and bottoms offensive, skip that clip. It’s an upbeat hip hoppy tune though, reminiscent in style of early 90′s American upbeat hip hop. As is his tune Vato Loco, which, while it could just as well be a commercial for Corona beer and tequila, is still a nice upbeat latin-flavored groove. Zolee really shows that maybe he is an American redneck in Route 66; what could be more truly American than a vintage Pontiac convertible, Route 66, and Elvis impersonators in the sun? I still haven’t figured out though what exactly is going on in Otokor, in whch the entire crew strips down to jock straps and puts on wedding dresses. In the same vibe as Zolee but a little more R&B-ish, we have Dopeman with Eredeti Genszter. Which as you might guess, means “original gangster”. Someday they’re gonna have to figure out who really was the original gangster. A lot less gangsterish, and a lot more fun like “Humpty Dance”, we have Animal Cannibals’ (who were in that first Funktasztikus clip) tune 1×1 . And lastly, while perusing all these artists, I ran across GEG’s Néhány, which features Dopeman. After all the typical rapper gender exploitation, this one really threw me. Does “GEG” mean “gay”? My curiosity was put to rest after watching GEG’s Szólj Rám . Yikes. That is an all new kind of gay to me. And they really make orange the new pink, don’t they? Whatever. Have fun. Clips below.

Funktasztikus feat. Animal Cannibals – Próbálj meg lassan beszélni

I’m amazed that Funktasztikus’ dentist-phobic teeth don’t fly out as he speed raps through this one…

Ganxsta Zolee és a Kartel – A szerb határ felé

Zolee looks like a guy you’d run into in a redneck bar. And well, I guess in this video he acts like one. If you find breasts and bottoms offensive, don’t watch.

Ganxsta Zolee és a Kartel- Otokor

I’m still tryng to figure out why the crew strips down to jock straps and puts on wedding dresses in this one:

GEG – Szólj Rám

Is this a bonus Hungarian gay pop song? It was hard to tell what these guys were about in “Néhány”, but this made things a little clearer. Decide for yourself though. Whatever it is, these fellas sure like orange.

I was so busy grinding my own music career into oblivion in the early 90′s that I was too busy to dig deeper into a lot of the cooler music that was going down, especially upbeat hip-hop as defined by bands like (these are all YouTube links) Digable Planets, Dream Warriors, Arrested Development, Digital Underground and others. Which is why I have to thank Del tha Funkee Homosapien for releasing his latest collection for free; I’m a cheap bastard, and I couldn’t resist seeing what he’s been up to. Del was only eighteen when he recorded the infectiously brilliant Mistadobalina, featured in the clip at left, and unfortunately a lot of what hip hop was about at that time got buried in popular perception by the gangsta crap bullshit that followed. Fortunately all the fools who used music to promote hatred and violence have done a pretty good job of offing each other, and now some of the more positive 90′s hip-hop acts are enjoying a little revival this summer, at least in Boston (and on my computer). Take a minute to download Del’s new release Funk Man (The Stimulus Package), it’s worth a spin, and the price is right. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but he definitely foments some downtempo funk with a crunchy mix (which sounds almost like it was done on tape) that puts to use a lot of heavy compressed bass, Fender Rhodes, and clavinet. Even if Del doesn’t stimulate your package, it’s an excellent stress test for your woofers.

If you’re in a funk today, check out the Peter Fox clip at left. If you’re not feeling a bit chippier by the end of the tune, call your doctor for an emergency dose of Zoloft. Your case may be terminal. I had heard of Seeed, the German reggae-ish hip-hoppish band before, but never given them a good listen until recently, when I discovered singer Peter Fox’s solo material. This is the freshest sound I’ve heard in a long time, somehow fusing string sections, the beatboxy-ness of M.I.A., and a kind of laid-back über-sunshine. By the way, if the idea of German reggae sounds a bit at odds with itself, get in touch with the fact that German music even had an influence on Mexican music. Coincidentally, the Peter Fox material is slated for U.S. release on election day. Order a copy now. You may need something to cheer you up that day. For another cool clip check out Alles Neu, also from the release Stadtaffe, which BabelFish tells me means “city ape”.