Scryptonite, Petar Martic and Waste Paper brought back intrigue to rap

Among the releases of August, those that are directly related to hip-hop sound the loudest. It’s getting harder and harder to find out-of-the-ordinary records in this genre, but even seasoned artists sometimes manage to keep their spirits up. How Scryptonite, Petar Martić and the Wastepaper group succeeded again.

Adil Zhalelov, better known as Scryptonite, this year keeps his fan base in an enviable tone. At the end of April, his numbered album “7” was released, live recordings of the Gruppa Skryptonite project on the release “360” have recently become available, and now fans have received the Fantasy Mixtape, vol. 1. The mixtape differs from the usual album in some randomness. Of the twenty-eight tracks included on the compilation, some have already been released before, however, in a slightly different “package”. So, the number “Clean” from the TV series “Psych” this time is presented in the form of a remix. “Bag”, originally recorded as a duet with Qurt, is also remixed with Carousel Paris.

However, there is no shortage of novelties. As is often the case on mixtapes, Scryptonite has brought together an impressive team of veterans and youth. The tracks were recorded by Slovetsky, Nedra, OG Buda, 104, LOVV66, Friendly Thug, 52 Ngg and others. It’s hard not to recognize Scryptonite himself, his timbre and style of reading (what is referred to as “flow”) allow him to flirt without unnecessary ado with a variety of rap schools and not allow any of them to dominate his own take on hip-hop. Scryptonite seems to have come into this industry as a hardened uncle, so even bridges to pop music in the form of a lighter (by Adil’s standards) sound do not deprive his words of a brutal character.

On mixtapes of solid length, not all tracks deserve serious attention. Fantasy Mixtape, vol. 1 is no exception. But even passing things Scryptonite knows how to load his life with the truth and remain at least in words a dangerous type.

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Petar Martić is a real citizen of the world, which also applies to his music. Born in Belgrade, lived in Moscow, studied at the University of the Arts in Bournemouth, England. Petar’s passion for writing music led to the project “Jump, Pussy”, where Martic reached certain heights in terms of rap, amazing with its simplicity and obscenity.

Then there was the Pasosh guitar group, which, together with Buerak, Ploho and others, changed the clean, mostly English-speaking local indie rock of the 2000s for something more native and raunchy. This rock wave subsided after the covid and the mass migration of musicians, and Petar, returning to Belgrade, decided to record another album under the label “Jump, Pussy”.

The lyrics have matured (but not much), and the music has become radically danceable. Petar surprisingly managed to marry Russian-language texts and rather unbridled subtypes of house music, which sound mainly in American clubs. Such a combination is usually decided under the motto “pan or go”, and Martic with his album “Icon” got straight into the top ten.

Pop music is now made with a ruler and compass, and in the end it resembles a complex mechanism of checks and balances. “Icon” was made as if on a dead reel, and almost every track here calls for forgetting about decorum and dancing a little dirtier than you can afford. Quite famous people flocked to such a mischievous light. Fits with Petar recorded Boulevard Depo and LSP, as well as Feduk, who, with his almost pop-star status, seemed to have avoided adventures.

But the artists in their marketing frenzy have already forgotten that it is adventures that should drive music. As a result, Martic and Feduk gave out a real dance bomb called Vogue. No less loudly shoots “Dolce Gabbano” – a remake of the old hit by Sergei Zverev. Through the efforts of the album’s producers, the king of local glamor seems to be shaking a heavy suite in a dirty alleyway, which is a lot of fun.

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“Waste paper” has resurrected, and this, of course, is good news. However, any movements of Yevgeny Alekhine and Konstantin Speransky as a single creative organism are so spontaneous in nature that it is not easy to predict further actions. Nevertheless, there is a new album “Nowhere!”, in which, in seven songs and twenty-four minutes, the recording participants managed to create a real thriller, and this is a convex hint at the enviable tone of the musicians.

“Waste paper” was formed more than twenty years ago in Kemerovo, and over the past years, Evgeny, Konstantin and their many associates have created a gloomy, intelligent and very literary rap contrary to any fashion. “Nowhere!”, one might say, has a certain concept. These recitatives are about St. Petersburg, which is about to fall into the apocalypse … And the end of the world here is more mental than physical. The scenery for hopelessness is ruthlessly chosen; the gloomy voices of Alekhine and Speransky seem to admit no chance of salvation; noises, guitars and drums, proposed by the full-fledged co-author of the album, Mikhail Zolotarev from the group “Crvenih Tsvetova”, seem to be the only possible instrumental under the circumstances.

“Red-faced terpils drink spicy cocktails on the verandas, half already engulfed in flames…” – Alekhine and Speransky are not one of those who try to grasp and comprehend the flow of information, but, as often happens, poems from timelessness turn out to be terribly relevant. “Nobody!” resembles an old phone in the era of smartphones, but the truth is that it does not fail in a situation where supergadgets are clearly buggy.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29092 dated August 16, 2023

Newspaper headline:
From dirty dancing to the end of the world