Rising East Online

Poles Apart

Polish Hip Hop

East On The Mic

—Shaheen Sadough

Polish hip-hop? Surely as bizarre as watching sour cream go off? That’s what I thought, until I started to investigate…

A quick browse on the web leads nowhere, and if it wasn’t for my friend who tells me that the scene is very exclusive right now, I would have been stuck. Luckily he informs me of a Polish hip hop night at The Cargo nightclub in Rivington Street., near Old Street.

So I set off to the venue with a friend, a clear head and an open mind. When we arrived, we found rap star O.S.T.R and his band SkillMega were due to perform alongside DJ Haem. The venue was bustling and almost full, but not so busy you couldn’t breathe. The crowd was very mixed in terms of age and race, with probably more males than females in the vicinity. When I spoke to a couple of Poles, clearly enormous fans of O.S.T.R, they tell me to look out specifically for his renowned freestyle skills on the mic.

Following a rousing performance from Dirty Diggers, a rap duo currently resident in Yorkshire and East London, O.S.T.R. appeared to rapturous applause. He and his crew lit up the stage. The beats were diverse, ranging from fast energetic club tunes, to slower paced music to simply sway and nod your head to. DJ Haem on the decks kept things flowing smoothly throughout with no significant mistakes and no obvious breaks in between songs. It was hard for me to distinguish between songs due to my lack of familiarity with Polish language and music. However the switch in beat is a good indicator of a change in song so I wasn’t entirely lost.

The involvement of the crowd was intense, with people dancing furiously to the high tempo tracks, and literally getting lighters out and waving them from side to side for the slow songs. In hip hop shows the way the artist affects the audience is important, and O.S.T.R created a distinctive rapport with the crowd. Dancing is a key element in hip hop culture, so the way O.S.T.R involved people in the performance was vital to the overall show. Constantly encouraging people to get to the floor, he wasn’t there just for the sake of it.

Then there were O.S.T.R’s rapping skills. It was obvious even with my ignorance of the Polish language, that his guy knew how to MC. He was clear and concise with his words, rhymed well, and had a pleasing voice. At one point the excited rapper went a cappella, unleashing a tirade of Polish. Although the literal meaning was unrecognisable to me, I could sense not only from the growing exhilaration of the crowd but also from my own judgment of hip hop, that he is extremely gifted.

Chatting to new found Polish acquaintances, they tell me about the topics covered in the lyrics. From marijuana smoking and sexual exploits, to social and political issues, O.S.T.R covers a broad spectrum. Perhaps he is trying to appeal to the masses, or maybe he really is bothered about all of these subjects – who knows? But what’s certain is that O.S.T.R gives a full display of his considerable rapping aptitude, the most important factor in building a fan base.

Aside from this wonderfully entertaining night, I have found it enormously difficult to locate any more noteworthy Polish hip hop events in London, although I am told Southampton is a good place to look.

It seems the foundations of the Polish hip-hop scene were cemented back in the early 1990s at a time when certain US rappers crossed over into the commercial mainstream, notably MC Hammer with his album Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em and particularly the single U Can’t Touch This. Vanilla Ice was also hugely successful at the time, and it is likely that the worldwide commercial success of these rappers brought their influence to bear on young people in Poland.

The first Polish hip hop album was an album called East On The Mic by a rapper from Kielce formerly known as PM Cool Lee, and now more widely known as Liroy.Nonetheless it was Warsaw which became the hip hop heart of the Polish nation. Radio station KOLOR started broadcasting – among the hosts was a Londoner named Sylvia Opoku – and a national cult of hip hop began. As young Poles began to travel West following accession to the EU in 2004, they brought with them their own take on hip hop.

I conclude with the observation that, although Polish hip hop may not be particularly booming at this precise moment, when you consider the evident flair of O.S.T.R. and the influx of Poles into this country, maybe Polish and American/English hip hop won’t be poles apart much longer.

Shaheen Sadough is studying Journalism

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