The dim, airplane hangar-sized garage was thick with paint fumes. The black beret-clad guards (more commando than French) informed us that we had to put on the neon orange wristbands, and it didn’t seem wise not to comply. From the garage we exited into a bright and mostly empty, linoleum-floored room-cum-large hallway that looked like the ass-end of any sports stadium in America. But this particular one happened to be St. Petersburg’s Ledovy Dvorets (Ice Palace), home to Russia’s S.K.A., (“Soviet Red Army”) hockey team. But anachronistically named sports teams were nowhere to be found tonight, as the arena was instead the setting for the Legends of Russian Rap—namely, Guf, Smoki Mo and Basta.
But especially Basta.
Rap is not at the same level of popularity as in America, making this arena concert a relative rarity in Russia and particularly in this second most populous of cities. The rappers Guf, Smoki Mo, and Basta are as close to superstars as you can get in the Russian hip-hop scene, but that still doesn’t necessarily indicate enormous crowds. Ledovy Dvorets has a capacity of around 10,000, but with only part of the main floor filled, the crowd looked to be in the 2-3,000 range. That said, this was still a bona fide Arena Show, complete with Jumbotron, fancy lighting and multiple camera crews shooting the stage and sweeping over the enthusiastic audience with a crane—and, of course, with sound that left much to be desired.
But audience members, who paid around $25 to attend this show, didn’t come for the acoustics, they came for the experience, for the community. Because more than anything, the best word to describe the Russian hip-hop scene is just that: community.
The Russian scene is more like a local hip-hop scene in America, magnified to fit the scale of the largest country in the world. As in smaller American scenes, all the artists know each other, collaborate with each other, share fans and keep things tightly knit, more by necessity than choice.
Due to some typical confusion about starting times, I missed most of the sets by Guf and Smoki Mo. But I did make it in time for the most well-known name of the night. If Russian hip-hop were big enough to have a Jay-Z, Basta would be it.
Like a lot of Russian hip-hop, Basta’s music draws heavily on the early 90’s New York hip-hop scene. Beats tend to be sample-centered, nostalgic, key-and string-driven affairs clearly influenced by producers like Rza and Pete Rock. Basta’s gruff, low-mid range voice matches well with the rich beats, and his delivery—straightforward, but dexterous—injects just the speed needed to keep the plodding beats engaging.
