The eponymous single from Nas’ 2006 album Hip-Hop is Dead solemnly declared the severity hip-hop’s inevitable demise.

Oz melting pot: Timur Bakan (left), Jehad Dabab, Hesham Habibullah and Moustafa Dabab (right), from Australian Muslim rap group The Brothahood perform at Fx mall, Senayan, Jakarta, for the Hip Hop is Harmony in Diversity Tour. The tour was part of the Australian Embassy’s month-long cultural festival OzFest 2010.

“Hip-hop just died this morning and she’s dead,” he rasps, almost forlornly against the monotonous drone of an Iron Maiden riff.  

Slaves to commercial imperatives as well as their own raging hubris, Nas reckons today’s hip-hop practitioners are too busy hitting Brazilian dimes from behind to care about social issues.

But perhaps Nas’ declaration was a little premature. His grim diagnosis of the genre’s terminal ills may prove accurate in the US, where the highest charting hip-hop artist of recent times is Lil Wayne:  a dreadlocked slinger of non-sequiturs, with his most notable rhyming couplet pitting “venereal disease” against a “menstrual bleed”.  

In Indonesia, it’s a different ball game. If anything, the genre seems to be thriving, enmeshing elements of traditional melodies and rhythms with rapid-fire repartee.

That’s certainly the assessment from two Australian hip-hop artists — Muslim rap group The Brothahood and DJ Jay Tee from indigenous act The Last Kinection — who have just completed a whirlwind tour of Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Bali before their performances in Jakarta on Oct. 16.

Their performances were part of OzFest, a month-long cultural festival held by the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

DJ Jay Tee was particularly effusive about the Indonesian hip-hop scene, especially the hip-hop stronghold of Yogyakarta.

“It was amazing”, he says, somewhat awestruck. “I played alongside the Yogya Hip-Hop Foundation, who sampled traditional Indonesian sounds alongside more conventional elements of rap music. The crowd went absolutely mental.”

He adds that what was most exciting was that the language barrier between him and his Indonesian audience did not dampen the level of enthusiasm in the room.

He says his time in Indonesia has inspired him to think outside the square and embrace cultural and sonic differences in hip-hop.

Mainstream Australian hip-hop seems to be afflicted by a sort of institutional malaise where “artists are boxed in by this perception that everyone has to stick to the same sound”, he notes.

“Initially there was pressure to sound American, then to sound distinctively ‘Australian’, which was just as restrictive. One message I’ve taken from my experience here is not only how alive hip-hop is in other cultures, but how it has been adopted and constantly re-interpreted.”

Certainly, one of the most popular criticisms to be leveled at mainstream hip-hop concerns an increasingly monolithic culture; that there is a perceptible shift from diversity and cultural inclusion to circumscribed narratives that prize materialism and sexual conquest.

Nowadays, its socially conscious origins read like a nostalgic narrative, with mainstream hip-hop dominated by a homogenized gangsta culture, the reiteration of racial stereotypes and some pretty hilarious innuendo involving bottles of Cristal. B.G. and the Cash Money Millionaires say it best in this eloquent missive against fiscal martyrdom in their pro-capitalist anthem Bling Bling: “Medallion iced up, Rolex-bezelled up/And my pinky ring is platinum plus”.

Undoubtedly, it is this type of sentiment that is indicative of the genre’s pronounced commercial and generational shift.

Given the increasingly commodified trajectory of mainstream hip-hop, one wonders whether there’s enough space for its geekier, less bombastic brother: Socially conscious hip-hop. So I posed that question to The Brothahood, a Melbourne four-piece consisting of MC Jehad Dabab, Moustafa Dabab, Hesham Habibullah and Timur Bakan. Their response: An emphatic “yes”. “Our lyrics,” says Moustafa, “are our weapon.”

The foursome identify foremost as Australian Muslims and provide a neat portrait of Melbourne’s ethnic diversity, with their backgrounds spanning Egypt, Burma, Turkey and Lebanon.

Their lyrics may be tailored towards the experiences of Muslim youths — they have songs about Ramadan and the emphasis on controlling your inner self — but they insist on the importance of speaking to a diverse audience.

“Basically, we want to break down the stereotypes and barriers we face as Muslims living in Australia,” Hesham says, “but racial slurs, bullying and not fitting in are experiences that non-Muslisms can also relate to. A lot of hip-hop has become more about being better than everyone else; no-one can relate to that.”

Unsurprisingly, The Brothahood are weary of the ideological tensions surrounding their work. Born and bred in suburban Melbourne, they would agree that they are products of the West.

However, they roundly reject criticisms from more conservative critics who suggest the merging of hip-hop and Islam is emblematic of a corrosive Western influence.

Rather, they believe the ultra-Western medium of hip-hop could act as perfect catalyst to debunk ignorance and stereotypes.

Their idealism recalls that of hip-hop’s halcyon era of the 1980s to mid 1990s, where the genre provided an enviable platform for social and cultural commentary, providing a platform for marginalized perspectives by drawing on personal and historical experience with solid commercial success.

And yet the coherency of today’s hip-hop’s political narratives is often suffocated by rampant earnestness, or a sophomoric nihilism that is derived from attempts to create a simplistic, diametrically opposed stance to the rigidities of mainstream civic and popular culture. To borrow from rapping parlance: How does one keep it real?

Timur puts it down to staying true to their roots. “We do workshops for primary schools, high schools and universities and organize events for the local Muslim community.”

For them, hip-hop is primarily about establishing a connection with their audience, regardless
of cultural, linguistic or religious differences. They seemed genuinely astonished at how enthusiastically they were embraced by Indonesian audiences.

“They probably had no idea what we were saying,” says Jehad, “but we were able to connect with them through our beats and energy. With hip-hop, you’re able to feign a connection with the audience no matter what. It breaks down all barriers.”

— Photo by JP/Wendra Ajistyatama

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