Reykjavík Grapevine - 26.09.2014, Síða 20

stream following. And after that, hip hop
in Iceland was 99% Icelandic.”
This informed the work of the next
generation, including Emmsjé Gauti.
“When Rottweiler released their album
in 2001 I was like, 12 years old,” Gauti
says. “After that, people had the courage
to do it themselves. I was writing in Eng-
lish, I didn’t think of writing in Icelandic
before that.”
But rapping in Icelandic presents a
unique set of challenges, with a very dif-
ferent rhythm and flow to modern Eng-
lish. “Icelandic is such a stiff language,”
Icelandic rapper Gísli Pálmi said, when
we interviewed him last November. “It’s
an old-school way of speaking. We don’t
have a lot of words for things. In English
there are ten words for one thing, here in
Iceland it’s just one word, and it’s prob-
ably a really bad one. That makes it hard
to rhyme, there are so many different syl-
lables and it’s hard to get to the point. You
might need an action word to complete
the sentence that’ll throw off the flow. I
like that though, when you do it right, it’s
raw.”
With the wide vocabulary and lyri-
cal agility required for rapping, MCs
gravitate towards the language in which
they feel most comfortable, with some
landing in English, and others Icelan-
dic. “We learned this from experience,”
Erpur says. “You have to be really, really
good with words to rap—you can’t com-
pete with someone in English if it’s their
mother tongue. The vocabulary, flow,
skills… me and Sesar A were thinking
primarily in Icelandic, and so we rapped
in Icelandic.”
And adapting Icelandic to rap has led
to interesting new usages for one of the
world’s oldest languages. “I was talking
to an Icelandic language teacher about
how kids do it today,” says Egill Ólafur
Thorarensen, aka Egill Tiny, of Quarashi.
“She embraces how the kids bend the
language, as if they were using ebonics.
People are adapting the language, bend-
ing it, breaking the rules, and that’s cool.
Language evolves,
rap evolves, and with
the young crowd to-
day, rap has evolved
in a very good way in
Iceland.”
Becoming Conscious
In stark contrast to the problematic tra-
vails of mainstream hip hop, Iceland is
often named as one of the world’s most
progressive cultures when it comes to
gay rights and gender equality. Icelandic
rap has sometimes found itself pulled be-
tween these opposing poles, reaching a
flashpoint when Blaz Roca and Emmsjé
Gauti released a track called “Elskum
þessar mellur”, or “We Love The Sluts.”
“It was really good for me to work
with Blaz Roca,” says Gauti. “When the
guy that actually brought you into the
game wants to make a song with you, it’s
a certain honour. The track we did was
controversial, it was about slut-shaming.
We went a little bit too far somewhere
in the lyrics. I don’t take that song back,
though. We were saying, if people are
gonna call girls who sleep with a lot of
guys sluts, it is not a shame to be a slut,
we are sluts ourselves. That was the main
thing behind it. But people got mad.”
The ensuing dialogue helped shape
Gauti’s attitudes and opened his eyes
to what feminism means. “I was ap-
proached by a friend of mine who got
really mad about the song,” says Gauti.
“And I just didn’t understand why. I al-
ways used to say, I’m not a feminist, I just
believe in equal rights. And now I know
that’s basically what feminism is, and
I can say I’m a proud feminist. You can
always look at your
opinions and clear out
your mind more and
more—I am still learn-
ing new things that I
am wrong about, like
this.”
Erpur thinks the controversial con-
tent of his music comes more from risqué
humour than offensive attitudes. “I’m a
feminist,” states Erpur, “but at the same
time, I talk lots of shit. I make metaphors
that some people find offensive and sex-
ist. We say lots of shit in hip hop, and find
controversial jokes funny, but there’s no-
body I know that’s actually against wom-
en or gay people.”
“I understand the message that Gauti
and Erpur wanted to convey in the song,”
says Anna Tara Andrésdóttir, of feminist
rap collective Reykjavikurdætur. “That
is definitely one way of speaking about
it. The language got criticism - people
thought using the word “mella" might
have the exact opposite effect of what
they were trying to convey. But I’m glad
that their thoughts, and the criticism, are
out there—I think the whole conversa-
tion encourages people to think for them-
selves. In fact, I’m excited to see what
feminist issue they will rap about next.”
Vanilla Iceland
Hip hop was born in the US, a country
currently in the throes of revolution of
consciousness regarding race and appro-
priation; that is, the strip-mining of black
culture for white people, as seen in ear-
lier decades via the repackaging of blues
and rock ‘n’ roll by mainstream artists
like Elvis.
But Iceland is a completely differ-
ent context; a small island nation whose
late-blooming, insular culture must feed
on external influence, or become stag-
nant. “I think it’s stupid to say you can’t
do something just because you don’t
have the roots in it,” says Gauti. “Hu-
man beings come from the same place
in the beginning, so we all have the same
roots. We come from different cultures of
course but it’s more relevant to ask ‘are
you doing it well, and do you have pas-
sion?’, instead of saying ‘you can’t do this
because you weren’t born there.’ That’s
just prejudice.”
And as rap and hip hop become a
global culture, people from around the
world are using it as a vessel to convey
their own lives and stories, Iceland in-
cluded. “The original form is, of course,
from the USA,” Egill says, “so we’re al-
ways going to be inspired by foreign hip
hop. But Icelandic rappers have their
own sense of style, and they talk about
things where they’re from. It’s not just a
copy-paste of something else. It’s a way
to express yourself. Rap is something
people have stumbled across, but there’s
something universal in it that translates
to all of us.”
“Rap has grown into so many differ-
ent places and genres now,” ponders Rag-
na Cell7. “People can’t judge us because of
where we’re from. It’s irritating to have
people judge you just because you live on
a remote island. It’s hard to be critiqued
based on that. We’re just doing what we
love. Doing our own thing, right here.
And that’s unique.”
20
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 15 — 2014
My
Name Is...
1 Emmsjé Gauti
Emmsjé Gauti is a fresh MC who
burst onto the scene via a controver-
sial collaboration with Blaz Roca in
2010.
2 Arnar Freyr Frostason
Half of Úlfur Úlfur, a popular rap
duo.
3 Egill Tiny
A member of Quarashi, Iceland's big-
gest English-language rap crew.
4 Erpur Eyvindarson
Erpur, aka Blaz Roca, is a founding
member of XXX Rottweiler, and the
self-styled 'papa of Icelandic hip hop.'
5 Ragna Kjartansdóttir
A member of Subterranean at the
age of sixteen, Ragna now performs
under her Cell7 moniker.
6 Anna Tara & Katrin Helga
Andrésdóttir
Two sister-members of large feminist
rap collective Reykjavíkurdætur, or
"Daughters of Reykjavík."
7 Sesar A
Sesar released the first Icelandic-lan-
guage rap album in 2001, just days
before XXX Rottweiler's debut.
(Not pictured)
“There are people that
don’t necessarily like
hip hop but like what
I’m doing because of
the lyrics. It’s not race
or religion that makes
us Icelandic - it’s the
language."
- Blaz Roca, XXX Rottweiler
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