Reykjavík Grapevine - 26.04.2019, Blaðsíða 16

16 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 06— 2019
Cell7’s release concert is packed. The energy flows
through the crowd, building them up with each verse
until brutally releasing them once the song ends. Like
a puppet master, she commands the room effort-
lessly.
“The energy was fire,” Ragna Kjartansdóttir—Cell7
herself—says of the concert afterwards. But for her,
this is just one notable performance. The first legend,
the original rap star—you could call Cell7 or a lot of
things—she is a professional and an Icelandic icon.
There is truly no one who knows the rap scene better
or who has endured like she has.
She was there in the beginning, and here she
remains.
THE BEGINNING
A few days later, nostalgia takes over Ragna Kjartans-
dóttir’s face. Her eyes mist up as a small smile tugs
at her lips. Taking a sip of coffee, she pauses, linger-
ing in a past long-gone. The artist, better known as
rapper Cell7, is recalling the early days of the Icelan-
dic rap scene, back when she entered it more than 20
years ago.
“There was one weekly radio show called ‘The
Kronik,’” she says. “The DJ’s mother was a stewardess,
so she always had the freshest vinyl from New York.
You’d tune in weekly to hear the show and record it
on a cassette tape and listen to it over and over.” She
laughs, diving into stories of how people would just
call in to freestyle and hang out with the hosts. The
show is still on today, she explains, but it’s not the
same.
To be fair, not much is the same from the early
days of Icelandic rap. The genre has exploded into
the mainstream in recent years, and boom bap has
been long forgotten in favour of trap. Albums have
migrated from vinyl to SoundCloud, and most of
the original artists have grown up, moved on and
retired.
But Ragna never left. She got her start in 1996 as
part of one of the first Icelandic rap groups, Subter-
ranean, and in March 2019, released her second solo
album, ‘Is Anybody Listening?’
It’s an apt title. Ragna is so humble that she often
questions if people in the scene are still paying
attention to her. That said, the response to the
album—from glowing reviews to a packed release
concert—has proven that, contrary to her worries,
they never stopped.
A CHANCE
MEETING
Ragna’s rap career started with a chance meeting
with brothers Magnús Jónsson and Karl Davíðsson
at an open-mic night. They urged her to meet up
with them and to make some music—something
she had never done before. “It just fell in my lap,” she
explains. “I listened to a lot of rap and hip hop. I was
consumed by it, but I never thought of myself as an
artist.”
It was the harsh modus operandi of the genre that
initially converted her to the church of hip hop. “The
whole vibe. The positive vibe. The nitty-gritty vibe,”
she muses. “The attitude and hard beats were some-
thing that you didn’t hear anywhere else.” Artists like
A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Common, and Das
EFX were particularly formative for the then-emerg-
ing rapper. “You can find everything under the moon
in regards to rap,” she adds, raising her eyebrows.
Ragna took Magnús and Karl up on their invita-
tion, and the trio worked on some tunes, going on
to form the group Subterranean, along with Frew
Elfineh. Ragna laughs as she remembers their first
collaborative effort. “It was actually in Icelandic,” she
says. This is in contrast to their other works, which
are all in English. “It was about us missing the bus or
something. Very childish!”
At that time, the rap scene was the opposite of
what it is today. Built around credibility, you had to
prove yourself as a true fan before you were let in. “It
was a closed group. You had to know your shit to be
legit,” Ragna explains. “Everyone was watching each
other. Who is that? Does he know the songs? Then
you’d spot people that weren’t really into it.” That
said, she underscores that once you had proved your-
self, it became an accepting and friendly environ-
ment. Like all subcultures, they only had each other.
PURE MAGNETIZM
In 1997, Subterranean dropped their first album,
‘Central Magnetizm.’ Full of bare bones drums, vinyl
scratches, bounce, boom bap and pure East Coast old
school vibes, the effort is a booming tribute to the
golden age of hip hop, Icelandic style. It has since
become a collectors piece amongst Icelandic hip-hop
heads.
“My music
surprises people.
People that don’t
generally like rap
music tend to like
my music.”