2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25
In recent years, the musical tastes of young people have undergone a new round of changes - rap has taken the place of piercing rock ballads and incendiary dance electronics. Along with the new culture, new words also penetrated the masses - terms used among performers and their devoted listeners. However, those music lovers who first discovered rap are unlikely to understand the meaning of the words flow, battle, diss, beef, and similar slang words. Of course, descriptions of such terms are easy to find on specialized sites - the Russian-speaking sector of hip-hop is widely represented on the Internet. However, if most of the terms have specific definitions, then it is rather difficult to explain what a flow is in a nutshell.
Origin of the word "flow"
The word "flow" came to Russia from the English language - the ancestor of rap culture. Flow is translated as "flow", "flow" - at first glance, this concept has nothing to do with hip-hop. However, in this case, there is a metaphorical transfer. Rap artists and their listeners equate rhythmic and multifaceted recitative to the even and noisy flow of water. Thus, for a hip-hop lover, flow is a rather important indicator of quality.track.
Flow as composition score
Among the discussions of rappers and their work, one can often find the term in question as a review of an album or track. What is flow in this context - a positive or negative characteristic? Based on the translation of the word from English and a beautiful metaphor, this is certainly a positive response. Flow is the recognition of the rapper’s entire work or his individual compositions as “rocking” or “rocking”, that is, affecting listeners to such an extent that they involuntarily begin to shake their heads to the beat of the track being performed.
Flow as a musical term
Together with all of the above, it is worth noting that the term flow is not purely emotional - for hip-hop artists it has a very specific meaning. Flow is the correct reading speed, an impeccable technique for writing and reproducing text to the “rocking” beat. Nevertheless, you should not think that quality in this case depends on speed. A fast, but inconsistent reading will not excite the viewer in the same way as a slow, but clearly falling into rhythm. Thus, the flow is not only an assessment of the quality, but also the skill of the performer.
Flow in Russian rap
The ability to create really "rocking" tracks for a long time bypassed Russian-speaking performers. Quite often compositions were read out under not especially allocated bits by quiet, almost unemotional voices. Probably this state of affairs wasassociated with the Russian mentality - gray and bleak everyday life with their dank weather and heavy skies did not encourage Russian rappers to show emotions. Listeners found something of their own in a quiet and melancholy performance, but hip-hop culture in Russia still remained isolated. With the appearance on the Russian stage of such rap figures as Hyde, Oxxxymiron, Horus (Lupercal) and other supporters of the prevailing technique of reading and the quality of text drawing, something appeared in the domestic hip-hop sector that fits all definitions of the word "flow". Even those who have not previously listened to and did not understand such music often highly appreciate these performers, paying attention to the fact that their tracks, unlike the compositions of many of their "colleagues", really "rock".
At the same time, fans of the "old" style of performance do not recognize such changes - in their opinion, in this form, Russian-language rap loses its soul, becoming only a technically filigree, but empty text. Rapper Ptah, whose compositions are mostly calm and melancholy, spoke extremely negatively about the tracks of the aforementioned Oxxxymiron, accusing him of excessive craving for pathos poetry and complex technique, which, as it seems to him, is the reason for the work of Miron and similar rappers ceases to be "male". The conflict between the two rappers has not yet been exhausted - it is unlikely that two opponents will shake hands when they meet. Despite this, the new style of rhyming and performance is gaining momentum and attracting more and more listeners, which is undoubtedly a good indicator. This only confirms that inRussian-language rap still penetrated the same "flow" that could previously only be heard from overseas and some European performers.
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