Cue Obligatory Guest Rapper: Your Handy Guide to Serbia’s Rotating Lineup Of Better-Looking Pitbulls

Got wood? Stojan and Yankoo do.

You know how it goes. You’ve been listening to, perhaps even vaguely enjoying, a tunefully inane pop song for a couple of minutes when suddenly a guest rapper bursts in, aggressively spouting a stream of syntax that goes straight over your head and seems to have nothing to do with the song. Then 10 seconds later, the chorus comes in again and things go back to normal. How did the incongruous guest rap become such a commonplace feature of Anglo-American pop songs? Is it in danger of expanding to other areas of life? Will future US presidents hand over to an aging Pitbull two-thirds of the way through their inaugural address? Will your doctor soon be interrupted during his explanation of your cancer treatment by a dollar-bill-throwing T-Pain offering you a cup of purple drank? Commonly used to add a veneer of urban credibility to mainstream pop songs – to make something very white a little bit blacker, essentially – the guest rapper is now such an ingrained trope in Anglo-American popular music that even Rebecca Black’s Friday had one. Unsurprisingly, Serbia’s megabucks pop industry has picked up on this trend in the past few years and successfully adapted it for the local market, picking a gaggle of previously obscure rappers and thrusting them into the commercial spotlight. Like a litter of enthusiastic puppies, they’re almost impossible to contain, constantly bounding into other artists’ songs and spilling over into every other music video, often two at a time, in a sort of Brownian motion of consonant-spitting gym bunnies. With so many of these similar-looking, permatanned reperi competing for attention, whether with their own songs or gatecrashing other people’s, it can be hard to remember who’s who – which is why I’ve created this handy guide. (If you’d rather explore some actual credible post-Yugoslav hip-hop – and you probably should – start with this excellent introduction by Laura Autton-Wise and check out artists like Dubioza Kolektiv and Who See on Spotify.)

Stojan

Identifying features: Always smiling. This is because young MC Stojan, real name Marko Stojanović, is living the modern-day Serbian dream. Just a few years ago, he was a gawky, plump adolescent uploading his own amateur rap videos to Youtube, dressed in a rather-too-revealing bathrobe. Now, he’s a buff orange superstar with seemingly countless hits under his belt who plays to packed clubs around Europe – the true Balkan Pitbull and the reigning king of Serbian party music, celebrated by young people at home and throughout the diaspora.
Skillz: Can sing as well as rap. Wikipedia: “His songs are usually full of lyrics about sex, or eating.” Sounds like a muškarac after my own heart. He’s obviously doing something right.
Hotness: I wouldn’t kick him out of krevet. You have to reward him for all the hard work he put into his physique, right?
Prolificness: Ubiquitous from 2011-2013, mercifully quieter recently.
Best moment: Volim te, U srce pucaj mi, Ti i ja and his other hits and appearances are all great, but the song that most perfectly encapsulates the Stojan ethos and pushes it beyond the point of parody is Kakva Guza (“What An Ass”), or as it will undoubtedly be known to future musicologists, “Stojanović’s First Kakva Guza Symphony in D Asscrack Minor”.
Funniest moment: Being broken out of hospital by a man in a Superman costume (Serbian Youtube star Gasttozz) in Ne znam gde sam.

Nesh

Identifying features: Speak-sings rather than rapping conventionally, and his parts are always heavily studio-processed. Looks like a sort of middle manager or insurance salesman who won a competition to appear as a guest rapper on television.
Skillz: Effective gesturing, first-rate posturing and superb idling. Normally to be found standing at one side of the stage trying to look useful while waiting for the singer to finish the chorus so he can perform the rest of his rap. He’s really good at that.
Hotness: I’d rather bump into him than Robin Thicke on a dark night.
Prolificness: Occasionally called in by the studio to enliven/spoil (depending on your perspective) songs by Jelena Karleusa, Milica Pavlovic and no doubt others in the future.
Best moment: Rocking a tux, being suave and getting the girl in the Alibi video; coming out of Ferrari less badly than everyone else.
Funniest moment: Being upstaged by JK’s butt in So; standing around doing nothing for most of the song every time Alibi is performed on TV.

Yankoo

Identifying features: Rarely heard performing in his native tongue, MC Yankoo prefers to rap in rudimentary English in a comically fake American accent.
Skillz: Standing around in shades, saying his name, going “Yeeeaaaah!”, being ungrammatical.
Hotness: Hard to judge when he’s always in those shades. But as long as he keeps his mouth shut, he’s not exactly going to shatter any mirrors, is he?
Prolificness: Inexplicably appears on everything. Called in by producers every time they want someone to rap in English (however badly) to add international flair.
Best moment: Actually rapping in Serbian in Zvuk; managing not to entirely ruin In Vivo’s 2013 summer hit Ruza; rhyming “work” with “twerk” in Uvek kad popijem before being upstaged by Dara Bubamara’s gigantic new breast implants. (Speaking of which, has anyone seen Right Said Fred recently?)
Funniest moment: Wearing a blond wig and announcing “We’re here to make a party” in the appropriately named Balkan Shit; expressing his desire for “dirty ass” in Kakva Guza. (I’m sure the local donkey sanctuary can help out there.)

Teča

Identifying features: King of gangster chic. Impressive arm muscles. Shades possibly glued to face.
Hotness: The stubble, shades and tough-guy posturing – and those arm muscles – definitely make an impression. The terrifying images on his Facebook page of him firing guns while showing off his perfect abs, and clasping a rifle across his rippling six-pack in the midst of a photoshopped warzone, also make an, uh, impression. I think his creative team (led by Dejan Milicevic, again) is perhaps taking gangster chic too far. Though before we start singling out Serbia for having a violent aesthetic in some of its music videos, let’s remember that this takes its cues directly from US hiphop as well as stars like Gaga, who at the peak of her popularity in 2009-2010 made three successive videos that showed her murdering people in a glamourised fashion (Paparazzi, Bad Romance, Telephone).
Skillz: Co-wrote Krimi Rad, Serbia’s biggest hit of 2012, as well as the blingtastic Milion Dolara by Ana Nikolic in 2013. Before his mainstream success, Teča was active in the Serbian hiphop scene under the name Teror Teča. Before that, he worked in a shelter caring for rescued kittens (or so I like to imagine).
Prolificness: Just the above. After his success with Ana Nikolic last year, will we see him write for more artists in future? Will there be a Teča album? And if there is, will he be shirtless astride a rocket launcher on the front of it?
Best moment: Not Krimi Rad, not Milion Dolara – but his appearance on Nikolija’s epochal Ćao zdravo.
Funniest moment: Krimi Rad’s follow-up, Ferrari, which was no-one’s finest hour.

Sha

Identifying features: Understated mohawk, friendly eyes, likes to act out song lyrics in gesture form during TV performances. When the vocalist sings “spava”, he makes a sleeping gesture; when she sings “ne” or “nema”, he wags his finger. In other words, Sha syncretizes rap and sign language into a true gesamtkunst, y’all.
Hotness: What really works in Sha’s favour is that unlike practically everyone else in this article, he doesn’t pretend to be macho. He’s your friendly local guest rapper who’s here to do the job, do it well, enjoy himself and make sure you do too. Like a kindly, ever-smiling grandfather transplanted into the body of a tattooed twentysomething, he’s just happy to be there and always makes you feel welcome. And he looked great shirtless with Jadranka Barjaktarovic in Fatalna too.
Skillz: Dobro. He’s good at what he does and his guest raps typically fit in well with the song.
Prolificness: Sha’s star is rising – over the past 2 years, he’s appeared not just on more and more songs but better and better ones, to the point that his presence now almost feels like a guarantee of quality. Works with a variety of collaborators, but most frequently with DJs Shone and Mladja and singers Ivana Selakov (Igraj dok postojiš, Nema plana), Mia Borisavljević (Bumerang, Lepota balkanska) and Katarina Zivković (Ljubi me, Ludo srce) – and it’s his songs with these, especially Ivana and Shone, that have consistently been the best.
Best moment: I love Nocas tvoja sam in addition to all of the above, but I have to go with Nema plana, released in June – it’s the genuinely uplifting summer party hit of the year, one that’s been such a success precisely because it doesn’t copy the standard summer-hit formula laid down by In Vivo’s smash Moje Leto (My Summer) two years ago and copied by many others since.
Funniest moment: Performing his guest rap in Etiketa while wearing a flamboyant silver-studded headpiece, intercut with shots of shirtless dancers in fetish gear.

Cvija

Identifying features: Eyebrows? Looks like a younger, less camp Michael Wendler.
Hotness: Yeah, he’ll do.
Skillz: More than just a party rapper, Cvija has a fair amount of good-quality solo material and has collaborated a lot with other rappers and appeared on mixtapes – he occupies the crossroads between commercial party rap and the Serbian hiphop scene.
Prolificness: Very. But like Sha, he picks his collaborators well.
Best moment: Visually, pulling off a waistcoast, cloth cap and butterscotch trousers in Nema te without looking like a hipster. Musically, Diskoteka is a pretty great “get the party started” song, and Djipaj is awesome.
Funniest moment: Accompanying Dara Bubamara on a girls’ night out in Noc za nas.

I for one heartily embrace Serbia’s party rapper overlords, even if it can be hard telling them apart, not to mention keeping track of (or avoiding) their output. They make vibrant, accessible, fun music for ordinary people to enjoy – and who, apart from those who look down on ordinary people’s cultural tastes, could have a problem with that? Commercial Serbian rap has come a long way since Ivan Gavrilović put pedal to the metal in 1994. Here’s to the next 20 years!

The Five Hits of 2014 That Will Convert You to Serbian Pop

Driving through a remote Austrian Alpine valley, turning on the radio and hearing 50 Cent. Dining in a restaurant in rural eastern Slovakia where Lily Allen is being piped in over the speakers. Partying in a huge beer tent in Germany in which thousands of people are swaying not to oompah music but to a band playing Robbie Williams covers: All things I’ve experienced in the past decade, and all things that rankle me.

Like it or not, Anglo-American pop music is our global sonic wallpaper – and I choose that word deliberately, in that it’s bland, uniform, and quite literally wallpapers over domestic music scenes by virtue of its greater marketing budget combined with cultural cringe, the widespread phenomenon of people in westernized countries (and those in the process of westernization) looking down on their own culture as parochial and uncool while embracing the newly imported, superimposed culture of the colonizer. As a result, in the absence of sufficient cultural protections like France’s radio quota for French-language music, local bands singing in a country’s native language or even in English soon find they can barely get mainstream radio airplay because stations are too busy promoting the latest Katy Perry single on hot rotation. Or as Miley didn’t put it: “Došla sam u ovo party, vreme da bih twerkala.”

Thankfully, quite a few countries in Europe – like France, as well as Italy, Estonia, Ukraine and much of the Balkans – have held onto thriving and distinct domestic pop scenes. This is of course also true outside of Europe – Japan’s J-pop and South Korea’s K-pop (albeit much of which, just like Anglo-American pop, is actually Swedish-written) are highly successful and have large domestic and worldwide fandoms. But while Serbian pop has yet to break out internationally or enjoy its own Gangnam Style moment (this Dado Polumenta Gangnam Style mashup notwithstanding), the country’s songwriters and producers are quietly and prolifically making some of the world’s best pop music – some of which I’d like to share with you now. Be warned though, you’re only going to like the following if you like pop to begin with, because Serbian pop is pop with the safeties off – so if you’re averse to ABBA, don’t like dance music, think Eurovision is eurrendous and go green at the thought of Gaga or Girls Aloud, I’m not going to win you over. (If you’d like to check out some awesome Serbian rock instead, I heartily recommend Ti’s new album Vidimo se, which has a lo-fi, Interpol-like sound.) With that said: BRING ON THE HITS.

sevdahBABY & Djixx, “Uvek mogu bolje”

I’ve known about sevdahBABY – the artist name of writer-producer Milan Stankovic, not to be confused with the other Milan Stankovic – since he competed in Beovizija, Serbia’s Eurovision preselection, in 2009 with the excellent electro song Previše reči. But it was only when his first full studio album came out this January that I became a fervent fan. Uvek mogu bolje is the joyous opening track to what’s quite simply an incredible album – one that brings disco vibrantly into 2014 with complete authenticity and credibility, as if Disco Demolition Night never happened and the genre had never been banished from the mainstream. I try never to compare Serbian acts to Western or “big-name” acts, but Daft Punk and Nile Rodgers are a good frame of reference here – this is an album that pioneers, surprises and delights at every turn,  where the tracks flow seamlessly into each other, and that (rarely for dance/electronic albums) has a live feel. A lot of pseudo-Balkan music made outside the Balkans for a Western audience by artists like Balkan Beat Box, Shantel and Miss Platnum has an unfortunate hipster vibe – it’s very self-consciously music for the cool kids that orientalises the region, doesn’t reflect the music people in the Balkans actually listen to, and lets Westerners experience the “other” in a commoditised form through dancing to “gypsy” sounds. This album is the exact opposite of all of that – it’s progressive, uplifting, genuine dance music the way it used to be, straight from Belgrade, with masterful instrumentation and production, and which still manages to incorporate Balkan elements without them seeming tokenistic. If Western music critics paid any attention to non-Western music, they’d probably be calling this the disco album of the 21st century.

Igor Garnier & Minja, “Ako te sretnem”

While the sevdahBABY album overflows with sonic inspirations, fellow Belgrade-based producer Igor Garnier takes a less-is-more approach – and the results are sensual, moody and dark. Everything about this, from the song to the video, is very much a sequel to 2011’s superlative Biću tu, and it gets under the skin just as much. I like pretty much everything Igor Garnier has put out, and I also love how he sticks with Minja as a vocalist (just like sevdahBABY sticks with Djixx) because he knows what a good thing he has in her – the melancholy in her voice brings out the emotion in his songs perfectly. And the artful black-and-white video is something else: Belgrade at night has never looked more beautiful or romantic.

Maya Berovic, “Alkohol”

Maya, an upcoming young singer signed to Belgrade’s City Records, spoke recently in the press about the likely existence of prostitution in Serbia’s entertainment industry and how unlike many of her colleagues, she reached where she is today without participating in this or doing topless photoshoots she knew she’d later regret. And indeed, Maya’s videos have always reflected her relatively wholesome approach – while other female turbofolk singers shake their bums and showcase their bronzed and surgically enhanced bodies, Maya manages to be awesome and sexy while keeping her clothes on; this video is easily her most sexualised so far. Writer-producer Damir Handanovic, responsible for Maya’s previous big hits Djevojka sa juga (Girl from the south) and Vjeruj ženi koja pije (Trust women who drink), wrote this song for Maya and gifted it to her for her birthday. Like its predecessors, it’s club-oriented and about going out, getting drunk and having a great time, even if you have a broken heart. It’s also the first Serbian song to tap into the emerging country-EDM genre – America’s own answer to turbofolk – and represents a highly effective Balkan riposte to chart-toppers like Avicii’s Wake Me Up and Hey Brother. Let’s not beat about the bush – if Calvin Harris, David Guetta or Avicii had put this out in English with Rihanna or Sia as the vocalist, it’d be a megahit.

Milica Pavlovic, “Alter Ego”

After a string of successful singles since 2012, most recently the catchy Alibi at the start of the year, Milica confirmed her ascent onto Serbia’s pop A-list with the release of her debut album in June. Unlike City Records stablemate Maya, Milica is all about the body and the look – but who can blame her with a body like that? It’s fair to say Milica occupies a similar niche in the market to the one Dunja Ilić did in 2011-2012 – and like Dunja, who famously recorded a music video for every song on her 2011 album, Milica has also been a busy girl in front of the camera, simultaneously releasing four new music videos on June 24, of which the above is one. If Alter Ego is up your street, check out upbeat summer song Dominacija, not least for the moment in the video where Milica rubs ice cubes into a shirtless guy’s abs. Chilly.

Selma Bajrami, “Tijelo bez duse”

Selma is back. And she’s not pulling any punches. This is old-school diva turbofolk at its finest – an uncompromising sonic juggernaut built for the dancefloor, it’s relentless, intense, hooktastic, and superbly produced and structured. Rather than a conventional verse-chorus structure,  it comprises 4 hooks – the verse (A), two bridges (B and C) and the chorus (D) – arranged in the order A-B-C-D-A-B-D-C-D, giving the song a structure similar to that of Girls Aloud’s Biology. The stellar, heartwrenching lyrics are written from the perspective of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage as she fondly remembers her former lover and ruefully describes how she has emotionally shut down as a coping method. “Not a day, not an hour passes that I do not wish you were beside me now. And do you know that when I sleep with him, I see you when I close my eyes? I don’t know why or when, but my life with him has become like a ruined city,” sings Selma. “Where is that woman? […] I’ll forever remain eager for your lips. I’ll become a shadow of the woman named Selma, but that will not be me. Love can’t kill a body without a soul.” Heavy stuff, and it fits the song perfectly: all the best dance music has sadness at its core. Written by Dragan Brajović Braja and produced by Atelje Trag, this is my favourite song of the year and I can’t praise it enough – every piece falls into place, from the stunning synths and killer beats to the way Selma imbues the melancholy lyrics with an almost frightening sense of loss and anger. In line with the “body without a soul” theme, the video sees Selma and her dancers reduced to purely physical objects, writhing with a listless, passionless sexuality.