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In quest of truth: the meaning of message making in Israeli rap

Uri Dorchin

Popular Music / Volume 34 / Issue 03 / October 2015, pp 452 - 470

DOI: 10.1017/S0261143015000367, Published online: 08 September 2015

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261143015000367

How to cite this article:

Uri Dorchin (2015). In quest of truth: the meaning of message making in Israeli rap. Popular Music,
34, pp 452-470 doi:10.1017/S0261143015000367

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 Popular Music (2015) Volume 34/3. © Cambridge University Press 2015, pp. 452–470
doi:10.1017/S0261143015000367

In quest of truth: the meaning of

message making in Israeli rap
URI DORCHIN
Zefat Academic College, 11 Jerusalem Street, Zefat, Israel.
E-mail: dorchin@post.bgu.ac.il

Abstract
This article explores the meaning of ‘message’ in rap made in Israel. I suggest that since Israeli rap-
pers perceive rap not just as music but as an instrument for the articulation of one’s true self, they
invest heavily in the notion of truth, rendering the making-of-a-message a message in its own right.
I draw on two different analytical methods to explore the meaning of truth in this context: text ana-
lysis, based on a ‘word-system approach’, and ethnography of performance. The analysis of speech
strategies exposes the different aspects attached to the idea of truth, and this is complemented by my
fieldwork experiences, which illustrate how these aspects and perceptions are being practised during
performance. I argue that for Israeli rappers the ideals of message making and ‘keeping things real’
draw simultaneously on the global stylistic capital of hip-hop and on local traditions of straightfor-
ward verbal expression.

By the year 2000, after almost a decade of incubation, rap music finally broke into the
musical mainstream in Israel. Unlike in other places, rap in Israel never became asso-
ciated with a specific social group; its adherents, performers and consumers reflect
the diversity of Israeli society. Thus, as I have previously demonstrated (Dorchin
2012), the foundation for the development of the local rap scene rested mainly on
a shared stylistic orientation rather than any political agenda embedded within eth-
nic or racial identity. In this article I delve further into the meanings attached to
Israeli rap by the rappers themselves; I argue that in spite of significant variation
in musical and lyrical content, all Israeli rappers share a similar perception of rap,
manifested by an explicit intention to provide their listeners with what they call
‘a message’. An early hit song by the pioneering rap group Hadag Nahash
(Snakefish), called Lazuz (‘To Move’ 2003), articulates this artistic approach:

This is what it’s all about actually

And I wouldn’t be here actually
If I didn’t have the platform to speak about things
To slip a few messages under the fun
And if your hips move it’s not for nothing
It’s both fun and smart
So bend your body and dance without fear
And in the end, with God’s help, your mind will move too. (Hadag Nahash 2003)1

1
All the tracks referred to in the article are originally Hebrew unless mentioned otherwise. All transla-
tions are mine.

452

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 In quest of truth: message making in Israeli rap 453

These lyrics are rather characteristic of the first wave of Israeli rappers, and crystallise
what soon became a matter of convention among them, suggesting that a message is
not an element hidden within the text but rather an issue to be declared and discussed.
Combining a festive atmosphere with serious commentaries is not unique to
Israeli rappers; as a musical form based heavily on lyrics, rap was claimed to repre-
sent the hardships and articulate the truths of the black-American neighbourhoods
from which it emerged (Keyes 2002). Today, while rap is circulated worldwide, rap-
pers still seek to ‘keep it real’; i.e. to portray the realities of people in any place where
it takes root (Mitchell 2001a). But how are we to understand the meaning of ‘truth’
once it becomes a repeated, popular mantra? In what follows I demonstrate how
the globalised ethos of ‘being real’, conveyed by (mainly) electronic and online
media, attributes great value to the idea of making-a-message, thereby rendering
the practice of message making an important guideline for practitioners of the style.
Instead of exploring varied messages conveyed by different rappers, my inten-
tion is to illuminate how the motif of message making itself retains strong connec-
tions to the issue of being real or true. The first section of this article features a
text analysis of Israeli rap songs and interviews I have conducted with rappers.
The analysis follows a word-system approach (Aphek and Tobin 1988) in order to
reveal the core semantic devices being used. This approach demonstrates how mes-
saging is hailed by rappers as their prime goal, and apparently elevates it beyond
what they see as ‘meaningless’ pop. I conclude that the act of crafting a message
becomes a meta-message in its own right. In the subsequent section I illustrate
how ‘keeping things real’ as a global convention of rap is being connected to a well-
rooted expressive tradition in Israel, known as ‘Dugri talk’, that emphasises straight-
forwardness (Katriel 1986). Hence, in spite of its transnational appeal, we can see
how rap grants significant local meanings by way of its expressive execution.
Finally, I highlight how the ‘sacred’ mission of messaging is translated, and to
some extent betrayed, during performance. My discussion will thus move from the
linguistic aspects of rap to the expressive and performative ones. In a sense this
strand also leads from the individual stage of writing to the more socially based
stages in which the style is communicated to and negotiated with the crowd.
This study is based on anthropological research carried out between 2004 and
2008; participant observations were conducted mainly but not exclusively in selected
nightclubs and concert venues where the local scene has been established. In add-
ition, the transcripts of 15 formal open interviews with rappers, DJs and entrepre-
neurs were analysed. Analysis was made in accordance with a semiotic word
system approach (Aphek and Tobin 1988), holding that any language is comprised
thematically of systems and subsystems of emic notions organised internally that
refer to one another. Exposing layers of referential relations between core themes
and notions reveals the interdependence between word systems and subsystems
within the text, and hence enables one to extract its inner logic. The same word sys-
tem analysis was also conducted on a corpus of some 350 rap songs. As hinted above,
Israeli rappers treat their texts as a serious matter and expect their listeners to do the
same. ‘I feel much more committed to what I have written in a song than to what I
have said in a press conference’, explains Muki.2 ‘In conversation I cannot pause and

2
All rappers’ quotations are taken from conversations and interviews I have conducted with them, unless
mentioned otherwise.

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 454 Uri Dorchin

sharpen my text while a song can take me three years until I find the exact word I am
looking for, the words in songs are exactly what I wanted to say.’ These words help us
understood why it is so common for rappers to refer their interlocutors to song lyrics.
Careful categorisation of word systems extracted from the texts revealed four
overlapping themes. The first is a definition of rap as an artistic realm made for true
expression of the self. Under this idea we can see how rappers view rap performance
as more than a mere ‘show’. The second theme presents hip-hop as the most up-to-date
style in Israeli music. Local rappers see themselves as vanguards that work in ‘real time’,
keeping Israeli music in line with what happens in the rest of the world. The third theme
locates rap in opposition to what might be defined as artificially engineered pop
products. It is here that the dichotomy of real–fake is most clearly exposed. The fourth
theme is one in which truth is associated with a sense of direct expression that best reflects
one’s opinions or mood. Here the fundamental idea of expressing one’s truth is translated
into a performative approach that validates the ethos of a straightforward delivery.

The language of truth

Music made by Afro-Americans has long been associated with the politics of resist-
ance and viewed as an alternative source of knowledge (Levine 1977). In fact, since
the era of the American civil rights movement scholars rarely refer to ‘black music’
beyond its political aspect. Paul Gilroy, in his seminal work The Black Atlantic
(1993), showed how explicit political articulations among the oppressed black public
had to be converted and coded implicitly within artistic expressions. Alas, many
works that deal with black music tend to take the political aspects embedded in it
for granted and even treat the supposed political component as the key for artistic
value (see, for example, Kofsky 1970). And so, while black music was appropriately
examined by Gilroy (1993, p. 37) as a ‘politics of transfiguration’, less sophisticated
works attempted to assess it as a mere reconfiguration of politics.
Yet ‘the message’ as a core aspect of rap is as much an outcome of recent devel-
opments as it is the product of social history and cultural traditions. According to Greg
Dimitriadis (2009), it was only during the 1980s – a time when rap moved from open
stages into music studios and became mainly a product designated for mass consump-
tion – that messages became a prominent feature of the music. As opposed to early
formations, when rap songs were a ‘loose mix of boasts, brags, artist-audience routines
and short narratives’, the radio-oriented rap took on the form of a ‘tight, thematic
track, one that explores the trials and tribulations of poverty’ (Dimitriadis 2009,
p. 26). From within the studio, rap took on a more mediated form, aimed less at sus-
taining live events and more at sustaining records. And while the commercial goals of
this move are self-evident, it also generates a whole range of social and artistic shifts.
Dimitriadis reminds us that studio technology enabled a higher degree of ‘verbal com-
plexity that demands close repeated listening, foregrounding an intricate word-play
that could not be absorbed in live performance’ (Dimitriadis 2009, p. 56). In accord-
ance, and alongside consolidating their position as media stars, rappers drew on
new social positions, pretending to be ‘artists’, ‘poets’ and ‘pedagogues’.3

3
In that respect, one might conclude that prominent rappers like KRS-One, Rakim and Chuck D, by pre-
senting themselves as poets and as ‘ghetto reporters’, combined established artistic conventions along
with black ideals.

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 In quest of truth: message making in Israeli rap 455

Against this backdrop, one may note that the point in time in which Chuck D
coined his oft-quoted statement that rap is the ‘CNN of the street’ ironically indicated
its departure from this role, in that the very branding of a style overshadows its
actual function. Indeed, as part of the entertainment industry rappers had to invest
more in public images and less on routine face-to-face correspondence with crowds.
In that respect, building one’s image as a politically aware artist is also part of the
process of positioning within the industry. From this point onward the main debates
within hip-hop culture would focus on the appropriate ways to (re)present black
communities and on which artists, practices and discourses empower or denigrate
them (Rose 2008). It is therefore clear that the reinvention of the rap song as a mes-
sage carrier involves competing narratives of truth and its preferred representations.
Since rap broke into the Israeli musical mainstream long after its popularisation
in other regions, it could perhaps be expected that local rappers would find various
approaches to domesticating the genre’s stylistic diversity and internal debates. Israel
is not a unique example in this respect, however, since scholars have repeatedly
shown that rappers around the world harness their mastery of hip-hop’s stylistic ele-
ments, and appropriate the narrative of racial discrimination that underpins them, to
make a firm claim for locality. Following Tony Mitchell’s early work (2001a) more
recent focus on the lingual dimensions of hip-hop has emphasised locality as an out-
come of both forms and contents, for example converging American rap and English
vernaculars with indigenous music, local idioms and local-oriented social commen-
taries (Alim et al. 2009; Terkourafi 2010).
From this body of work it is important here to highlight a few modes through
which the sense of locality is claimed by rappers and by the scholars who study
them. Perhaps the most dominant is one that gives voice to the experiences of mar-
ginality of immigrants and indigenous people within national and neo-colonial social
orders (cf. Gross et al. 1994; Mitchell 2001b; Androutsopoulos 2010). While many of
these communities are comprised of what may be called people of colour, in many
instances the social marginality itself marks community members as non-white
(cf. Simeziane 2010). A second mode, which is closely related to the first, is one in
which rap is used to confront hegemonic narratives of integration and social solidar-
ity, usually by those excluded from such narratives (cf. Fernandes 2003). Rap is thus
being used to racialise allegedly racially homogenous societies and to infuse racial
reasoning where this is regarded as illegitimate (cf. Shabtai 2001; Condry 2006).
A third mode of claiming locality invokes a sense of national or tribal identity by
drawing on the imagined past (and future) of the relevant social entity (Urla 2001;
McDonald 2009). I have elsewhere illustrated how Israeli Jewish rappers cling to
an essentialist perception of black culture to portray a glorified Israeli past and to
offer an ideal image of their own society (Dorchin, forthcoming).
Thus, the paradigmatic perspective guiding most contemporary study of
hip-hop is that ‘global real talk, while easily glossed as keepin’ it real, is better under-
stood as a global ideology that is always pulled into local ways of being’ (Pennycook
2007, p. 112). What makes ‘the real’ so confusing in rappers’ speech is the fact that
such an assertion is not self-evident and must be validated through performance.
For many rappers, including Israelis, the appropriation of black music is an act
intended to fortify the sense of being ‘real’ but it nonetheless carries the potential
of coming off as fake. It is against these multiple dimensions that truth for Israeli rap-
pers takes the four different formations recognised through the textual analysis

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 456 Uri Dorchin

described above: as a realm for artistic truth, engagement with up-to-date styles,
positioning as anti-pop, and as a forum for straight talk.

Hip-hop as an artistic truth

John Jackson (2005, p. 176) wrote that ‘in hip-hop, realness is the most valuable form
of cultural capital (whose) mandates frame most internal debates’. This sentiment
was carefully enacted in the case of Israeli rappers. When asked what attracted
him to hip-hop, Muki said it was ‘the ability to speak of anything, whether it is on
parties or God or freedom or peace. The ability to speak about it in a real way, this
is hip-hop’ (emphasis added). Put this way, ‘realness’ is not associated with a certain
repertoire of subjects but rather with the way they are treated by the artist. Indeed,
one aspect of being real is to demonstrate a non-discriminatory approach and to
talk of whatever one feels like without considering other people’s opinions. In his
song Eich kor’im li (‘What I’m called’) rapper Quami (2005) states that ‘I make no con-
siderations, I just fuck considerations off, this is my theory and truth, ashkara!’.4 As
shown here, the claim for making no excuses rests not only on what the rapper
chooses to address but also on how he articulates it.
There is an intrinsic conflict, however, in proclaiming one’s realness from a
stage; it is the stage that gives rappers the opportunity to prove themselves while
at the same time it underscores the performative nature of the event. In February
2006, during a concert by the rap quartet Hashevet (‘The Tribe’), one of the members
took time between songs to say, ‘Our songs are all truth, any word is carved in stone,
real incidents.’5 His friend then added, ‘I speak just the way I sing [rap], at eye level’.6
In colloquial Hebrew, to speak to someone ‘at eye level’ means to speak as equals. In
the context of the concert, with the performer physically situated above his audience,
this statement can be understood as an effort to eliminate the gap between the per-
former and his audience. As their songs present them in the guise of charismatic per-
formers, the rappers use the breaks between songs to restore their image as ‘regular’
people, hence the statement about the apparent sameness of talking and rapping. The
comments made by the rappers while on stage are therefore part of the same semantic
manoeuvre, intended to undercut any perception of the rappers as mere entertainers.
This dynamic can also be seen in a concert by the duo Peled and Ortega (12 May
2008). In a break between songs, Peled approached the audience saying, ‘whatever
goes on here, it is all us! If you go up, if you go down, the good things that are
going on here and the bad things, it is all us, it is all truth.’ This sentence derives
from the same conflict presented above but refers to it in a more deliberate way.
Unlike the previous example, in which the aspect of performance was strategically
blurred, here the rapper offers the potential of high and low moments as a way of
explicitly demonstrating the ‘realness’ of the performance. Although decidedly a differ-
ent tactic than that of Hashevet, Peled’s strategy reflects the same argument: that rap is

4
The word ashkara was adopted from Persian, in which it means something that is revealed, open or well
known. In colloquial Hebrew it means something that is proven and therefore taken to be real.
5
All ethnographic notes referring to live concerts are based on my personal attendance unless mentioned
otherwise.
6
In Hebrew the word rap lacks its English configuration as a verb and appears only as a noun. Lacking a
better option, Israelis tend to use the verb lashir (‘to sing’) instead, although they fully realise that rap is
a non-singing form.

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 In quest of truth: message making in Israeli rap 457

an extension of everyday life and not just staged entertainment. The motif of truth that
acknowledges the ‘lows’ in a performance suggests a rapper is at the mercy of himself;
the only thing he or she can offer the audience is his/her real personality along with its
good and bad moments. This act also contains a sense of confession that enhances the
overarching message of sincerity. It calls on audiences to evaluate low moments equal-
ly with high ones as part of a deal that defines hip-hop as a unique artistic form.

Contemporary style as truth

The history of popular music in Israel can be viewed through its complicated rela-
tions with influential international trends. Rock, for example, gradually took root
from the 1960s onward alongside many of its artistic and aesthetic elements.
However, as Regev and Seroussi (2004, p. 137) note, in the process of
‘Israelisation’ local rock was neutered from many conceptual aspects associated
with the term Rock (e.g. rage, sexuality, hedonism, etc.). It seems, then, that each gen-
eration must cope anew with the translation of international trends in a way that will
reduce the divide between Israel and the world, and rappers have explicitly
embarked on this quest since the very early stages. The first hit single by Hadag
Nahash from 2000, a song called Lo Mevater (‘Not Giving Up’), is a manifesto explain-
ing the group’s artistic decision in a period in which rap was still strange to Israeli
ears. In their lyrics they say:
. . . for us singing (rapping) is not a job but a mission
We don’t give up quality, don’t compromise essence
(We) Just fill up the gap that was created because
Israel is a thousand light-years from Hul.7
Musical production is another dimension marked by rappers as requiring particular
improvement in an effort to equal non-Israeli standards. This is perhaps not surpris-
ing, since hip-hop is a more studio oriented and less instrumentally based type of
music. However, rappers point to a larger problem that apparently characterises
Israeli music in general, as Quami explains:

Israeli music has been stuck in a groove for years. The sound of rock records for example is
poor, even when the musical quality is good. Why is this? Because the standards aspired to
(here) are local ones, not Hul standards. American recordings from 1976 sound better than
Israeli recordings in 2005. (Interview with the author, 28 September 2005)8

This statement has to be understood beyond the immediate stylistic or technological

aspects; in regard to the question of truth, rappers’ efforts to match international
recording standards are aimed at giving them a better opportunity to express them-
selves. When asked what was missing in the local music prior to the introduction of
rap, rapper Subliminal replied:

Text and context. We [rappers] came and all of a sudden started to talk politics. But it is not
only political talk that was missing but mere talk. I felt as if Israeli music has no text, only

7
Hul, the Hebrew acronym for ‘out of the country’, simply means ‘abroad’. However, as a notion it sig-
nifies different worlds of possibilities and qualities that cannot be reached in Israel. Hence the ability to
employ terms like ‘hul standards’ (see the next paragraph).
8
All interviews were conducted myself unless mentioned otherwise. Hereafter excerpts from interviews
will be followed by date only.

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 458 Uri Dorchin

blah-blah-blah and no one actually knows what he is singing. . . . In the aspect of sound too, it
‘flies’ different now. I had to build my own studio to make my own mixing and mastering
because no one [producers] ‘spoke’ the low levels of hip-hop here. (Interview with the
author, 24 October 2006)

According to the rapper, the context was needed in order to make the text become
possible. Producers were not ‘speaking’ the language of hip-hop, and the language
of pop, which they did speak, said nothing. Hence, building studios and acquiring
new producing skills are all aimed at supporting the final end product of a valuable
message. Rapper Kashi repeated this point:

Look what we have now: Miri Mesika, Keren Peles, Har’el Skaat, Aya Korem and all these
[Israeli pop singers]. Come on man, we moved fifty years back in time. These are pretty
songs that anyone can hum but it’s fucking unconnected to anything that happens in the
world nowadays, (Interview with the author, 2 July 2006)

The innovation rappers aspire to is directed towards a better and updated articulation
of the Israeli way of life as they experience it. Bringing Israel closer to ‘what happens in
the world’ is a means of producing a more loyal representation of contemporary reality.
Subliminal (2006) summarised this notion well in his song MC Netto (‘Net MC’) by stat-
ing, ‘Sub speaks S.M.S. you speak yonot-do’ar [carrier pigeons]’, where his pronunciation
of the Hebrew term for carrier pigeon, although incorrect in formal linguistic terms, fol-
lowed that of contemporary spoken Hebrew. Introducing contemporary everyday
speech into poetry is closely related to the employment of up to date SMS technology;
both cultural devices (language and technology) distinguish the young rapper’s experi-
ence of Israeli-Hebrew culture from an old and apparently more ‘appropriate’ one.

Truth as anti-fashion
‘Whether in the words of academic theorists, journalists, fans or musicians, the music
industry frequently appears as a villain’, wrote Keith Negus; it appears as ‘a ruthless
corporate “machine” that continually attempts to control creativity’ (Negus 1996,
p. 36). This narrative gets an additional meaning as the white-dominated music
industry is accused of co-opting black musicians and artificially reproducing the
raw quality of their music for commercial ends (Mahon 2004). As Israeli rappers asso-
ciate this sense of rawness positively with notions like truth, authenticity and reality,
the collaboration with the music industry is an issue to be discussed. Referring in her
song to the local starlet Roni Superstar, female rapper Shorty raps:
The Label fears I won’t be aired in Galagalatz9
You are invited to play Roni instead,
A shiny package filled up with cheap imitations
I’m not her,
Do I look like a puppet on a string?
Cast me as the new provocation
’Cause I got a big mouth and I ain’t gonna shut it
Presenting the pop-icon as a puppet implies she is under the full control of her
music-industry ‘puppeteers’ and lacks self-awareness, will or independent opinion.
This is why the starlet is compared to a shiny package that offers nothing original.

9
A popular radio station, a branch of the army radio broadcasts.

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 In quest of truth: message making in Israeli rap 459

Similarly, another female rapper, MC Shiri (2005), uses the metaphor of a doll to
convey her intentions:

I’m not a doll you’ll dress up for a clip

If an agent thinks I’m Barbie, here’s a tip
I got personal style no one will play with me
I wrote the song for you to listen not to dance [to]
I don’t [make] pop don’t call me a bubble
I hate that people hate me based only on rumour
Amid the fake rap I am always the most sincere
But I will always be treated like ‘little Shiri’10

The song, entitled ‘It’s hard to be a girl in the hip-hop business’, presents us with a
set of words that acquire similar meaning within the arching dichotomy between rap
and pop. The doll is passive, something to be dressed up for a show. The rapper, on
the other hand, claims she ‘doesn’t make pop’; her music is not made for pleasure, it
demands listening and unlike a pop song or a bubble it aims to last. The message
identifies pop with artificiality, shallowness and ephemerality whereas real rap
(unlike ‘fake rap’) is identified with meaning, sincerity, unique personality and via-
bility. Rumour, a fleeting unverified piece of information, also stands in opposition to
the kind of content rappers intend to supply; the rumour is associated here with the
gossip that surrounds pop icons and helps to build (or ruin) their images, having no
necessary connection to their musical content.
Shiri’s song draws a line not only between pop and rap but also between real
rap and fake rap. Kashi also points to the same definition, saying:

Sometimes this whole thing seems to me like a fraud, like a big lie. Sometimes I say to myself
what a bummer that music is built on conventions because it gives even the worst rapper the
ability to learn the conventions and start making lies; to lie to the world and present it in the
guise of music. (Interview with the author, 2 July 2006).

Understanding the rapper’s intentions, we might still wonder how to distinguish the
real from the fake. If Israeli rap is about (mostly) non-black people experiencing black
music, how can we define real music against a lie that is served ‘in the guise of
music’?
In that respect, the case of Subliminal is perhaps the most telling, as no other
Israeli rapper has exhibited such a complete adoption of the American style, in
terms of music, attire and performance, as he has. This ‘American’ appearance led
many to refer to him and to his crew as ‘wiggers’ or ‘wannabes’ (Shor 2002). Some
of his colleagues, however, pointed to a subtle dimension of truth that critics, lacking
an intimate understanding of hip-hop, tend to overlook. Rapper Fishi Hagadol (Big
Fishi) says:

People can say a lot of things about Subliminal but he got it, he knows what real rap is and
that’s why he survived. He knows the history, he knows the culture and he knows hip-hop.
Why has he ‘got it’? Because he knows what a rapper has to go through to have a good
show while others (rappers) just watch MTV, they see something that is separated from
reality. They do not see the whole picture; the rap battles you have to maintain on the street
and the clubs you have to perform in in order to make it to MTV. (Interview with the
author, 14 July 2005)

10
Italics are for emphasis added by the author in transcription.

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 460 Uri Dorchin

What defines Subliminal from other people, according to Fishi, is his long-term com-
mitment to the style of rap and to its demanding rites of passage. Hence we are pre-
sented with two categories of show which are in close proximity to notions of
realness: Subliminal puts on a ‘good show’ because it is based on an in-depth
study of hip-hop, whereas others’ shows are not as good because they are based
on secondary learning from the media. Subliminal’s ‘survival’ (success) is due to
the fact that he acknowledged hip-hop as the cultural property of another group
before (re)making it his own. Fishi presents such an intimate acquaintance as the
only legitimate way to turn this strange cultural model into a local and personal
reality.
Against this backdrop it is not surprising that Subliminal himself renounces the
analogy people make between him and Afro-American rappers, and by doing so
reclaims the truth embedded in his music:

The reality here (in Israel) is not the reality there (in America). If you see a policeman here
chasing someone you will probably side with the policeman because that someone is
perhaps a terrorist or maybe stole someone’s purse. People here are more like a big family,
whereas there everybody tries to kill one another, or at least that’s how it seems. The ‘good
guys’ are the Negroes and the ‘bad guys’ are the white policemen. This is not our world,
man, for me it’s only a movie, it’s good for television. (Interview with the author, 24
October 2006)

Defining reality from non-reality (when speaking of the good and the bad guys he
adopts a mocking pronunciation), Subliminal tries to refute the criticism that labels
him a fake. In order to do so he actually flips the criticism around, claiming that it
is his critics who adopt unreal movie-like narratives of blackness as a basis for the
analogy they suggest.
Unlike Subliminal, some rappers chose a reversal strategy by rejecting hip-hop
stylistic components as means to persuade others of their truth. Quami’s most iden-
tifiable trademark, for example, was originally his Afro hairstyle, which he later
decided to abandon in order, as he explained me, to feel more true to himself. In a
cultural realm in which stylistic components constitute valuable capital, renouncing
one’s distinguishing signifier may bear high costs, as Quami explains:

They [the audience] accepted me more as a rapper when I had this huge Afro, it made sense to
them. Even if I looked like a freak-show, for them it made more sense, it seemed to suit the show
better. But I’m interested in the music more than the show. (Interview with the author, 28
September 2005)

The dichotomy between the music and the show denotes the opposition between true
and false, real and unreal. As the Afro hairstyle made the rapper look like a ‘freak’, the
music provides him with means to express his personality. Preferring the music to the
show is therefore an effort to keep things real; the rapper rejects shallow stylistic
aspects and is willing to cope with the possible consequences of this rejection.

Truth as straightforward expression

Here the meaning of truth is based on the perception that only free speech would
express exactly what the rapper wanted to say and in exactly the right manner.
The strong association of black music with ghetto street life alludes to a plain,
unsophisticated form of straight talk. Rapper Muki summarised this perception,

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 In quest of truth: message making in Israeli rap 461

mentioning that ‘Bob Marley once said that a song that an eight-year-old kid cannot
understand is not a good song’ (Interview with the author, 12 January 2006). These
words give us a clue to the rapper’s own approach for writing.
In regard to the use of language, both in writing and delivery, rap can be seen
as regular talk being intensified. Avoiding poetic expressions refers to the idea of
truth on two levels. First is an intention to present things as they are, bare and
free of any unnecessary flowery phrases. We can therefore see what the rapper
may gain by reminding his listeners that ‘I speak just the way I sing, at eye level’.
Second, if a song is a way to say something about life, as rappers often repeat,
then plain talk better serves this end. Rapper Mesika explained this perspective, ‘peo-
ple want to hear what you have to say without too much “oh my pretty darling” and
stuff like that. Tachles, if you have something to say, say it; if not just shut up!’
(Interview with the author, 10 August 2006).11 Mesika sees the phrase ‘Oh my pretty
darling’ as something whose sole purpose is aesthetic, and therefore not getting to
the point. This is not to say that romantic expressions have no place in rap songs,
but that rap is supposed to strike a chord with speech as used by real people in
real life. The economy of a language aiming to be as direct and practical as possible
brings rap into close proximity with one of modern Hebrew’s most identified
characteristics, known as dugri speech. Below, this aspect of vernacular speech in
Israel is explained and explored to show how the literal strategies explored thus
far are being put into action.

Speak Dugri: straight talk in Israeli culture

Dugri speech usually means straight or direct talk and is an identified character of
Israeli discourse. In her comprehensive study, Tamar Katriel (1986) shows how
this strategy of discourse has become part of the local ethos, one that defines the
desirable relationships within the Israeli cultural community. As a matter of style
dugri encourages people to become open with one another by speaking in a direct
manner that might be considered rude or aggressive in other cultural contexts.
Whereas the notion of dugri describes the typical communication strategy, Katriel
also shows how the term itself can be used to emphasise its own nature. For example,
dugri can be applied as an adverb (as in: ‘I’ll tell you dugri, what you are saying is
bullshit’), or as an adjective (‘this man is all right, he’s always dugri’).
Like many other words, dugri was adopted by Sabra Israelis from their Arab
neighbours.12 However, as Katriel shows, the different meaning attributed to the
word in colloquial Hebrew explains it as a major cultural device in Jewish-Israeli
society. In Arabic, dugri means to tell the truth and hence would refer the listener to
what one is saying. In Hebrew, on the other hand, the term emphasises one’s effort
to speak openly and hence it refers the listener to how one says something. Whereas
in both languages the term is associated with qualities of sincerity and honesty, for
Arabic speakers it connotes being true to facts, whereas for Hebrew speakers it implies
being true to oneself. In the transition from Arabic to Hebrew, then, dugri departs from

11
Tachles is a word implemented from Yiddish, literally meaning ‘purpose’. Here, as in many instances, it
means to become practical. This point will be further contextualised in the following section.
12
The term Sabra refers to the first generation of native-born Israeli Jews, who defined the cultural char-
acter of the nation.

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 462 Uri Dorchin

a mere claim of objectivity, becoming a vehicle for the construction of certain intersub-
jective relationships. Katriel (1986, p. 11) makes this point clear, saying ‘dugri in Hebrew
can be said to color or structure the interpersonal domain: it is uniquely concerned with
persons and their interrelations as behaviorally manifested in and through speech’.
The cultural derivation of sincerity from explicit or straightforward talk was an
appropriate ground for the Israeli implementation of rap. American rappers often
justify explicit talk by claiming it as a reliable depiction of the harsh environment
in which they grew up. This approach is at first more reminiscent of the Arabic appli-
cation of dugri than the Hebrew one. However, the stylistic kernel of any rap is not in
the lyrical content itself but rather in the use of language, what Katriel (1986, p. 2)
calls ‘the tonal coloring given to spoken performance’. This stylistic colouring is
said to keep music close to its social base, and in so doing to prove artists’ devotion
to their audience. Typical titles like ‘Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z’ (by Tupac Shakur
1993) are therefore revealing in both content and form.
And yet Israeli rappers’ orientation toward dugri speech can hardly be seen as a
matter of convention in local popular music. Scholars have already mentioned that
Israeli performers, as early as the 1960s, failed to deliver an authentic experience
of rock and pop since they were trying to translate the relevant English notions to
appropriate Hebrew phrasing (Regev 1995; Taub 1997). For example, when the
Anglo-American term ‘baby’ was translated to the Hebrew ‘buba’ (doll), it did not
retain the authenticity it held in rock and moreover made local everyday talk more
poetic and artificial. Against this backdrop we can re-examine a statement like
‘Sub speaks S.M.S, you speak yonot-do’ar [carrier pigeons]’ (see above), where the val-
idity and innovation derives from converging contemporary technology, common
use of English terms and common Israeli expressions (yonot do’ar) that ignore appro-
priate grammatical standards.
We might further exemplify this idea with reference to a specific case. In
November 2013, Israel was shocked by the sudden death of Arik Einstein, widely
regarded as ‘the greatest and most influential Israeli singer and musician of all
time’ (Wikipedia 2014). Einstein was a prominent representative of the Sabra gener-
ation, an Israeli-born singer-songwriter whose work beginning in the 1960s signified
an alternative to the old-fashion and often pompous poetry of the nation’s formative
years. Three days after Einstein’s death, Matan Sharon, a rap critic, dedicated his col-
umn to listing musical samples excerpted from Einstein’s songs by local rappers.
‘There is no better way to show respect for Einstein, the most dugri-music person
there is, than to make dugri-music’, Sharon wrote (2013, emphasis added).
Sampling someone’s music is often interpreted as sign of respect, but it can also be
carried by other motivations, as the example of the group Shabak Samech shows.
Shabak Samech, also the first local Israeli rap group, were the first to sample
Einstein’s music. In their 1995 debut album they sampled an Einstein song from
1968 called Mekofef Habananot (‘The Bananas Bender’). The original song was a collab-
oration between three major forces of the (then) young generation of Israelis, writer
Meir Ariel, composer Shalom Hanoch, and singer Arik Einstein. The song itself is a
humorous tale about a dwarf who goes out during the night to give fruits and vege-
tables their unique shapes. As the song tells it, although the dwarf continues his
ancestors’ tradition of night-time fruit-shaping, bending bananas is his own original
trick and masterpiece. In their updated rap version, Shabak Samech turned the ori-
ginal chorus on its head by using the term bananot (bananas) in its alternate meaning,

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 In quest of truth: message making in Israeli rap 463

as a common slang for banot (girls). Hence, the mastery of ‘bending bananot’ now
acquired a whole new sexual meaning upon which the rap verses further elaborated.
In retrospect, the metamorphosis of the song signifies two phases of innovation
in Israeli music. The original song marked a shift from poetic and nationalist song writ-
ing toward a more secular and individual type of expression. However, it still featured
genuine Hebrew, fine singing and sophisticated instrumentation. This genuine profes-
sionalism was the subject of jokes in the later version. Shabak Samech was a group
comprised of young boys around the age of 20 whose desire, as their lead rapper
Muki told me, was ‘to smoke, get laid and make a fuss (in the media)’. Although
their version of the ‘bananas bender’ does not necessarily show disrespect to the ori-
ginal, it revitalises the song by making it relevant to their updated reality. Thus making
‘dugri-music’ is a matter of speaking one’s mind and doing it in strict everyday idioms.
One of the main characteristics of dugri talk, as Katriel explains, is its orienta-
tion for actual action and firm devaluation of speech gestures. This began, in part,
with Zionism’s intention to distinguish itself from diasporic Jewish cultures in
which submissive Jews used their adroit speech skills as professional and political
resources. Katriel writes:

Dugri speech . . . derives its force from the contrast between words, talk (diburim) and deeds
(ma’asim). In this dichotomy, diburim is often qualified as stam (mere talk) and ma’asim are
interpreted as socially oriented actions, manifesting full commitment, in the spirit of the
nation building ethos to which this cultural contrast should probably be traced. (Katriel
1986, p. 25)

Apparently this orientation is hard to imply through musical performance, as music

is by definition classified as a form of expression and not as a mere deed. However,
retaining close connection to its actual social environment, rap aims to maintain this
action-oriented music. An example of this is a long tradition in rap, in Israel as else-
where, in which rappers describe themselves as soldiers with words and rhymes tak-
ing on the metaphor of weapons (McDonald 2009). We might here recall Mesika’s
statement ‘Tachles, if you have something to say, say it; if not just shut up.’ Tachles
literally means ‘purpose’ or by extension ‘to become practical’, and it has close con-
nections with dugri because both utilise talk as a lever to promote deeds.
Rappers further clarify these intentions by sharpening the alleged difference
between rap and ‘regular’ pop. Muki, for example, opens his 2001 debut album
with this:

I use my microphone as a Jedi sword

Always prepared, I never stop, never say enough
I see how everybody writes and sings the same things
And how they treat themselves as big stars

Hadag Nahash opened their own debut album from 2000, rapping very similar
words:

I turn on the radio hearing the same songs

That are sung by the same singers
Full of ego and showing-off
There is satiation, almost suffocation
From non-musical music that says and does nothing
Enough, enough, enough and enough,
We ate too much of all that

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 464 Uri Dorchin

When he compares the microphone to a sword the rapper presents himself as a war-
rior and respectively presents rap as sort of (martial) art that can make an impact.
Readiness to fight for something (the Jedi reference alludes to fighting for justice, a
theme that is further elaborated in this particular album) gives the rapper his integ-
rity and differentiates him from pop singers whose supposed sole motivation is their
ego. Pop singers are presented as having a lack of unique personality (‘same things’,
‘same songs’, ‘same singers’) and since their (non)music says nothing it also lacks the
potential to do anything.
Pop, then, as rappers see it, is nothing but showing off; following Katriel’s
explanation we might say that its words do not deliver ideas but rather mask the
fact that there are no ideas behind it. Rappers, on the other hand, claim to use
words that depict their opinions in the most accurate way even at the price of
being scathing and impolite. In his song Eich Kor’im Li (‘What I’m Called’) Quami
makes this point as clear as possible, spitting:

If I would like to say that ex-prime ministers are getting paid

The money that could be allocated to the unemployed
And to fired people, and that the treasury shits on us
I will say this, I will say this
And if I would like to say that women are humiliated here
That there is no minimal respect, place with too many fools
And that any violent man should have his dick cut off
(ouch) hard to hear this? Fuck you!

This is the ultimate realisation, although dramatised, of the ethos of dugri as a moral
concept. According to this ethos people are expected to reveal their thoughts and
feelings to one another in a plain and direct manner. This sense of exposure aims
to make sure no issue will be swept under the rug and that a high level of sincerity
will be maintained within interpersonal relationships.

Modes of discourse and their meanings

The Quami song quoted above is an example of dugri speech in its most naked
form, but it is not to suggest that all Israeli rappers tend to express themselves
in such an explicit way. In fact, most rappers seem to elaborate on the issue of mes-
sage making as an artistic ideal rather than to simply plant strong messages within
their songs. This is strange since, as we saw, all of them tend to emphasise their
sense of independence, sincerity and indifference to questions of decency. The
explanation for this paradox is that Israeli rappers, in the process of introducing
the Israeli public to hip-hop, highlight stylistic and ethical contours of their new
style in an effort to distinguish it from other popular genres. For this reason it is
more important to explicitly embrace an in-your-face attitude as a sort of unique
cultural capital than to realise it in practice. The impression of being dugri is
achieved by Israeli rappers through what I shall call an ‘inclusive mode of dis-
course’, that is, an attitude of regulating the clarity of one’s words in order to elicit
widespread identification from among heterogeneous crowds. My idea of the
‘inclusive mode’ is based on similar practices that were described previously by
Aphek and Tobin (1989) in the context of fortune telling and by Dalit Simchai
(2009) in her study of New Age entrepreneurship in Israel. In the first case the

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 In quest of truth: message making in Israeli rap 465

researchers diagnosed a strategy they called an ‘omniscopus use of language’

(Aphek and Tobin 1989, p. 46) in which general patterns of discourse employed
by fortune tellers enables clients to cast, absentmindedly, specific content that is
relevant to them. In the second case Simchai showed how New Agers strive to
offer alternatives to Western capitalist orders and are inspired by eclectic tribal
and non-Western images and practices. Typical themes that characterise New
Age discourse, like holiness, holism, energies, ritualism and naturalism, distinguish
the group’s self-image by their general rather than specific nature. As I will dem-
onstrate, the apparent dugri speech produced by some rappers is actually non-
specific and hence has great inclusive potential. Like the discourse of New
Agers, it strives to gather a heterogenic audience into a group of hip-hop faithful,
a subculture that sees its music as alternative and expects it to be more than ‘just’
music. As with the case of fortune tellers, this rap is articulated through schematic
forms that invite each listener to imagine the possible meanings of the scheme on
his or her own terms.
A performance by rapper Roy Edri presented the similarity between rap and
New Age to me for the first time, and it exemplifies how inclusive discourse is
being operated. At the time I attended his concert, Edri hosted a television hip-hop
show called Dibur Tzafuf (‘Dense Talk’) on the Israeli Music Channel. In colloquial
Hebrew, ‘dibur tzafuf’ means an openhearted conversation about a serious matter,
so it could be seen as a later incarnation of dugri. ‘Dibur Tzafuf’ was an appropriate
title for a rap show as it denoted the artistic character of rap and also invited viewers
in for a ‘dense talk’, a supposed break from the sequence of banal pop programmes.
But in contrast to his tough image as a television host, in which he implements exag-
gerated body gestures and American rap lingo, Edri’s stage performance is rather
calm; it was perhaps this contradiction that helped my conceptual bridging of rap
and New Age scenes. In an introduction to a song called Ba Me’Ahava (‘Comes
from Love’) Edri says, ‘I come from love because I see that you come from love
too’. The song itself says:

Melody frees the soul

Though the situation is horrible (I) give a good word
Speak to the next generation
May we all know success, my song is also yours
When we’re down, when we’re up, all together
May we all have love, my prayer your prayer
May it bring blessings for another season,
All together let’s hear
Who comes, who comes, who comes from love

Edri wishes to present his words as dense talk, i.e. a serious conversation. Alas, his
remarks about a ‘horrible situation’, ‘freeing one’s soul’ and sending words ‘for the
next generation’, all seeming to allude to serious matters, are not further elaborated
and actually lack any specific reference. Likewise, mentioning prayer denotes ‘mean-
ingful’ themes like faith and determination that can be easily interpreted within the
stylistic framework of rap and apparently differentiate it from light-headed pop.
Despite the apparent seriousness of the words, the rapper’s terminology does not
present a clear message but rather a blurred one, which enables a wide range of lis-
teners to identify with it.

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 466 Uri Dorchin

As one may realise, such a discursive strategy is inclined to dismantle potential

controversies. This is surprising, given the common image of hip-hop as explicit talk,
and the expectation that rappers’ quarrelsome attitudes would naturally find full
expression in the most confrontational situations (i.e. racially charged issues). At
least in Israeli rap, this not the case. In the summer of 2005 Israel was in turmoil
because of the Disengagement Plan and evacuation of Jewish settlements from the
Gaza strip. One week prior to the execution of the plan (9 August), with the public
split between supporters and opponents, and demonstrators flocking to the streets
across the country, I went to see rapper Fishi Hagadol (Big Fishi) in Tel Aviv. At a
certain point of the concert Fishi turned to the crowd and said: ‘recently everybody
is talking about the hitnatkut [disengagement], everywhere you hear about the hitnat-
kut, so I will tell you my opinion about the hitnatkut.’ At that point he paused and
the audience tensed in silence. Fishi’s audience is quite familiar with his tendency to
speak, sometimes at length, between songs and usually responds enthusiastically to
him. This pattern explains how unusual the silence was that night, and it indeed indi-
cated the explosive potential of the subject at that point in time. After a short pause,
he said, ‘I think we were all disengaged a long time ago’. Stress was relieved imme-
diately; shouts and whistles now took the place of silence.
As a matter of routine, shouts and whistles by the audience signal support,
agreement or identification with the rapper’s words. But in this case we may ask
with what exactly the audience agreed or identified. ‘We have all been disengaged
for a long time now’, repeated Fishi, ‘we are disengaged from ourselves, from one
another, we are not sensitive anymore to each other. Only unity will eventually
bring anything to end up for the better.’ What does that mean? Being in the early
stages of fieldwork I had been hoping to hear some of the provocative statements
for which rap is notorious. Disillusioned, I wrote that night in my field notebook:

Any listener can take these words in any direction he wants. It is possible that Fishi wanted to
see more compassion for the evacuated settlers but this is also such an ambiguous message
that I’m not at all sure this was his intention. This is an art of ambiguity, of speaking
vaguely, that disguises itself as talk about principles, values and social matters.

Clouded at the time by my disappointment at Fishi’s ambiguity, his words

now reveal themselves as a deliberate strategy of the ‘inclusive mode of discourse’
– language that is intentionally vague but structured so that almost anyone can iden-
tify with and find meaning within it. We might conclude that in matters of perform-
ance, being honest is less about what one is saying and more about how one is saying
it. This is not to suggest that rappers have nothing precise to say or that they are
always likely to blur their messages, but that blurring messages in itself does not
weaken, and sometime may even enhance, the impression of being honest.
Moreover, since rappers and their audiences do not comprise a homogenous
group, then precise statements may turn out to be too precise and may put a barrier
between the performer and the crowd. During the dramatic summer of 2005, for
example, in the aftermath of the evacuation, the press quoted rapper Muki as saying:
‘[we] ought to “get into” them [Jewish settlers], to break their bones, load them on
trucks, throw them in some corner and shut their mouths.’ Muki had already alluded
to his ‘left-wing’ opinions in a few successful hits with lyrics such as ‘everybody is
talking about peace, no one is talking about justice’, but these were abstract enough
to be acceptable to a wide range of listeners. These clear and scathing remarks, then, a

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 In quest of truth: message making in Israeli rap 467

rare example of such refinement, resulted in firm denunciations of Muki from within
rap circles and from the Israeli public. The examples of Fishi and Muki demonstrate
the difference between crafting a message as an inclusive stylistic frame and message
making as an uncompromising practice.
Along with the carefully vague messages, in the early stages of my fieldwork I
was also surprised at the difficulty of capturing song lyrics during live performances.
Since rappers repeat both in song lyrics and private conversations the meaning
attached to messages, I presumed they would make an effort to deliver their lyrics
loud and clear during concerts. A group called Parvarim Refugeez (PR) supply a
striking example of a performance in which the vocals are indeed loud but not at
all clear. The group is comprised of some eight core members whose performance
renders the strong impression that they share a tight bond of friendship. During
the concert they continuously break into one another’s talk, teasing each other, joking
and laughing as if they were playing to themselves in private and not to a paying
audience. Such simultaneous talk eliminates all possibility of understanding what
is said. At the same time, it still seems that band members have a lot to say; their
exaggerated gestures allude to emotional conviction and to the sense of seriousness
they attribute to whatever has been said up there, amid the dense cloak of noise.
Therefore, although the performance provides a sense of seriousness, it does not
translate into any clear verbal content.
At some points, though, it happens that you may capture a fragment of a sen-
tence that comes out clearly before being swallowed again into the verbal tumult,
like a picture that is sharp for a second before getting blurry again. In one concert
(29 October 2005), for example, a band member turned to his friends between two
songs and managed to say, ‘do you remember how once at the town centre in
Makabim . . .’ before his words were covered with a barrage of enthusiastic com-
ments. Makabim is the group’s hometown and the enthusiasm this sentence evoked
among the other band and many audience members alike clearly revealed they all
know what he referred to. But I and some others in the audience were left wondering
what did happen there once, and why this particular moment was the right time and
place to recall this particular episode. After attending more than a few subsequent
concerts by PR it became clear to me that such breaks in communication were not
an accident but a pattern. Once understood, questions about exactly what happened
in the sleepy suburb they came from became less important than the fact that it con-
solidated the group of friends as we see them today. Precisely by insisting on per-
forming as if they were still in their parents’ garage, the group persuades us of its
realness and integrity, as if they are not putting on a show at all.
The PR case presents a different manifestation of the inclusive mode that may
be called ‘partial discourse’. Here the sense of inclusiveness is achieved by the pattern
in which correspondence is continually interrupted. In the introduction to the song
‘Kikar Party’ (‘Square Party’, PR) rapper McDady G manages to say ‘the next song
is dedicated to . . .’ before his voice disappears within those of his friends. A few sec-
onds later, in the midst of the song, a fragment of a sentence caught my ear saying:
‘. . . you ruin everything you have built . . .’ but was then swallowed back by the noisy
choir and musical accompaniment. In a simple sense these sentences failed to make
their mark since they remained unfinished. However, this also left the impression
that meaningful statements had been made; their very partiality prevents them
from becoming too specific or too committed while simultaneously inviting us to
evaluate the potential meaning of what could have been said (or even was said,

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 468 Uri Dorchin

although we could not hear it). Once again we see how rappers’ inclusive attitude is
being achieved by abstract and non-specific discourse that presents itself, via differ-
ent performative means, in the guise of a direct and decisive one.

Summary
American rap and modern Hebrew seem to be strange bedfellows. However, the case
of Israeli rap reveals that both hold straight talk as a desirable goal. Although crystal-
lised within different cultural contexts, the musical genre of rap and Israeli dugri
speech both encourage plain, clear and explicit expression and associate it with cer-
tain moral standards. For its Israeli practitioners, the typical command of rap to ‘keep
things real’ serves to reinvigorate their own cultural preference for unsophisticated
sincerity. But the convergence offered in Hebrew rap is not always a matter of
smooth blending. On the contrary, as rap became a popular genre, its own conven-
tions, including the sense of ‘realness’ and straight talk, have become highly stylised.
Hence, when Israelis appeal to rap they face an innate paradox: how to operate with-
in the superstructure of a desirable style in a way that still denounces stylistic clichés?
As I have shown, this conflict is closely related to the meanings attributed by rap-
pers to the notion of message and to the issue of being true. Rappers’ speech can be
understood as a pendulum-like movement between restricted codes of style and the
ability to transgress them; while they must prove their mastery of the relevant cultural
capital of their chosen style, they must also, and to no lesser a degree, defy certain styl-
istic manners in order to prove their sense of individuality (Hess 2005).
One last example may demonstrate this innate paradox. A song called ‘Mister
DJ’ (Shorty 2005) is a collaboration between rappers Shorty and Quami in which they
ridicule some of their colleagues’ tendencies (and maybe even their own) to take
themselves too seriously. In particular, they humorously criticise rappers’ pretension
to value lyrical content over musical pleasure:

So here I come to ruin the party

I love to see it when the dance floor gets empty
Hey, why are you dancing ha? Why are you dancing?
Calm down all of you and just listen to the lyrics
They say nothing but since we are rappers
Let’s pretend they do, got it? The lyrics?

As we can see, the rappers take the option of not being serious seriously, and attri-
bute great meaning to texts which are allegedly meaningless. Their words support
the main argument made here, that any act or verbalisation by rappers is meant to
convey a message, even (and maybe especially) when the rapper pretends not to
make a message at all. Rap is therefore always about meanings, a claim that becomes
clearer, ironically, in moments when rappers deny this very claim.
Against this backdrop we can also understand the special importance attribu-
ted to notions like truth and reality. Efforts made by rappers to mediate ‘their
truth’ to the crowd sustain the act of message making, while at the same time the
persistent references to ‘the message’ support the image of being true. As cultural
capital and ethos in rap, the message is an extra-textual and extra-linguistic issue;
its existence is not self-evident within songs but rather one that has to be proved,
verified and discussed. In that respect, notwithstanding the myriad differences

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 In quest of truth: message making in Israeli rap 469

between them, making a message and being true is the sole meta-message that con-
sistently binds rappers the world over into a cohesive stylistic community.

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 470 Uri Dorchin

Discography
Note: All excerpts from recordings were authorised by ACUM (the Israeli association of authors, compo-
sers, lyricists, poets, arrangers and music publishers).
Edri, R. Until the End. Hed Artzi. 2008
Einstein. A. Capricorn. CBS Records. 1968
Hadag Nahash. Groove Machine. Hed Artzi. 2000
Hadag Nahash. To Move. Hed Artzi. 2003
MC Shiri. Microphone Princess. Levantine Records. 2005
Muki. Shema Israel. NMC Records. 2001
Parvarim Refugeez. Rapperrarium. High Fiber. 2006
Shabak Samech. Shabak. NMC Records. 1995
Shabak Samech. Canaan 2000. NMC Records. 2000
Shakur, T. Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. Interscope Records/Atlantic Records. 1993
Shorty. To Tame the Shrew. Base Records. 2005
Subliminal. The Light from Zion. Helicon Records. 2001
Subliminal. Exactly When You Thought It Is Over. Tact Records. 2006
Subliminal and Hatzel. The Light and the Shadow. Helicon Records. 2002
Quami. Everybody knows the answers. BNE Records. 2005

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