Right people, lets face it...  it cannot be ignored that the Poles have acquired somewhat of a bad name in some peoples eyes... and yes, some of us can be guilty of making some very unscrupulous,  somewhat less than kindly comments about their existence within this nation. However, there are many things we could appreciate them for;,the musical genius of Chopin, A highly popular Pope,  emancipation from socialism.... This considered, it is safe to say..NOT for their Hip Hop endeavours.  I recently had the pleasure of stumbling across this little European hidden gem, Jeden Osiem one of Poland’s leading hip hop star’s new video. At first glance you wouldn’t be wrong for thinking it was some sort of elaborate spoof due to the less than sophisticated, seemingly comic music video complete with a naked lady showering and a random Chav congregation at the end.However, whilst  I concluded that this particular strain of hip hop music was not exactly my cup of tea, and on surface value  probably wouldn’t wash well with most, I decided that I wasn’t going to judge Poland’s entire musical credibility on one shoddily assembled and heinously dated music video.  I thought that if I could actually understand what the guy  was on about, the lyrics might well be inspiring and meaningful. Luckily for me some kind soul had taken the time to laboriously translate on the youtube comments page, and despite some linguistic discrepancies there was actually plenty of substance behind what I had pre-judged to be probably a load of pointless jabbering.

However I couldn’t help thinking of the randomness of the idea of Polish Hip Hop, seeing as Eastern Europe is about as far removed as possible from Hip Hop’s roots in Black American society.  Intrigued, I turned to the answer to all questions/ source of procrastination: Google. In less that 0.17 seconds I realised that Hip Hop in Poland is actually a hugely thriving subculture, and is extremely popular.  Warsaw has even strangely become some sort of Hip Hop Mecca within the nation. In Polish they call it ‘czarna muza’ or ‘black muse’ paying adequate homage to hip hop’s black  American origin. Some of the major front-runners in the scene like DJ Tomekk have even made it across the pond to feature on tracks by some of the State’s best known artists. There is even west-coast/East-coast beef between two rival hip-hop clans!So whilst it may not be everyone’s thing,  Hip Hop is surprisingly some sort of musical revelation over in Poland,  strange   !Listen up on your polish hip hop at www.last.fm/tag/polish%20hip-hop