Iwa-K is local answer to rap music

By Damon Adeoquine

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian rap music does not come from the mean streets of Jakarta, Bandung or Yogyakarta. The closest Indonesia has to a rap ghetto is the small, one-story home of Guest Music Production in the quiet Blok K of Cinere, South Jakarta.

It is here that Indonesia's premier rapper Iwa-K and his posse of Pesta Rap fame get together to live the life and create their rhythmic beats.

The rappers and their entourage of fans and producers spend their days at the base between the sweltering heat of an outdoor basketball court, where serious ball is played, and the cool of a three-by-four-meter recording studio where rhymes are made.

And the lyrics are not about violence and sex. Iwa-K, 27, prefers to talk about love, social problems and sports in his songs, "ordinary stories for ordinary youths, just chilling out," he says.

So do other local rappers. On the album Pesta Rap I, a compilation of songs by junior rappers released in 1995, the group Boyz got no Brain sings about mosquitoes. The hit song of Pesta Rap II, released last year, was Mati Lampu -- a song about an electricity blackout.

"A lot of people think that rap is talking about violence and sex, but rap is just talk and you can basically talk about anything, you can have all the fun you want with words," explains Masaru Riupassa, manager of the Guest Music Production. "We aren't going to pretend we're gangsters when we aren't. But we can be courageous and say what's wrong with everyday society."

The story of rap in Indonesia is actually all about courage since nobody believed the musical genre would sell in this country. Rap emerged two decades ago on the streets of South Bronx, New York City, as a way of expressing rage on energetic bass lines. Hip-hop, which encompasses rap, graffiti and break- dancing has since grown into a global pop culture, but was slow coming here.

The only rappers to record any success on the Indonesian market were The Hammer or Bobby Brown, hybrid musicians who offer more dance and soul than rap. Hardcore rappers such as Wu-Tang Clan or gangsta rappers such as the recently slain 2 Pac and Notorious Big have always turned Indonesian customers away, industry insiders say.

But Riupassa believed in the powers of black music and he successfully launched Guess Band, an R&B unit, with the hit song Takan in 1987. When the lead singer left the group, Riupassa decided to start a recording company instead. Riupassa found the rapper he wanted in Iwa-K, a Jakarta native and sometime university student in Bandung. At the time, Iwa-K was writing lyrics and rapping cool tunes for radio stations instead of going to school.

Riupassa signed Iwa-K to produce Indonesia's first ever rap album, Ku Ingin Kembali (I Want to Return), which was finally released in 1992 and sold at 100,000 units. The hardest part was finding a distributor. Riupassa was turned down by seven music labels until PT Musica Studios reluctantly agreed to promote the product, not knowing they had stepped into a gold mine.

Iwa-K's second album, Topeng (Mask), released in 1993, was sold at 260,000 units. The first track, Bebas (Freedom), a free- flowing song about freedom, was the number one song on the Prambors radio chart, Jakarta's barometer for popular songs. The music video produced by Rizal Mantovani, with Malcolm X in the background, won the MTV Asia video of the month award in April 1995. The album kept selling and was awarded the BASF Platinum best selling cassette.

The success prompted Iwa-K to embark on a Java-wide tour in 1994, with gigs in Yogyakarta, Semarang, Surabaya and Bandung, attracting over 5,000 screaming teenagers at each concert. Iwa-K also had the chance to open a Run DMC concert at the Senayan sports complex in Jakarta in 1995. His new-found fame took him to Japan where he was the main event at the 1996 Asian Music Festival in Fukuoka.

Not satisfied to have only one rapper in his stable, Riupassa organized a rapping competition for teenagers at the Jakarta Hilton in 1995. The winners, he decided, would participate in the production of a new rap album with fresh voices. The result was Pesta Rap I, which sold an astonishing 270,000 copies.

"If you make good rap like we do, the young upper middle class of Indonesia will go for it," Riupassa said. "It's all a question of toning down the style, making it easy-listening, all the while keeping that distinctive edge rap possesses. I might add a lot of Indonesians have a natural gift for rap."

Excited to hear new talent, Riupassa used radio advertisements asking young rappers to play demo tapes over the telephone. "We received 60 songs a day during two months on the answering machine," remembers N'Ti, who writes the backup music and choruses for all the songs produced by Guess Music Production. "Most of them were terrible, but it proved that most of our fans are also wanna-be rappers, even if they are not all successful at it."

The best sounding telephone rappers from across Indonesia, including Da'Ricuh, an 18-year-old girl from Jakarta, were then chosen as the voices for Pesta Rap II, which was released at the end of last year. Meanwhile, Iwa-K released his third album Kramotak, which means "brain-dead". The title song Nombok Dong (Unfortunate), with its incessant chorus Bola Basket, Bola Basket!, has become an anthem for Indonesia's growing legion of basketball players.

In the nation's only rap ghetto, far from the murderous streets of Compton, California, which gave the world gangsta rap, the boys from Cinere stay alive, play ball and keep on rapping. The best groups from Pesta Rap I and Pesta Rap II have finished recording Pesta Rap III, slated to be out in record stores in October. Iwa-K is currently writing songs for his fourth album which should be out by the end of the year.