Iwa-K is local answer to rap music

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.