The owner of one of Israel’s leading underground labels sounds off about who’s pushing music forward and the the angry state of hip hop

It's way past your bedtime. On the tube, the newsman says that another bomb killed so and so and, in retaliation, the IDF "took action" against this and that. You tune out because you know the ending already.

Reality re-runs...
life in the Middle East...

On a grassy amphitheater on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, about 1,000 like-minded fans of Hip-Hop are shaking their heads in unison, tuning into their news Tel-Aviv-City style. Here, street poetry is the way to communicate. And way before the 8 PM show time, you can see teens sitting on the grass outside the amphitheatre with baggy pants, and writing their verse in notebooks while battling in impromptu circles ­a scene right out of Eminem's 8 mile.

Welcome to Hip-Hop Israel 2003, where war meets politics, and baggy pants-clad youth sporting oversize star-of-David chains spit angrily about the last suicide bomb, or the hellacious ex-girlfriend who left them for the other guy.

The Gathering: It's a yearly tradition called "Hip-Hop in the Park," started a few years ago by Culu, one of the godfathers of the modern music scene in Israel. (He also owns the only Hip-Hop clothing and music shops in the country, Madman and Yaga.) Most importantly, Culu's recording studio is one of only a handful of studios pumping out a constant stream of hummus-flavored hip-hop to the local "heads."

Master of Ceremonies, hip-hop radio DJ and journalist Liron Teeny, presides over the festivities, keeping the show going (shows rarely run over 15 minutes of pure music per act), introducing here, dissin' there. I get a sense that 2003 is the year that Hip-Hop emerged proudly out of the underground in Israel. It's no longer just the world of Shabaq Samech (the best-selling 90's group to-date), doing popular crossover and comical hits for pop radio consumption. It's now an angrier, more political, true-headed hip hop.

Tonight, we've got the likes of Subliminal (currently the best-selling Hip-Hop artist in Israel, reaching platinum record sales in mid-August) and socially-conscious verse the likes of SHI 360. These artists share the stage musically with Jewish-American Hip-Hop players Remedy, Necro, Ill Bill, and Nonphixion. Truth in hip-hop has never had a more real representation than what is going on in Israel in 2003. As one rapper put it: "When you have people you went to school with blowing up, with their funeral pictures in the front pages, it's hard to rap about anything else."

As the star of the evening , SHI (who for health reasons didn't see much stage-time this year), walks behind the DJ booth, the crowd goes into an uproar, as he, Babylon, Sneakers, and Leeroy (SHI's brother visiting from Montreal) go through their set.

Going backstage afterwards, I seek out an exhausted but beaming SHI and ask him for a few words about his music and hip hop in general in Israel. "I'm the only one in Israel that can stand behind any word that he said," he claims. "I don't rely on image-marketing or any of that Hollywood bulls--t. I rely on my truth, to tell my side of the story, as real as it gets."

For me, SHI 360 is the blessing Israeli Hip-Hop is getting right out of the gates. Coming from Canada's underground music scene, we get the no-frills approach to hip-hop relaying mainly on SHI's now-legendary verbal skills. Every song that hits the speakers feels like poetry, with his flow of English, French and Hebrew. And you can still bounce to it in the club, thanks to his production partners Genius A and Doron Plascov­ two rising young hip-hop producers.

Next, the bulky Elan Babylon emerges from backstage to the spotlight in front of an exhausted sweaty mass and bellows his now legendary "Where my soldiers at?!!" to his crowd of young recruits. He drops his classic West-Coast-meets-Middle-East style. It's a classic example of the commercial crossover happening in Israel as hip hop goes mainstream. Having literally risen from nothing, Babylon has preformed more than 300 shows this year alone. His ethnic style is breaking new ground in what is thought to be two completely different worlds: Sepharadic Oriental music, and white-boy's hip hop.

The hip hop emotional connection

It's not a question of where you come from or how much you've got in the pocket. In Israel everyone can find a connection to hip hop. There is just so much going on. People are finally finding out that it's not about who you are or what you say, it's a language ­an amazingly unique platform of self-expression and discussion and, for me, a vehicle for dialogue and peace. Hip hop is so emotional in nature, and this is what the Middle East is all about for bad and good.

The concert finally ends around 2 AM, and even afterwards hoards of energized teens (and some balding career-heads) continue to spit at the top of their lungs to impress friends, or passers by. I finally return to my apartment around sunrise, happy and fulfilled swaying my head to the night's beats, and dropping for a long-awaited rest on my bed.

Now, looking back on the concert, I think about the fact that every country has a different "hip hop." It's the voice of the street, the voice of the people and their hardships all over the world. Out here, violence is an everyday reality. We're the only country in the world that has so many enemies. The rappers voice their concern about their friends--their people. The best example is what Subliminal is saying: We only have each other, and we need to be united to stay strong.

The concert gave us a chance to listen to artists being honest to the audience and themselves. Israel 2003 can be a place where you can listen to the news and nothing much else, or live your life in ignorance. It's hard to be young in a country where at the age of 18 most of your friends put on a green uniform and start a crash course in Israeli-Palestinian relations. I find myself enjoying Israeli hip hop because so much of what is being said is credible. Still, I look forward to a day when we can rap about booty and other simple pleasures, instead of "where my soldiers at?"