He started out as a "hypeman" and loyal follower of one of the most popular rappers from the former Yugoslavia, Ed Maajko, and soon got his five minutes. He first attracted the attention of the region with his aggressive approach to the microphone and battle rhymes, and definitely bought the audience with his angry punkish tirades of dissatisfaction with the socio-political situation in which his fellow citizens, including all residents of the former Yugoslav republics, find themselves. Today he is considered a veteran and one of the legends of the ex-Yu rap scene, and he recently relived his musical journey by choosing songs for a new release.
The Tuzla rapper Frenkie released under the label of the Croatian publishing house "Menart" an album called "Reexperience", on which he made a cross-section of his ten-year career with a selection of the best songs from the first album "Odličan CD" from 2005 through a call to burn the MMF in It "burns" to last year's DNA. The owner of the MTV Adria award for the best performer of the region in 2013, added four new ones to the ten already known songs in which, among other things, he says that he is no longer "smaller than Eda".
This November turned out to be a month of celebrating hip hop culture in the area of the former Yugoslavia. In this name, the documentary "Stani na put" was recently released, which brought together famous names from the scene, among whose actors is Frenkie. The Tuzla rapper talked to "Vijesti" about the mentioned film, the new edition, the past, but also the current hip hop and many other things.
"This release is a cross-section of my career so far, with the fact that I didn't want to make a classic 'best of' where everything will be known, but I decided to give the fans a couple of novelties as well. And the bottom line was that the album should come out with some of my favorite songs that I perform very often at concerts, they are the most requested and cause the best reactions at concerts", begins Frenkie's story and points out that on "Reexperience" two old songs found themselves in a new guise .
- How difficult was it to choose your favorite songs and what was the journey through all the albums released so far?
I knew some of my favorites right away, but I didn't choose them myself, I talked with friends, colleagues, the publishing house... And I know from concerts which songs create the best atmosphere. Everyone made their own list and most of the songs matched. So in the end we realized that those songs we chose were the most popular. Of course, it was interesting to listen to old albums, to remember the time when those songs were written, to go back in time. That's why I decided to call the album "Reexperience" because I actually lived, experienced and felt them all again.
- What is the biggest difference between that time of your first rap steps and now?
There are many of them. Just looking at the age, I was very young when I released that first album, I was hungry, thirsty, eager to prove myself. Later, it turns into a routine, when you gain some experience... The friendships we made through music in those early years were very deep. Whenever we went somewhere to perform, we had five or six people in each city, with whom you know you can eat, sleep, and who will take care of you, and you take care of them when they come to your place. Today, a lot has changed, people have grown older, they have families, they are no longer in that story. And the music itself, specifically the production, has changed a lot, the beats, the way they are made. And that's quite normal, because hip hop constantly changes and reinvents itself and is born again. There are big differences, but it's always nice to remember it all. I just said somewhere that, listening to those songs, I felt like I was looking at an old photo album. Some nostalgia got me.
- On your Facebook page, you also shared footage from rap battles that are increasingly popular in this area, and where another talented fellow citizen, Stoposto, took part. So you follow that too?
Yes, that team - Rap Skillz from Osijek, which is behind those battles, is excellent and kudos to them. We used to do "Red Bull MC battle" tournaments in BiH, and then in Zagreb and Belgrade for two years in a row, and then we took a short break. And this is a very good thing, the organization is at the level, the rappers are of very high quality. The difference between the battles we did and these ones is that now it's about pre-prepared, written texts, not freestyles. This means that the content is of better quality, because people are able to prepare properly. And one very good thing is that these beats connect rap fans from the region and offer them a springboard. That's how I first heard about some great rappers who hadn't reached me before. There is, for example, Random from Montenegro, a member of the group JJ Okoča, who is phenomenal in those battles. He lived in Sarajevo until recently, where he was studying, so I managed to meet him and he seems like a nice guy. I follow those battles regularly, I watch them every week when they are released. They also did beats in my Tuzla and it went very well and it seems to me that they are getting more and more popular, which is a very positive thing for the whole regional scene.
- You mentioned how rap is constantly changing. At the moment, the current trap subgenre is in the focus of debate, because part of the rap audience did not enthusiastically accept the changes in the sound?
Let's say in the 90s, some characters considered the rap of that time bad, because it was different from the one from the 80s. Even now, we have people who perceive that trip as something that has nothing to do with "real tail". It's totally okay for me, I follow and listen to it all, and even on the album I had bits that veered in that direction. I'm not against it, but I also understand people who don't like it, it's all a matter of taste. I like something like rapper techno - music for the club, for going out, for the DJ to make the audience dance, because I see that people mostly react that way. I try not to be conservative, in general in life, even in terms of music, so I look at all these changes that are happening as something normal. These things come and go, we'll see in a couple of years what will happen, maybe the treb will disappear completely, and some old school sound will come back. Although even today we have a lot of artists who deal with that boom bep sound, despite the great popularity of trap artists. No one is neglected, everyone can choose what to listen to.
The documentary "Stani na put", a story about the first steps, the first acquaintances...
- What was the experience of participating in the film "Stani na put", what do you think about the idea of the documentary?
Of course, I wouldn't participate if I didn't have a positive opinion about it. It's a great movie, we had three premieres – in Belgrade, Zagreb, Tuzla... We all got together again and it was nice to see all those people in one place. Some we really haven't seen for a long time, some I meet a little more often. It is a very beautiful, warm, human story, about our first steps, first acquaintances, travels, filming... The film made me see it off with a slight smile on my face. Now it is not some document that will remain in the museum and be the definition of the history of Balkan rap, because that is not what the film is. It's more of a story about three rap collectives - about our FM Jam from BiH, Blackout from Croatia and Bassivity from Serbia. Of course, there are some important people missing, but the authors of the film wanted to do it in that way, to connect those three groups that somehow connected themselves through music before that. And I think they portrayed that beautifully.
- The youngest actor of the film is your compatriot Kontra, the last rapper from Bosnia and Herzegovina who attracted the attention of the environment. What is the state of the scene in BiH in general?
There are many quality performers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As I said, this film features the FM Jam team and hence Kontra tu, and I would say that in BiH hip hop is experiencing a new boom in the last few months and I'm not worried, because you can hear quality modern as well as traditional, old skool boom bep rap.
"Let's tear them down" is still relevant
- What characterizes all your releases so far is that you were constantly angry about the socio-political situation in your songs. Are the new songs like that?
Not really. I don't have any new songs on that topic. I thought about it for a very long time. I see that people expect that from me, that they want such songs. And I've been trying to write something along those lines, but I just don't feel that way anymore. Rather, it seems like I'm repeating myself. Because in my city and in my country things are changing very slowly and I can talk about it, but I have already said all that in previous songs. Now when people listen to this new album, they will have the opportunity to hear, for example, the song "Hajmo ih rušit", which is almost 15 years old, they will see that it is still relevant today, that everything I mention in that track is more or less the same. Almost nothing has changed. Or let's say "Gori" - if I had published it now, I don't think it would have fared any worse. Unfortunately, things change slowly here, everything goes around in circles, and that's why I had a reluctance towards such topics in the new texts. That doesn't mean, though, that something new won't happen in the future that will inspire me and make me say something about it again
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