For more than a decade, the Podgorica hip hop duo JJ Okoča, who have been Marko Lubarda Random i Stefan Strugar Poetic He managed to set new standards when it comes to rap, and thanks to his songs, they became regionally popular. Even the eight-year hiatus that has passed since the 2016 album “AB Revolucija” has not changed anything.
At the end of last year, they released the album “NAGARIGAGAREMA”, which ended their eight-year recording hiatus. Although both Random and Poetik were musically active during that period, it was the return of Okoča that delighted their fans, and a concert to promote it is underway. Random and Poetik will perform to the delight of the audience on Wednesday, February 26th at CKZ Ribnica, and they will also have surprise guests at the concert.
Random and Poetik talk to Vijesti about the concert, as well as new songs from their fifth studio project "NAGARIGAGAREMA"...
The new album after the break, DJ DJ Okoče, has been on the air for some time now, and the promotional concert is scheduled for February 26th at CKZ Ribnica. Has enough time passed for the audience to learn your new songs, and will this concert be a career review where you will remind the audience of some older songs, or will it be solely a promotion of new songs?
Random: She is so sweet. Marija, the new release of “NAGARIGAGAREMA” has been shaking the speakers of our fellow citizens for two months, and on February 26th at CKZ Ribnica we will check if our audience has anything in their ears, besides water, and how much of the material they have remembered. Of course we will do a cross-section of the situation, of course the balance will be zero, and we will perform all the songs we can think of, starting with the debut project “Niko nije spreman”. For that occasion we will disguise ourselves as us from 2012, I have already started the hair transplant treatment.
Poetic: The audience should not worry that I have a Bulgarian Random instead of the real one that disappeared in the vicinity of Blagoevgrad eight years ago, I was assured that this one is even more beautiful and older, like everything Bulgarians do. Anyway, the only thing that matters to me is that I am returning to the place where I celebrated my semi-graduation, when no one wanted to hang out with me, and now everyone is asking me to put them on the list, so I will be happy to tell all the schoolchildren that they are forbidden to enter. Trt Milojka!
“NAGARIGAGAREMA” sounds like a ritual wake-up call, what level of consciousness did you unlock on this album and how did that reflect on the lyrics?
Random: "Nagarigagarema" is a shamanic ayahuasca cry, only applied to the mountainous Balkans and not so mountainous Podgorica, because the relief is becoming more and more flattened due to the phenomenal construction expansion. It is a well-known fact that the lyrics for this album were not written by hand, but were dictated by Quetzalcoatl during complicated rituals at the old "Funeral", and then binary entered into the recording program. Personally, I have not unlocked new levels of consciousness, because this passage has no lock but only a cat flap, which is easy to get stuck in if you are not careful about your weight. It will be interesting to compare the lyrics from the beginning of my career, where masturbation in the toilets of prominent local TV stations is described, and these latest ones, where it is quoted Michael Jordan Peterson and they mention seroxats.
Poetic: We used to try to make our songs as shocking as possible, in order to stir up the audience and throw a party in our otherwise sad public space that reeked of boredom, littered with abused platitudes and colored with false politeness. People haven't even had time to brush the dust we threw in their eyes, and Okoča is already gone. I withdrew from the world to a monastery, however, in the seventh summer of the Lord, an angel appeared to me and warned me that the shock formula is now being used by performers who make huge money by giving headaches to parents whose children hit each other on the head with sneakers in viral videos. So we decided it was time for Okoča to return with a new, upgraded subversion, telling everyone not to drink and drive, go to psychotherapy, avoid gluten and break up with toxic relationships. On the next album, we will present the daily routine used by billionaires, which will help you become one of them in three months.
There are a lot of cultural references in your rhymes. Are they stylistic embellishments or do they carry deeper symbolism?
Random: We are a (non)cultural reference in ourselves, and it is impossible to escape from the self. It is precisely the stylish decorations that carry a deeper symbolism, because without them the Christmas tree would be a pile of needles and cones, ready to be eaten by various forest animals. In essence, no matter how much we pretend to be mature and enlightened, I don't think we have strayed too far from our style and the constant reminder that you are listening to two guys from Podgorica.
Poetic: The truth is, I spent my childhood in front of the TV without a single friend, and that throwing around pop culture references is the only way I know how to communicate. Admittedly, there are those who claim that if you take the first and third letters of every person Okoča mentions and write them backwards, you get a list of all the organizations that the CIA has funded to carry out coups around the world. But so far, every attempt to investigate this claim has ended in tragic accidents that ended fatally for the actors.
In one verse you say “rap taught me that the street is long”. Although hip-hop is associated with the street, it has long been considered a school of life. However, unlike your songs that carry clear messages and are critical, there are also those rappers, especially rappers, who deal with superficial topics. Considering that art is the one that should warn and criticize how much commercialization, and even hip hop, has harmed culture in general?
Random: Don't tease us about this, because you might get an answer you won't like. Rappers have been exalting material values in their songs since the late 80s and early 90s and insisting on status symbols and the pursuit of the jet set, without any need for, as you say, clear and critically oriented messages. After all, rap is mostly a product of low passions and first impulses, and as such it doesn't have to be didactic and aspire to a social revolution. The only problem I have is the excessive compromise with other musical genres and the boredom/shallowness in the lyrics, it's hard to get used to oriental and Latin howls and the desecration of turbo folk in modern rap expressions. But we can see that, at least in the region, performers who inherit the so-called "real rap" are still listened to, respected and their concerts are highly attended, so that the audience at least has a choice.
With the second song from the album “Viri junšpi”, you addressed spying and surveillance. However, unlike in the past when spies really had to “peep”, today when we put everything “on the line” on social media – starting from what we eat, where we go, what we listen to, who we hang out with… can we talk about espionage or do we prefer to be “spied on” ourselves?
Random: And no no, our exposure on social networks gives a warm welcome to every form of espionage, it is that desired attention that we think we can control and that caresses our ego and leads to the illusion that we as an individual are important in the turbulent jungle of organisms that think they are isolated from the rest. What we shy away from, not us as Okoča, but us as a people, is unwanted attention, when a neighbor reports you for illegal activities or reports to the service that you are making a lot of noise with your political views. I think that the “peeping of the spy” has not been lost with this “at will” way of life - precisely because we all take pictures and narrate our own lives to an audience that may not be interested in it at all, we are all drowning in the same pattern of behavior again and again spies are needed to draw the attention of certain decision-makers to the protruding buoys in the sea of narcissism.
Poetic: Like every other neoliberal marketing ploy, authenticity is being pushed on us today under the guise of emancipation. To be authentic means to be free from externally dictated expressive and behavioral patterns. Everyone must be the author and creator of themselves. The imperative of authenticity thus makes us compulsively question, eavesdrop, stalk, obsess over ourselves... This is another example of how neoliberalism reduces all activity to production, in this case we are expected to produce ourselves. Thus, today we all compete in the market of difference, not understanding that such difference perpetuates a higher-order conformity where difference is drowned in sameness. Faced with its inner emptiness, the narcissistic neoliberal subject tries in vain to produce itself, but the only thing it reproduces is emptiness itself. But... what was the question? The state?
You address a lot of social issues through satire. Is humor the best way to reach a larger audience?
Random: Whenever someone mentions satire, I think of a quote from "We Are Not Angels" - "Today, kids are satirizing...from learning". This is the era of post-satire, where reality is much more satirical than attempts to mock it, and this can perhaps be felt on the latest album, which has a lot less "forica" than previous works. Extremes are always used to reach a larger audience, some choose humor, some cruelty and brutality, it's best not to think about the audience during the creative process.
Poetic: No one still knows when or how it happened, but at one point, years ago, reality disappeared, replaced by a bright, noisy simulation that we are all hooked up to via USB cables. To make matters worse, those who managed to briefly disconnect say there is no way out, because where reality once was, there is now only a desert, and sandstorms and quicksand swallow up random travelers. It is only in moments when we do not take the situation seriously that we are struck by the occasional flash of Truth. Everything else, as the wizard warned us long ago, is Merlin - is “A lie, just a lie”.
The album closes with the track “Murder at Karver's” and it contains the line “May 21st vs. August 30th, every debate is like this story - futile.” This nation is chronically polarized, but where do you see the key rift - in political divisions, economic inequality, or something deeper?
Poetic: I'm not paid enough to have an answer to that question. If I were a political analyst, it would be indicative to me that people at protests here, and elsewhere, distance themselves from both the government and the opposition, while boycotts here, and elsewhere, Alan Shearer, show the powerlessness of the state. All of this would indicate to me that the political elite, on both sides, is just a service to big capital. And that no one really cares about the oxen arguing about who is more cultured and correct, as long as the plow doesn't stop pulling. But since I'm into rap precisely because my dream of being a political analyst never came true, then I'll have to agree with the profession: TikTok is guilty of peer violence, Jala i Buba for organized crime, Peach for the collapse of education and healthcare, DPS is to blame for inflation, Trump The agenda is the creation of a Greater Serbia, and Russia has been out of fuel and ammunition for three years, even though it is preparing to invade five more countries after Ukraine.
You have always been chroniclers of not only Montenegrin but also Balkan everyday life. How much has it changed in the eight years since you were active as a duo?
Random: The names and surnames have changed, the patterns of behavior have remained very similar. The local “etagemont”, to quote Ms. Medical, (“the elite”, ed. transl.), has moved from TV screens to 9x16 AMOLED handheld rectangles, and through these platforms it lives on a waterbed of fictitious self-confidence. Partitocracy, corruption, violence and OKG did not go on either summer or winter vacation, so there was no “lack of” inspiration. So now we will try to take a vacation of 18 years and see if anything will change then.
Poetic: All is vanity and ashes. Mankind has already committed every folly and villainy, and now it only repeats them. Everything eternally circles and repeats itself over and over again.
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