Israeli hip hop

Israeli hip hop refers to hip hop and rap music in Israel.

Although Native Hebrew hip hop gained popularity only during the 1990s, stemming from global influences, traces of it could be found during the mid-1980s. Yair Nitzani, then a member of the Israeli rock group, "Tislam", released an old school hip hop parody album under the name "Hashem Tamid". Nitzani was mainly influenced from New York old school Hip Hop. In 1993, Nigel Haadmor and Yossi Fine, influenced by Eric B & Rakim and Flame-3 of the TPA Crew and other late 1980s Hip Hop, produced the album "Humus Metamtem", which was released by Yair Nitzani. Yossi Fine later immigrated to New York, where he played as a bassist with artists such as David Bowie, Naughty by Nature and Lou Reed. Nigel Haadmor is the pseudonym of Yehoshua Sofer, a Jewish-Jamaican Broslov Hasidic Jew who was born in Jamaica and raised in Jamaica, the U.S., and Israel. Influenced by his mother, who listened to Jamaican ska at home, Haadmor produced a unique sound based on his Caribbean roots living in the Jewish state.

In 1995, the Beastie Boys toured Israel and were interviewed by Quami de la Fox (Eyal Freedman) on Galgalatz, the Israeli Army’s radio station and most popular radio station of that time. After the interview, Quami de la Fox created a Hebrew parody of their song “So What’cha Want” to promote their tour in Israel. Later that year Quami de la Fox collaborated with DJ Liron Teeni, also a host on the Galgalatz station, the vice-station of Galei-Zahal, to produce Esek Shachor (Black Business) – the first all hip hop radio show in Israel. Playing a mix of Hebrew, Arabic and English hip hop, by 2000 Esek Shachor “was the most popular program on Galgalatz and today remains a leader in Israel’s hip-hop world.”

Just as Kool Herc is credited in America as being a founding father of hip hop, DJ Liron Teeni is given similar credit as the pioneer of Israeli hip-hop. His major role in the process of making Israeli hip hop the popular genre it is in Israel today was the transformation of the lyrics to the mother tongue of Hebrew. Kids would come on his show on the army radio station in order to showcase their rapping skills, but when they would start rapping in English, he would make them translate it into Hebrew. Because rappers began to rap in English, it was seen as an American export which was not authentic to the music of Israel.

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