Get Audio+
Hot FM
Kool 101
Eight FM
Fly FM
Molek FMPop Malaysiana: Soul Searching of the Music Kind
Thirsty for JUICE content? Quench your cravings on our Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp
ALTIMET
FOLK RAP
“Put some gamelan in your song and suddenly you’re not ‘copying the west’ anymore? No, it’s deeper than that.” – ALTIMET
At one point in his career, Altimet self-anointed himself with the title ‘King of MY’, but these days he’s more folk hero than royalty. The 2-hit combo of the Sudirman-sampling ‘Syukur’ and ‘Kotarayaku’ (along with his multiple recent guest appearances) have metamorphosed one of Malaysia’s renowned MCs from the standard braggadocious rapper into an artist regular Joes can relate to. It seems like he has found the right amount of Malaysiana that has eluded a lot of hip hop artists.
More than any other genre, hip hop is an easy target for others – even to people who do other western genres – to accuse of being phony in a Malaysian context. JUICE asks the Executive Director of Kartel Records if he’s bothered by this, or even care to address it. “I just try to make good music, that perception is shallow minded and the remedy for that perception is similarly shallow minded,” he says before continuing with a statement that is 100% on our thought wavelength too, “put some gamelan in your song and suddenly you’re not ‘copying the west’ anymore? No, it’s deeper than that.”
Local hip hop has always attempted to sample traditional instruments in an attempt to sound localised, which more often than not comes off as dishonest at worst. To Altimet, it’s not only that, even the language used can be contrived if not used well. “I don’t think having ‘lah’ in your lyrics will make you sound Malaysian… it’s not the sounds or words used, but what goes into them that is more important.”
Altimet isn’t one to dictate the musical direction of others though, he believes everyone should be free to do what they want. It’s just that some acts would sample a traditional instrument not because it sounds dope, but because they think they should sound a certain way – Malaysian.
“Most times it won’t come off sounding right. Timbaland didn’t sample Hossam Ramzy for Jay-Z’s ‘Big Pimpin’’ because he wanted some Middle Eastern ‘sounds’, he did it because it sounded dope. It didn’t matter that ‘Khusara Khusara’ had a Middle Eastern rhythm, it was just too fresh not to be sampled.”
Hip hop is heavily focused on the language – the verbalised words used rhythmically over a beat. And often time, the language used is colloquial, street level vernaculars as opposed to propriety. There’s an emerging scene within local hip hop in the Bahasa Pasar rap scene in the likes of 542 and SSK. Could this be what truly local hip hop is? “It’s one of the steps in the evolution, yes. It comes back to my belief that hip hop is folk music. If you make music for your folks, it should be in a language that’s accessible to them.”
But at the same time, Altimet doesn’t believe we have come to a point where we have a genre that is uniquely ours, be it in hip hop or other music. “Is the inang uniquely ours? It’s rooted in India. Zapin, the Arabs brought it here. Joget, the Portuguese,” he enlightens us, “but they’ve all been transformed into something different once they’re here.”
And that’s exactly the point of it all, in a heavily connected globalised world influences are inevitable. “These transformations don’t happen overnight, maybe the new modern genre for us is in gestation.”
If you insist on knowing what is the Malaysian identity in music according to Altimet though, look for Search doing ‘Joget Pahang’ at Panggung Anniversary on YouTube.
“That’s as close to a perfect example I can give,” Altimet tells us. And yes, he’s right. It’s f*cking epic.
Currently Altimet is writing 3 albums at once, and he has written more songs for other people and guest verses than he has the capacity to remember. Find more on the man at www.altimetonline.com and follow him at www.twitter.com/altimet.
