Here.
Click on the photo album to see more of these idiots acting all tough and throwing gang signs. They are from Cordoba, Argentina, which is in the west of Argentina. Known from growing wine grapes, relatively dry climate in the rain shadow of the Andes. These folks look like Whites, which seemed strange to me. An Argentine friend of mine told me that they were typical Argentine mestizos. If that is so, then your Argentine mestizo looks awfully damned White.
I knew that Hispanic-Black US gang culture was spreading to other areas, particularly mestizo and Indian populations in Latin America and I believe Black and mulatto populations in the Caribbean. I have also seen pics of Filipinos and Negritos in the Philippines who have adopted US gang culture. There are some Australian Aborigines and Polynesians who have adopted it too. The Polynesians like to imitate US Black culture, possibly because they feel closer to Blacks. In gang fights at LA schools, the Samoans would always line up with the Blacks.
If you have any information on other regions where US gang culture is spreading, please let us know in the comments. I guess this is one of the only products were are exporting anymore.
Alpha Unit
jacobbauthumley
I think Tulio linked to some rappers from Poznan, Poland quite a while ago. Here’s a video with some rather dorky guys rapping in Polish:
Apparently there’s a thriving hip hop scene there, though this old article from the NY Times says the lyrics are not as bling-oriented as that of US rappers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/05/world/poznan-journal-polish-hip-hop-rocks-the-homies-on-the-blok.html?src=pm
While Polish hip-hop’s anger may echo that of urban African-American youths, the lyrics barely touch on familiar American themes of police violence or racism (Poland is virtually all-white). Fancy cars, guns and gold chains are not part of the picture — given the relatively small potential market in this country of 39 million, and the relative poverty of most fans, riches are out of the question.
Instead, hip-hop here celebrates the grimness of life in the bloki. Occasionally, the songs stray into political territory, bemoaning widespread corruption or efforts to join the European Union, a step that many in the Bloki believe will drive up prices more and drive away jobs.
Rhymers like Peja say they don’t want to get rich fast, or even get out of the bloki, clinging instead to the life they know and casting themselves in the tradition of Poland’s most famous 19th-century poet, Adam Mickiewicz, and the ”Mloda Polska,” or Young Poland movement that defined the country’s national image in the decades before Poland won freedom in 1918.
”If Mickiewicz was alive today, he’d be a good rhymer,” Doniu said.
What and Asian gangsters rapping in French(?), English and Chinese(??)
*White
China
This isn’t gangsta, but I know Palestinian youth use rap as a form of personal expression and protest:
Amongst youth In the UK, it’s a familiar pattern that blacks would imitate US ghetto culture, and whites would imitate UK blacks. Lately, UK blacks have developed their own ghetto styles with ‘grime’ etc:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyLkLHY2LuQ
I used to work in a record shop. The playlist would be programmed in at the beginning of the day. All the staff couldn’t help noticing that whenever gangster rap or grime was played there would be an increase in theft by customers.
So you might think I’m against this kind of music. But I see it as a reaction against the blandness and passivity of modern life. It’s two sides of the same coin. Life is going to get increasingly mechanised, so expressions of the human spirit are going to have to be more violent and extreme in order to provide balance.
Great scene from the movie Ghost Dog.