A documentary film Beef is released - a study on the origin and development of Russian hip-hop, made by one of the frontmen of the genre Roma Zhigan. Although Beef is a rapper project made by the rappers, the promising ending “for rappers” is not applicable in this case. Despite the fact that Zhigan offers the viewer only a view from the inside and does not include in his work almost any position of third parties, the final product fully corresponds to the definition stated by the author “artistic documentary biopic about Russian rap”.

From the point of view of documentary films, Beef, of course, looks a little awkward: the sampling of characters and the timing given to them do not always have a logical justification, studio recordings are rather poorly glued to the concert video sequence, and the sound quality jumping from interview to interview leaves much to be desired. From the point of view of one’s own essence — that is, a love letter to a native culture — is an absolute success.

  • Roman Zhigan - director of the film "Beef: Russian hip-hop"

To a person who is far from the domestic rap scene, most of the names on the screen will not say anything, and even more confusing is that each speaker is titrated only once - and there are more than a hundred characters. But in their burning eyes, everything will be clear. In any case, hardly anyone is able to seriously pronounce the mantra "First thought, then sound, then word" without a sincere belief in your work.

It is important that Zhigan’s picture is a good option to finally understand the phenomenon, the existence of which is already useless to argue, and the number of new and “obligatory for listening” performers is growing exponentially.

The author himself is present here as a narrator, and from time to time he makes linings to the semantic blocks of the accelerating film. All this is illustrated not only by a documentary chronicle, but also by an “artistic” line about a schoolchild who reads something in his room at the beginning of the film into a cheap microphone, and at the end turns into Bast.

  • Natan - singer, resident of Black Star Inc.

Anyway, a general idea of ​​what happened with hip-hop in Russia in all this time, Beef still gives - and more, perhaps, is not required of him.

Of course, it will not be possible to remember all 130 people, but it will not be difficult to identify artists really important for Russian rap culture by the enthusiastic response of the audience. As a bonus track, Kulio, a well-known singer of Gangsta's Paradise song, is here - he, as it turns out, is aware of the existence of two Russian rappers: Zhigan and a “boy with a rich dad who does rap” (Timati).

  • Andrey Zubov - producer of “Beef: Russian hip-hop”

Toward the end, it comes to the topic in the title of the film - the showdown between musicians. Zhigan first appears on the screen as a character in a chronicle (several years ago, he broke into the apartment of Oxxxymiron and his then associate Schokk in the company of eight armed masked comrades to sort out the relationship). It is not quite clear why the authors consider the conflicts that arise regularly to be almost the most important component of the Russian hip-hop culture, but we have to admit that it was really impossible to get around this issue - in the end, high-quality rap-battles sometimes happen on the basis of personal dislike.

Zhigan refrains from moralizing in the spirit of “let's live together” and only notes that “everyone plays this game by his own rules”.

The finale summarizes what has been said: hip-hop in Russia is a long time ago (half the participants of the tape cannot be called young) and, apparently, for a long time. The main anthem of Russian rap is the track “My Game”, which ended the concert in support of Husky “I will sing my music,” Basta wrote almost 20 years ago. For young guys, rap is one of the easiest ways of creative realization - all you need is to have a sense of rhythm and digestible diction.