IN BLACK AND WHITE YOU CAN’T SEE THE COLOR OF THE FLAG
Visual rhymes on rap tunes, feat. Mikó Attila (2Arc, or Acsi to his friends), Marcel Floruț, and Vlad Constantin (Cortex).
How did our collaboration start? The way it does between a Romanian and a Hungarian. And what’s more, between a rocker and a rapper. Double the discrepancy.
We were young, I had a rock band, Acsi was my girlfriend’s neighbour. At the time hip-hop was hugely successful, even in Eastern Europe. During that time, several people came up to me, “I heard you can record stuff at your place.” We have to understand that it was the 90s, this technology was not widely available. If someone had a computer, it was a big deal. We made do as best we could, with whatever we had on hand. We did our own research and learned a little, as much as we needed in order to help us with the bare minimum we needed to record some demo tapes. “But,” I’d ask, “what do you play?” “Rap music.” The second I heard ‘rap’ I’d shake my head in disappointment.
At that time, almost any teenager would’ve wanted to make rap music. It wasn’t just trendy, but it was easier to make rap than to learn an instrument.
When we’re young, we’re prone to judging people by the music genres we either like or dislike. I was definitely a bit frustrated that the musical area I was in had no potential. Since what we were trying to do at the time was a bit niche, people didn’t take us seriously. We weren’t commercial enough for the bigger record labels and we weren’t metal rock enough for the very underground labels. We were kind of in-between. And, at that time, there was nothing for the in-betweens in Romania.
That’s how Acsi also came up to me at a party, asking about recording. My first question was, “What do you play?”
Marcel
Cruel reality, mixed with poetry. That’s hip-hop to me. It has to be cruel, it has to be real, it has to have some poetry, so it has to be well written. But it means something else to each of us. You like what you can identify with.
Attila
A sors az ami teríték nélkül tálal
Egész kisgyerekként kezdtem barátkozni a halállal
Amíg a legtöbb haver apja kocsmában sörözött
Az enyém ölbe vett a vértócsában a blokkok között
2Arc, Nekrológ/Necrolog
[Fate lies the table with no knives and forks
I made friends with death when I was a kid
When my friends’ dads were having beers
Mine was hugging me in a pool of blood behind the buildings]
From the moment we met until we wound up working together on a full album, that is with me recording and coproducing it with him it took ten years.
Marcel
When I went to Hungary, I went to work on a construction site. And Marcel told me, “Take three CDs with you and give them to the hobos living in the streets. This demo needs to get to Hungary. If you get the chance, hand it out to a record label.” And I actually took three CDs to Budapest, while working in construction. If it weren’t for Marcel, 2Arc projects wouldn’t be anything of what they are, none of them.
Attila
He did this for laughs. The first two-three songs, the first album, even, he only made them for fun, with no expectations. He didn’t set out to do anything, didn’t take it seriously. When I saw how talented he was, I started taking him more seriously and I started to encourage them.
He just fell out of the sky, he was featured on the best of 2001 Hungarian album and then disappeared.
Marcel
When I was a teenager and started getting into certain Hungarian songs, I began to feel like I would kind of want to know what they’re saying. I would hear a band I liked and I also wanted to know what they sang about. As luck would have it, my first more serious relationship was with a Hungarian woman, so I had instant help by my side. She translated for me and that’s how I started to understand, to learn.”
After a short while, I started wanting to take notes. There was no Internet back then, you couldn’t get access to the songs’ lyrics that easily. If you had an original tape or CD, in which you found the printed lyrics, you were lucky, but this was a rather rare occurrence. I’d write down lyrics, take notes, write by hand. As I wrote them down, my girlfriend would explain the grammar of the language, the spelling, the special characters. As I was learning how to write properly, I also started to learn, to understand the words.
It was weird, I first started to write and read in Hungarian.
Marcel
Marcel understands what it’s about. In fact, Marcel understands more of my lyrics than a Hungary-born Hungarian. Because there are a lot of words that Hungarians in Hungary don’t understand. When I make a pun… For instance, ‘megfentál’. ‘Az ördög megfentál.’ To do a dodge. ‘Az ördög átbasz.’ The devil will fuck you. No one would understand this in Hungary. But Marcel understands.
Attila
I thought us Romanians and Hungarians could do a song together. The idea was an older one. I wanted to appease, to subdue the hatred between Romanians and Hungarians, to show it’s not really like what the news will have you believe. It’s not what we feel in our daily lives.
Attila
2Arc feat. Trackkilla, JÉGCSAP, JIM’NTB, ESK, Cortex, TRANE NINETY 3, Estinca, Stukkeres Pepa, Bothee, Scartz, Cifra, Mario Broda, MEYO, MEDZSIX, Frankie
Mix/Master: Marcel Floruț (Postanalog Studio)
Dalton Dal
If you listen to it the first time, you can be slightly thrown off, because it changes. The other guy comes in and slicks it differently with his rhyme, then a Hungarian performer will come in and place the accent differently and a single word can lend it a different weight.
It will be easiest to understand in Transylvania, where Romanians – or a large part of Romanians – understand Hungarian, at least a little bit, and the other way around, there are Hungarians who understand Romanian. If a guy in Budapest listens to this song, he’ll have holes in those bits where the Romanian rappers sing. The same would apply to the folks in Bucharest, for instance, who will understand the Romanian singers and won’t get a word of what those guys are singing in Hungarian. It will be weird for them, anyway. ‘cause they believe one thing over there, they believe something else over here and the truth is in the middle, it’s neither here, nor there.
Marcel
You sometimes get the feeling that Romanian is more lyrical and perhaps at times Hungarian is a bit more rough in terms of pronunciation. But, at the same time, it can highlight tougher things. Whereas if you want to say the same things in Romanian as in Hungarian, it will sound tamer. It depends. Each language has its perks and shortcomings. At the end of the day, you can express yourself in the same way through rap, no matter the language. You find what’s good, what works and somehow adapt to the language you know and in which you want to send out a message. But things can differ.
Marcel
One is a Latin language, the other is Finno-Ugric. They’re completely different. To my mind, it’s harder to rap in Hungarian, because you pronounce words differently. A Latin language flows. I say rap sounds better in Romanian than in Hungarian. This is why it’s interesting to combine them, to mix them.
Attila
I like Italian rap, French rap. The endings of stanzas are smoother. I find Hungarian hip hop to be hardcore. The language is more aggressive, in terms of means of expression and everything. Even if it’s a bluesy, soulful song, to me it seems aggressive. But I like that.
Vlad
Oradea is also a much bigger town than Miercurea Ciuc. The only hood tales in Ciuc were from when we were young and probably got into fights. What else could we do? It’s not like the B.U.G. Mafia stories, that you’d peddle heroin and bullshit like that.
Vlad
Lately, I’ve discovered that enthusiasm I had in the beginning. When my dad accidentally brought me my Paraziții tape. Aside from the fact that I was young and enjoyed hearing cuss words to drum beats, I enjoyed it, compared to other types of music, because they also said something, aside from the profanity.
Since the tape was bought on the Russian market, it wasn’t an original. I think it was a recorded, copied tape, displayed on the stall, the way classical piracy was carried out. My mom and dad listened to old folk music, as old people do, and some remixes. Since the gentleman in question was in a hurry – I think he was from out of town -, this tape sort of wormed its way in. I think it was predestined to change my future. Not that it built too much of a future for me, but, honestly, it was like a second family to me. And it still is.
Vlad
The people who don’t particularly know what the deal is with these areas think you go to Miercurea Ciuc or Sfântu Gheorghe and can’t have Romanians and Hungarians talk to each other over here. Which is very absurd. I still hear people saying, “Look, I went there and couldn’t buy a loaf of bread.” Well, I’ll be… Where? That’s a joke.
Vlad
We grew up together, Romanians and Hungarians. If there was some ruckus afoot, the Romanians and Hungarians eventually bandied together. If someone came in, if a Hungarian came in to show off, a Romanian came in to act tough, we’d all ally together.
Attila
When I started to discover this side of the Hungarian language, which has puns, where you can be cooler in rhymes, ‘cause it has no genders, for instance, I thought it was fascinating. When I had this explained to me, that there are no genders, then I understood why my poor Hungarian friends called ‘her’ ‘him’ and ‘him’ ‘her’. That’s when I understood.
Marcel
Everyone says hip hop is dead.
No, it’s not dead. It just lost itself a little along the way.
Vlad
I’d rather steer clear of the new trend. Hip hop is music with a message, so I don’t think the current direction it’s going in is the right one. You have to get out into the world, have stuff happen to you, tell the story, ‘cause otherwise, of course, all you sing about is money, Gucci, and whatever you see in the shop window. Besides, in order to make hip hop, first it’s about that poetry and it’s about the sound. I see a song as a family. Father lyric comes in with mother instrumental.
Vlad
There are things you see one way when you’re 18 and another when you’re 40. There are a lot of things that don’t work. You set the words to paper, have them fit together, but when you try to sing them, it doesn’t work anymore. There are things that shouldn’t have been said. Back then, I thought it was appropriate to utter them, but I wouldn’t sing them anymore today. When you’re young, what do you care? In youth, you utter the line, and then… But as the years pass by, people stop thinking in that way. I suppose I would also say whatever I wanted to day, too, but not in the same way.
Attila
I work on my lyrics a lot today. I try to have each sentence lend itself to several interpretations, to see it visually when you hear it. To go through that trip when I tell you the story. I don’t just write the lyrics for the sake of making words rhyme and recording it to an instrumental track. That’s what I used to do before. I’d write, rehearse, record, and then regret it. Especially because I was in a rush to upload them online.
I’ve recently put out a song. I’ve been fiddling with it for a year, but I was waiting for the right time and the right instrumental track. And I never felt it the way I felt it now. And I saw that, yes, fools rush in, first of all, and if you do things for your own pleasure, it doesn’t matter whether you put it out now or you put it out in two years’ time and it’s up to date.
Now I can say I am the way I’ve always wanted to be. I’m on the road…
Vlad
I can’t conceive of hip-hop without rough words. This is the way I grew up, this is how I also speak at home. I don’t censor the lyrics. I write down the lyrics on paper the same way I speak. People will make of them what they will. Those who get it look beyond the swear words or the bad words.
Attila
There’s no such thing as ‘not allowed’ here. This is why I really like this genre. When I listen to a lyric or two, I like knowing that there’s more to its subtext than what you hear, that there’s something deeper there.
Vlad
It’s more convenient for me to do it underground. I do what I want and when I want to. If I don’t want to put out an album in ten years, then I won’t put out an album in ten years. Total freedom. But it also comes with a lot of disadvantages. It’s harder to develop your style, since there isn’t that much money available. It goes slower without the money, in baby steps.
Attila
Rájöttem vannak dolgok, rímek és szavak
amik a hiphop-ban bár kurva jól hangzanak
valahogy az életben keményebbek a sorok
és átélni őket már nem is olyan fasza dolog
2Arc, Hírnév/Faimă
[I realised there are things, rhymes, and words
Which sound damn good in hip-hop
But in life the rhymes are tougher
When you live them they’re not so damn good no more.]
When he was four years old he went down to the sandpit to play with his little shovel and that Hungarian kid played with the shovel, somehow they got along, there were no problems, he gestured, “Now give me the little shovel and bucket, too,” and he gave it to him. And he went home and heard his dad saying the Hungarians are scum who want to steal Transylvania from us. And then he was kind of vexed.
Just like Romanians can be so mean about this, so can a close-minded Hungarian parent.
Marcel
IN BLACK AND WHITE YOU CAN’T SEE THE COLOR OF THE FLAG
Visual rhymes on rap tunes, feat. Mikó Attila (2Arc, or Acsi to his friends), Marcel Floruț, and Vlad Constantin (Cortex).
How did our collaboration start? The way it does between a Romanian and a Hungarian. And what’s more, between a rocker and a rapper. Double the discrepancy.
We were young, I had a rock band, Acsi was my girlfriend’s neighbour. At the time hip-hop was hugely successful, even in Eastern Europe. During that time, several people came up to me, “I heard you can record stuff at your place.” We have to understand that it was the 90s, this technology was not widely available. If someone had a computer, it was a big deal. We made do as best we could, with whatever we had on hand. We did our own research and learned a little, as much as we needed in order to help us with the bare minimum we needed to record some demo tapes. “But,” I’d ask, “what do you play?” “Rap music.” The second I heard ‘rap’ I’d shake my head in disappointment.
At that time, almost any teenager would’ve wanted to make rap music. It wasn’t just trendy, but it was easier to make rap than to learn an instrument.
When we’re young, we’re prone to judging people by the music genres we either like or dislike. I was definitely a bit frustrated that the musical area I was in had no potential. Since what we were trying to do at the time was a bit niche, people didn’t take us seriously. We weren’t commercial enough for the bigger record labels and we weren’t metal rock enough for the very underground labels. We were kind of in-between. And, at that time, there was nothing for the in-betweens in Romania.
That’s how Acsi also came up to me at a party, asking about recording. My first question was, “What do you play?”
Marcel
Cruel reality, mixed with poetry. That’s hip-hop to me. It has to be cruel, it has to be real, it has to have some poetry, so it has to be well written. But it means something else to each of us. You like what you can identify with.
Attila
A sors az ami teríték nélkül tálal
Egész kisgyerekként kezdtem barátkozni a halállal
Amíg a legtöbb haver apja kocsmában sörözött
Az enyém ölbe vett a vértócsában a blokkok között
2Arc, Nekrológ/Necrolog
[Fate lies the table with no knives and forks
I made friends with death when I was a kid
When my friends’ dads were having beers
Mine was hugging me in a pool of blood behind the buildings]
From the moment we met until we wound up working together on a full album, that is with me recording and coproducing it with him it took ten years.
Marcel
When I went to Hungary, I went to work on a construction site. And Marcel told me, “Take three CDs with you and give them to the hobos living in the streets. This demo needs to get to Hungary. If you get the chance, hand it out to a record label.” And I actually took three CDs to Budapest, while working in construction. If it weren’t for Marcel, 2Arc projects wouldn’t be anything of what they are, none of them.
Attila
He did this for laughs. The first two-three songs, the first album, even, he only made them for fun, with no expectations. He didn’t set out to do anything, didn’t take it seriously. When I saw how talented he was, I started taking him more seriously and I started to encourage them.
He just fell out of the sky, he was featured on the best of 2001 Hungarian album and then disappeared.
Marcel
When I was a teenager and started getting into certain Hungarian songs, I began to feel like I would kind of want to know what they’re saying. I would hear a band I liked and I also wanted to know what they sang about. As luck would have it, my first more serious relationship was with a Hungarian woman, so I had instant help by my side. She translated for me and that’s how I started to understand, to learn.”
After a short while, I started wanting to take notes. There was no Internet back then, you couldn’t get access to the songs’ lyrics that easily. If you had an original tape or CD, in which you found the printed lyrics, you were lucky, but this was a rather rare occurrence. I’d write down lyrics, take notes, write by hand. As I wrote them down, my girlfriend would explain the grammar of the language, the spelling, the special characters. As I was learning how to write properly, I also started to learn, to understand the words.
It was weird, I first started to write and read in Hungarian.
Marcel
Marcel understands what it’s about. In fact, Marcel understands more of my lyrics than a Hungary-born Hungarian. Because there are a lot of words that Hungarians in Hungary don’t understand. When I make a pun… For instance, ‘megfentál’. ‘Az ördög megfentál.’ To do a dodge. ‘Az ördög átbasz.’ The devil will fuck you. No one would understand this in Hungary. But Marcel understands.
Attila
I thought us Romanians and Hungarians could do a song together. The idea was an older one. I wanted to appease, to subdue the hatred between Romanians and Hungarians, to show it’s not really like what the news will have you believe. It’s not what we feel in our daily lives.
Attila
2Arc feat. Trackkilla, JÉGCSAP, JIM’NTB, ESK, Cortex, TRANE NINETY 3, Estinca, Stukkeres Pepa, Bothee, Scartz, Cifra, Mario Broda, MEYO, MEDZSIX, Frankie
Mix/Master: Marcel Floruț (Postanalog Studio)
Dalton Dal
If you listen to it the first time, you can be slightly thrown off, because it changes. The other guy comes in and slicks it differently with his rhyme, then a Hungarian performer will come in and place the accent differently and a single word can lend it a different weight.
It will be easiest to understand in Transylvania, where Romanians – or a large part of Romanians – understand Hungarian, at least a little bit, and the other way around, there are Hungarians who understand Romanian. If a guy in Budapest listens to this song, he’ll have holes in those bits where the Romanian rappers sing. The same would apply to the folks in Bucharest, for instance, who will understand the Romanian singers and won’t get a word of what those guys are singing in Hungarian. It will be weird for them, anyway. ‘cause they believe one thing over there, they believe something else over here and the truth is in the middle, it’s neither here, nor there.
Marcel
You sometimes get the feeling that Romanian is more lyrical and perhaps at times Hungarian is a bit more rough in terms of pronunciation. But, at the same time, it can highlight tougher things. Whereas if you want to say the same things in Romanian as in Hungarian, it will sound tamer. It depends. Each language has its perks and shortcomings. At the end of the day, you can express yourself in the same way through rap, no matter the language. You find what’s good, what works and somehow adapt to the language you know and in which you want to send out a message. But things can differ.
Marcel
One is a Latin language, the other is Finno-Ugric. They’re completely different. To my mind, it’s harder to rap in Hungarian, because you pronounce words differently. A Latin language flows. I say rap sounds better in Romanian than in Hungarian. This is why it’s interesting to combine them, to mix them.
Attila
I like Italian rap, French rap. The endings of stanzas are smoother. I find Hungarian hip hop to be hardcore. The language is more aggressive, in terms of means of expression and everything. Even if it’s a bluesy, soulful song, to me it seems aggressive. But I like that.
Vlad
Oradea is also a much bigger town than Miercurea Ciuc. The only hood tales in Ciuc were from when we were young and probably got into fights. What else could we do? It’s not like the B.U.G. Mafia stories, that you’d peddle heroin and bullshit like that.
Vlad
Lately, I’ve discovered that enthusiasm I had in the beginning. When my dad accidentally brought me my Paraziții tape. Aside from the fact that I was young and enjoyed hearing cuss words to drum beats, I enjoyed it, compared to other types of music, because they also said something, aside from the profanity.
Since the tape was bought on the Russian market, it wasn’t an original. I think it was a recorded, copied tape, displayed on the stall, the way classical piracy was carried out. My mom and dad listened to old folk music, as old people do, and some remixes. Since the gentleman in question was in a hurry – I think he was from out of town -, this tape sort of wormed its way in. I think it was predestined to change my future. Not that it built too much of a future for me, but, honestly, it was like a second family to me. And it still is.
Vlad
When I started to discover this side of the Hungarian language, which has puns, where you can be cooler in rhymes, ‘cause it has no genders, for instance, I thought it was fascinating. When I had this explained to me, that there are no genders, then I understood why my poor Hungarian friends called ‘her’ ‘him’ and ‘him’ ‘her’. That’s when I understood.
Marcel
The people who don’t particularly know what the deal is with these areas think you go to Miercurea Ciuc or Sfântu Gheorghe and can’t have Romanians and Hungarians talk to each other over here. Which is very absurd. I still hear people saying, “Look, I went there and couldn’t buy a loaf of bread.” Well, I’ll be… Where? That’s a joke.
Vlad
We grew up together, Romanians and Hungarians. If there was some ruckus afoot, the Romanians and Hungarians eventually bandied together. If someone came in, if a Hungarian came in to show off, a Romanian came in to act tough, we’d all ally together.
Attila
Everyone says hip hop is dead.
No, it’s not dead. It just lost itself a little along the way.
Vlad
I’d rather steer clear of the new trend. Hip hop is music with a message, so I don’t think the current direction it’s going in is the right one. You have to get out into the world, have stuff happen to you, tell the story, ‘cause otherwise, of course, all you sing about is money, Gucci, and whatever you see in the shop window. Besides, in order to make hip hop, first it’s about that poetry and it’s about the sound. I see a song as a family. Father lyric comes in with mother instrumental.
Vlad
There are things you see one way when you’re 18 and another when you’re 40. There are a lot of things that don’t work. You set the words to paper, have them fit together, but when you try to sing them, it doesn’t work anymore. There are things that shouldn’t have been said. Back then, I thought it was appropriate to utter them, but I wouldn’t sing them anymore today. When you’re young, what do you care? In youth, you utter the line, and then… But as the years pass by, people stop thinking in that way. I suppose I would also say whatever I wanted to day, too, but not in the same way.
Attila
I work on my lyrics a lot today. I try to have each sentence lend itself to several interpretations, to see it visually when you hear it. To go through that trip when I tell you the story. I don’t just write the lyrics for the sake of making words rhyme and recording it to an instrumental track. That’s what I used to do before. I’d write, rehearse, record, and then regret it. Especially because I was in a rush to upload them online.
I’ve recently put out a song. I’ve been fiddling with it for a year, but I was waiting for the right time and the right instrumental track. And I never felt it the way I felt it now. And I saw that, yes, fools rush in, first of all, and if you do things for your own pleasure, it doesn’t matter whether you put it out now or you put it out in two years’ time and it’s up to date.
Now I can say I am the way I’ve always wanted to be. I’m on the road…
Vlad
I can’t conceive of hip-hop without rough words. This is the way I grew up, this is how I also speak at home. I don’t censor the lyrics. I write down the lyrics on paper the same way I speak. People will make of them what they will. Those who get it look beyond the swear words or the bad words.
Attila
There’s no such thing as ‘not allowed’ here. This is why I really like this genre. When I listen to a lyric or two, I like knowing that there’s more to its subtext than what you hear, that there’s something deeper there.
Vlad
It’s more convenient for me to do it underground. I do what I want and when I want to. If I don’t want to put out an album in ten years, then I won’t put out an album in ten years. Total freedom. But it also comes with a lot of disadvantages. It’s harder to develop your style, since there isn’t that much money available. It goes slower without the money, in baby steps.
Attila
Rájöttem vannak dolgok, rímek és szavak
amik a hiphop-ban bár kurva jól hangzanak
valahogy az életben keményebbek a sorok
és átélni őket már nem is olyan fasza dolog
2Arc, Hírnév/Faimă
[I realized there are things, rhymes, and words
Which sound damn good in hip-hop
But in life the rhymes are tougher
When you live them they’re not so damn good no more.]
When he was four years old he went down to the sandpit to play with his little shovel and that Hungarian kid played with the shovel, somehow they got along, there were no problems, he gestured, “Now give me the little shovel and bucket, too,” and he gave it to him. And he went home and heard his dad saying the Hungarians are scum who want to steal Transylvania from us. And then he was kind of vexed.
Just like Romanians can be so mean about this, so can a close-minded Hungarian parent.
Marcel
