"}Early on Monday, August 14, readers of Vedomosti, one of Russia\u2019s leading business publications and one of the few remaining independent media in the country, saw a headline that elicited many confused reactions from its loyal audience.
\u201cBattle Between Oxxxymiron And Gnoyny Attracts 2.7 Million Views Overnight,\u201d the article\u2019s headline said, looking quite out of place in a publication that normally covers initial public offerings, mergers and hostile takeovers by state-owned conglomerates. \u00a0
The event in question was an hour-long YouTube video of a highly anticipated rap battle between two prominent Russian hip-hop performers: Oxxxymiron, whose real name is Miron Fyodorov, and Gnoyny, whose artistic handle translates to \u201cThe Festering One\u201d and who also is also known by the monicker Slava KPSS (a play on the diminutive form of popular Russian names like Vyacheslav and the Soviet-era slogan \u201cGlory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union\u201d). Both contestants exchanged colorful poetic barbs in a smoke-filled bar, with Gnoyny declared the winner by the judges.
\n\nEven for native Russian speakers, the hour-long verbal ping-pong is difficult to understand in full, as a most of it deals with obscure subculture references, as well as in-jokes and insults recognizable only to someone fully versed in contemporary Russian hip-hop. For example, around the 15:33 mark Gnoyny delivers a scathing, rhymed review of Oxxxymiron\u2019s latest full-length concept album \u201cGorgorod,\u201d finally released after a four-year hiatus:
\n\nLet\u2019s talk about your album, let\u2019s dissect it with the cold-blooded composure worthy of Lavrenty Beria [Joseph Stalin\u2019s chief of secret police]. You were a bad student at your Gryffindor [a reference from the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d book series] \u2014 if Russians have ever been good at anything, it\u2019s tearing down empires! Everyone waited for years, he was building up suspense \u2014 and the best he could come up with was an audio book! And a banal one at that, a dystopian novel, such level of discourse better befits Jamal and Loic [rival hip-hop performers]! With a plot that looks like it\u2019s been put together by a dim-witted hustler! Your rap is pulp literature at best! It\u2019s a collection of the most tired cliches in history! Oh, it\u2019s such an original plot, look at it \u2014 a tragic love story in a dystopian setting! Fuck me, I\u2019m sure no one yet has come up with anything of the sort, right? Not [Russian writer Yevgeny] Zamyatin, not [English writer George] Orwell! It\u2019s a pop motif that\u2019s just pissing everyone the fuck off!
As the YouTube clip of the battle was accumulating more views \u2014 almost 12 million as of August 15 \u2014 it attracted unprecedented attention from general interest Russian media, both state-owned and independent. The Interfax news agency reported that the Oxxxymiron-Gnoyny battle set an absolute record for coverage of such a niche subject: more than 800 articles in a single day across the whole spectrum of Russian news outlets.
\n\nProfessional reviews of the rap battle appeared in publications like Kommersant, post-Soviet Russia\u2019s oldest business newspaper, and Republic.ru, another prominent independent business and general interest news outlet. Reviews have been mostly positive, highlighting the fact that both contestants used complex, multi-layered allusions to classic Russian poetry and the affair wasn\u2019t just an exchange of profanities between two people with bizarre nicknames, as many have complained. [\u2026]
\n\nRap battles are an increasingly popular phenomenon on Russian YouTube, with one of the earlier battles involving Oxxymiron having so far generated an unprecedented 38 million views. Independent publication The Bell offers an explanation as to why the news was picked up by business publications: rap battles are serious business, with ad contracts from major clients like Tinkoff Bank and BMW potentially bringing in up to 5 million rubles ($83,480) to the organizers of Oxxxymiron vs Gnoyny alone.