LIGHT TRAFFIC

I was introduced to Turkish hip-hop by Emre Ünalan, the then 13 year-old son of my good friend Fatma. Fatma, her husband Mustafa (whom she was forced to marry when she was 13), Emre and his kid sister Nihal, lived in Egirdir, a gorgeous lake-side town in Western Turkey. The family ran this sort of informal bed and breakfast in an old Ottoman-era house. All day, whether he was sweeping the floors or out in the courtyard, shelling fava beans, young Emre would have his beat up old boombox by his feet, blaring Turkish rapper Ceza (pronounced “Jeza”) at top volume. Emre knew all the lyrics off Medcezir (“The Tide”), Ceza’s first album and he spit them out earnestly, as swaggerful as a small-town prepubescent Turkish boy can be.

I wasn’t a fan at first, but I soon came around. Turkish is euphonious by nature – thanks to its vowel harmony – and as languages go, it really flows well. (Ever listen to German rap? You know what I mean.) The more I listened, the more it made sense. And those hauting, melancholy instrumentals were just so… well, Turkish.

One day, the fam and I took a trip to Isparta, the province’s capital. Isparta is known for its roses and rose by-products, but Emre and I were after beats. While Fatma and Nihal were shopping for house slippers, Emre and I disappeared into a shady CD-burning joint. The owner, acting as though it was everyday that a Turkish teenager walked into his shop with a tall blonde looking for local hip-hop, proceeded to empty the contents of his “Türkçe Rep” mp3 folder onto a couple CDs.

Of all the tracks that ended up on there, this is one of my favorites.