Kyrgyz Rappers Trash Bribe-Takers in Hip-Hop News Segment · Global Voices
Zukhra Iakupbaeva

Screenshot from Kloop.kg's official channel.
Kloop.kg, a youth-driven Kyrgyz news portal known for experimenting with new formats, has done it again.
After a corruption scandal affecting several important political figures in Kyrgyzstan in July, Kloop gave two young rappers a platform to critique the political system in a hip-hop-meets-the ten ‘o’ clock news format.
The young rappers, Ermek Myrzabekov and Mederbek Yrsaliyev, thus released a 2-minute long video about the arrest of Kyrgyz MP Hadzhimurat Korkmazov and former head of the presidential apparatus Daniyar Narymbayev.
The pair stand accused of combining to extort $100,000 from the daughter of a former Bishkek mayor — detained on corruption charges since 2012 — in exchange for a favourable court decision on the confiscation of his property.
One of the rap singers riffs on the arrested MP:
Привет, коррупция. Встречай, вымогательства и взятки,
Теперь Коркмазов с правосудием играет в прятки.
Hello, corruption. Meet extortion and bribery.
Now Korkmazov is playing hide-and-seek with justice.
In their song, the rappers condemn corrupted officials and courts:
По идее тут выше всех должен быть судов система,
Но в прогнившем насквозь шальных денег в мире иная схема.
Тузы, шестерки, у короля в кармане перемены.
Навряд ли возможны, нет чистых лиц на старой сцене.
Ideally, the court system has to be above everything,
But there is a different scheme in this rotten to the core world of easy money.
Aces, sixes, the King [President] keeps reforms in his pocket.
There are no clean people on this old stage.
Ulugbek Akishev, an editor at Kloop.kg told Global Voices why the editorial staff decided to give the young rappers a space to exhibit their talents:
Мы хотели запустить видео репортажи о главных событиях недели, как это делают некоторые новостные агентства. Услышав первый трек ребят, мы связались с ними и решили пригласить их делать для нас такие репортажи, потому что рэп на социальные темы затрагивают. Ребята настояли, что видео будут посвящены отдельному событию.
We wanted to launch video coverage [wrapping] the main events of the week, as some news agencies do. After hearing the first track of the guys, we got in touch with them and decided to invite them to do these video stories for us because rapping on social issues can be a strong tool. The boys insisted that the video would be devoted to a particular event only.
For another Global Voices ‘rap news’ story, see Anna Gueye's The ‘News in Rap’, an Unconventional News Broadcast from Senegal.