Welcome in new term

Welcome to the third and final semester of the foundation year for me. The world is still not going very well, but at least summer and vacation are coming. My goal for this semester is to continue to improve my English, but also to try to work harder. 

My inspiration for this semester is Taco Hemingway, who is a Polish rapper. I admire him primarily for the courage to rap what he thinks about his country and for standing out from other Polish artists.

Taco Hemingway

His real name is Filip Szcześniak. He created a nickname for one of the video games from the "FIFA" series and stayed with it when he started playing music. He was born on July 29, 1990 in Egypt, where his parents lived at that time. They later moved to China. He spoke English with his mother and sister, and Polish with his father. He graduated from the Copernicus High School in Warsaw, which gives the opportunity to pass the international matura exam. During his studies at the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw, he spent a year in London. Before he started rapping in Polish, he tried his hand at English - his first album was called Young Hems. However, it was only the debut Polish EP Triangle Warsaw, released in the last days of 2014, that was noticed.

Taco consciously creates its mythologies: maps of the now-defunct party venues in Warsaw, known to everyone, such as taxi drivers, waiters, cashiers, but also characteristic characters with whom the listener can easily identify. He gives it all relaxed, gracefully, giving his voice a tired, irritated or surprised tone. As a sensitive man, his hero must be a gentleman, a dreamer, willing to reach for drinks and need money forever.

Over the last summer, he released a track, “Polskie Tango” (“Polish Tango”), which many saw as a direct criticism of Poland’s right-wing government and the culture of fear it’s often seen to have created in the country through its attacks on gay and women’s rights. Hemingway expresses his dissatisfaction with the country in which he lives. As you can hear in the following line: "I dance Polish tango, my feet are in the mud, because the Vistula is a boggy swamp". It was not without strong words - in the parody of the poem "Who are you? Little Pole", Hemingway asks and replies: "Where do you live? In a guarded one. In which country? In this pop f ** k". He adds: "What is this land? This is my castle of sand. Conquered by what? Propaganda of fear."

Taco Hemingway's albums have repeatedly won the status of platinum and gold albums, and it is worth noting that the rapper provides his music for free. The list of awards and nominations of the young rapper is impressive. Suffice it to mention that the albums Agreed on the work, Szprycer and Soma 0.5 mg won Fryderyki in the nomination for the best hip-hop album of the year. However, he did not take back any of the awards granted to him. He is a very secretive artist. He practically does not run Instagram, he does not give interviews. Its mystery, however, arouses the interest of the media, as well as the fact that he meets Iga Lis, the daughter of famous journalists. Young people protect their privacy. He also became the first Polish artist whose songs have been listened to over a billion times on Spotify.

Why is he a great inspiration to me and why do I admire him? Words, words, verses, and even curses are arranged for him as beautifully as few others. Brilliant associations, non-obvious rhymes and rhythms, hidden meanings of lines and sequences of associations that I sometimes discover only after listening to each other again and again. He likes girls. Respect. And he writes about it. Big breasts, firm ass and the ability to do fellatio as a determinant of femininity - not for him. "Custom Bape, you even have a custom woman. Who's ever seen doing things like that to their mouths?" Among rappers - a rarity. Worth its weight in gold. He is not even afraid to write (almost) romantically about love. He writes that he wants to "redefine masculinity, he wants to teach the types that it's great when they miss them, that they don't have to choke when they have sex with her, that when aggression is responded to with aggression, it's like water when oil burns." He knows the concepts. His albums are connected so that the listener has the impression that he is listening to one long story. And as I wrote above, he is not afraid to express his opinion in his texts. His courage and talent inspire me to create equally creative texts that will express me one hundred percent.

Bibliography: 

Marshall, A., 2020. A Rap Star Agonizes About His Role in Poland’s Culture Wars. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/arts/music/taco-hemingway-poland-rap.html> [Accessed 13 April 2021].

Pl.wikipedia.org. n.d. Taco Hemingway – Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia. [online] Available at: <https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taco_Hemingway> [Accessed 13 April 2021].