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Fundamentalist Christians, Feminists, Social Democrats and Conservative politicians don’t have much in common. Yet at some point, individuals belonging to one of these groups have criticised rap artists. Two of Malta’s most known rappers are none other than Jon and David, respectively coming from the IQ and Sanitarium crews. They are both refreshingly eloquent and equally passionate about their less glamorous aspects of their lifestyles, which involves taking care of underage refugees. Their comments are not peppered with either the blasphemous or misogynist speech that rappers are normally associated with and are astonishingly insightful – destroying the stereotypical tough-guy image of the genre of music that they represent.
I am sure that you get asked this question all the time but what does IQ stand for?
 I come from a crew called Inquisition because at the time that we started out there was a lot of candy hiphop like Will Smith and we were the inquisition for that kind of music. In the end people automatically people shortened it to IQ because Inquisition was too long.
How do you get around to writing the lyrics and picking the beats?
One day we went to David’s house as he has keyboards and I had a tune in my head and I sang it to him and then we just started making songs together.
We are taking it as it comes and both of us rap and Jon actually sings on some of them. We always write our own lyrics but sometimes we use sampling for the music. For the song 5 minutes we used the sampled ‘Summer in the City’ by the Lovin’ Spoonful. Our producer built on it and added some keyboards as well so production wise we all have a hand in it.
What do you rap about?
It depends as you are not always in the same mood so after a day of work the first thing that you write about is I need to get paid and that sort of thing. But if you are with your friends and have had a good day you end up writing about that. In ‘5 minutes’ we took the piss about having attention of the whole world for five minutes. But basically it was about letting everything out in the open. It was Dave’s idea and when I heard it I thought ‘damn, this is some good stuff.’ But then we also mentioned important stuff like racism and the different types of racism. Almost everyone can sometimes be xenophobic which can transform itself in blatant or subtle racism.
Is racism an issue that you care deeply about?
It’s ignorance and it does worry me in a certain way. Through people’s attitude you realise that when you tell them that you work with refugees they give you a look of pity or a look of hate. They reason that you are supporting the people who are taking our jobs. But it’s not true as the unemployment rate hasn’t gone up since they’ve arrived here and they do a lot of jobs that most of Maltese society doesn’t want to do so I can’t see what the fuss is about. We are both care workers at two separate refugee houses. We work there on a daily basis so it’s an issue that we face every day. Since we are not in the administration, but we do the hands on work we have direct contact with the refugees and we know about the problems that they face. We take care of underage refugees who are pretty smart. They’ve crossed the Sahara desert by themselves and they’ve got resilience. They are inspiring as they managed to get to Malta on a little wooden boat.
It’s a give and take job and they give you a certain amount of strength and knowledge and when we are going back home from work, thinking about every child gives us strength, as these are people that you can learn from. They’ve experienced things that we can only dream about and things that we have only seen on TV. People say that anyone can come into Malta but it’s only those who survive come here, yet we just see them as numbers.
So as artists you feel that you have the responsibility to address racism?
As human beings not simply as artists but as human beings we have a responsibility from one human being to another and we say that we are Christians but when it comes to every day life we stone them – it’s really dumb. Christ himself was a refugee when he escaped to Egypt.
David you are Ethiopian, do you experience racism on a daily basis?
My dad is Ethiopian and I was born there but I came here when I was eight months old so I am Maltese but my physical appearance is different. I get to experience first-hand the things that the people in the house talk about like people not sitting down next to you on the bus. It was something that I grew out of but working with them brought it all back again and it made me realise that it’s not something that I should accept.
Certain academics are starting to view some rap artists as poets and their work as poetry, what are your views?
The first real rap poet was Tupac. He was making poetry and Rakim as well I guess. Tupac’s verses are studied in high school literature as they have recognised that there is depth to his pottery. People say that hiphop is dead but it’s because they listen to the music that is on MTV right now. You can go home and listen to Immortal Technique, Jedi Mind Tricks, Apathy and DMX and Eminem himself. They are smart individuals and it’s a form of instruction and poetry. Tupac once explained in an interview how people used to go round from tribe to tribe telling stories about everyday life and that is basically what they are doing nowadays – telling stories of every day life, in a rhyme on a beat.
You are obviously concerned with racism and senseless discrimination but don’t you think that on the other hand rap promotes misogyny and homophobia?
But that’s part of everyday life and admit it, there are some bitches and others who are ladies just like there are dogs. It’s reality and if you pretend that it’s not you are just obscuring reality and pretending that everything is fine and dandy. There are bitches that are guys as well. By bitches it could be anyone, male or female who doesn’t act properly or morally right. The accusation that rap can be homophobic is something that I can’t defend, as a lot of rappers use words like gay and homo as insults so you got me there. But the rap that we listen to now doesn’t disrespect women as that was more of a nineties thing with G-funk when it was much about sex drugs and women. But rap has evolved as everyone has made mistakes along the way but it’s wrong to generalise and say that all raps are like that. Some artists have made mistakes but hopefully they won’t repeat them anymore.
Do you intend to enter the Malta Song for Europe Festival again?
I did it once already but not in the way that I wanted to so now I am going to do it on my own terms. We really love the song that we have but we can’t divulge any more information than this.
David and Jon were talking to Michaela Muscat
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