Night Train
Looptroop
Fort Europa, 2005
Ok, I don’t know if this is a song that I’m going to listening to in ten years (or even one year) but for some reason this sounds so good to me right now. Looptroop are Swedish and like so many people making music in Sweden (and tons of other places, I’m sure) they record in English to make their chances of popularity outside of their country exponentially greater. The funny thing about a lot of international hip hop is that often the artists are aping styles and borrowing subject matter that they’ve experienced second or third hand (of course that’s true of American hip hop too) but the artist’s understanding of the context of what they hear can somtimes be extremely limited. In those cases the resulting music can be cartoonish, especially if the some of the lyrics are lost in re-translation.
That said, this song is surprisingly aesthetically on point to me. The 80′s-pop-sounding “why am I here?” vocal sample contrasted with the merky, 3:00 a.m. beat sounds like mid-career NaS song (see “You’re Da Man” and “We Will Survive”). At the same time, what I can catch of the subject material is surprisingly personal and local.
I’m on the night train from Copenhagen to Berlin
Early in the morning, my head hurting from the Bourbon
…
I know you love the feelin’ of leavin’
But it don’t matter what country or what region of Sweden
All we got is us and this what __ believe in
I don’t know about you but I’m gonna find freedom
In the everyday life and make the most out of it…
According to wikipedia have been around since 1991 and have a history being critical of the Swedish police and Swedish immigration policy (and I’m sure much more).
Songs are available for two weeks.
