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Sometimes knowing your audience can be truly vital. A hip-hop aficionado in the Russian Far North proved this with his life when he was stomped to death this weekend for rapping at a sports bar. On Monday, the Arkhangelsk Oblast SKP said on its website Monday that the incident took place in the city of Arkhangelsk. Aleksei Gorlishchev, 25, was rapping at the local Bookmaker Pub, sparking the ire of some patrons, Lifenews.ru reported. One of the critics, Artyom Furzikov, 21, told the rapper to “take it outside”… where he threw the artist on the ground and jumped on him, the tabloid said. The SKP said that the victim died of internal bleeding shortly after hospitalisation; it didn’t release any names, but confirmed rapping to be the cause of the brief fight. The irate listener faces 15 years in prison if charged and convicted of intentional infliction of grave bodily harm that resulted in death.
Hip-hop has had a hard time in Russia, with the 1990s seeing street wars between rap and heavy metal fans complete with beatings and stabbings. It remains unpopular among many sports fans, especially, those who tend towards nationalist views, who prefer punk, rock, and related genres such as “oi”, favoured by skinheads worldwide. Russian music fans in Russia have killed before. In December, police in Astrakhan Oblast reported that a taxi driver murdered by his two passengers over a music-related argument. They didn’t release any specifics on what caused it. Last July, in Nizhny Novgorod, a drinking companion stabbed a Deep Purple fan to death. They’d asked in vain to hear some “shanson”, a specific Russian genre of music combining folk and cabaret influences with sappy lyrics about criminal life.
18 February 2013
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/crime/20130218/179549416/Man-Stomped-to-Death-in-Russia-for-Performing-Rap.html
