Rap Around the Globe

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IN ITALY, ONE SINGER CALLS IT "REDIScovering the tribal rhythms of our ancestors." In Brazil, another calls it "the ideological music of the street." In Russia, yet another performer says it is simply "a new feeling, a new experience." In France, they say le rap. In any language, it is a certifiable, global rhythm revolution.

Rap, which began as a fierce and proudly insular music of the American black underclass, is now possibly the most successful American export this side of the microchip, permeating, virtually dominating, worldwide youth culture. It is both a recreational vehicle and a form of social commentary: you can dance to it (one Mexican rap hit has a salsa kick) and think it over too (a German piece rails against neo-Nazi goons and a complacent, fat-cat government). The language may differ from place to place, even when it's English, but the music is everywhere -- in the air, on the streets, in the racks.

And on the backs. Rap is also a worldwide fashion commodity. Local variations of the basic American street outfit -- baggy pants, pricey sneakers, hooded sweatshirts, flashes of jewelry -- turn up everywhere, from dance clubs to fashion layouts. Yves Saint Laurent produces golden belt buckles with his logo writ large, Public Enemy-style, and Karl Lagerfeld loads his Chanel models with enough baubles to sink M.C. Hammer into the ground like a stake. Spike's Joint in Tokyo (yes, that Spike) supplies Japanese trendies with film-related merchandise, from team jackets ($794) to the official Malcolm X baseball cap ($39) -- the one indispensable part of any streetwise uniform, a kind of overseas emblem for the whole rap army.

Although Paris is still slave to what French rapper MC Solaar calls "the cult of the sneaker," other rap accoutrements like gold jewelry are giving way to a more Afrocentric accent, notably batik fabrics and African coats of arms of the sort worn in America by Queen Latifah. The burgeoning dictionary of Franglais, moreover, includes not only le rap but a distinctively Gallic version of the standard salutation, "What's up?" Szup? is what American ears & hear, though in Paris it sounds more like an appetizer course: "Soup?" The genre has spawned one break-out hit, Auteuil Neuilly Passy, in which a trio called Les Inconnus (the Unknowns) ridicules the well-to-do who live in those three ritzy parts of Paris. MC Solaar, who was born in Chad, easily concedes that "Parisian rap is pretty much a U.S. branch office. We copy everything, don't we? We don't even take a step back."

In Japan, by contrast, fans step forward and jump in. Whether performed in Japanese or in phonetic English, rap has become a point of generational challenge. "My parents say no more disco, but I must go to the disco," says Haruyo Kobayashi, 17. "When I listen to rap music I feel excited, and when I'm dancing, I feel free."