If you missed Zacke last time Jesper wrote about him here on Meadowmusic, you really missed something special! With a voice just as characteristic and unique as Louis Armstrong and an expression like no other swede, Zacke raises the level for Swedish hip hop yet another pinhole. Just like Snook did with their album “ÄR”.

In “Förlorad Generation” (“Lost Generation”) Zacke raises caution to his generation of the eighties and their creators. On a well produced Kihlen-beat I think that Zacke presents his qualities in the best way. Instead of being impressed, listening to an endless row of rhymes, it makes me think when I hear:

“Media, politicians, they speculate. No job we’re floating on studies ’cause on loans we can almost survive. Let us become academics in these rough times. But that education gives you a job automatically, those times are gone.” (translated from the Swedish original lyrics)

Zacke says that he’s inspired by artists like Allan Edwall, Ola Magnell and Cornelis Vreeswijk. And even if he also listens a lot to music from his own genre, it shows in his music that he gets inspiration from the outside of the hard-boiled hip hop-egg. The piano, the instruments, well the whole arrangement, makes me experience something more than just traditional hip hop. An important ingredient to this is that the instruments are handled by real musicians, which gives an extra dimension to Zacke and his music. This, and opinions like:

“I believe and hope that my generation has a positive view on society. We are the society. On the other hand, I would like that everybody, including my generation, would become more interested and engaged in what’s happening around us. That we consider how we act and also how the authorities act. If we are not aware, we are in a way lost.””

The fact is that I, as I write this, have been thinking about “floating on studies” next fall. And maybe it’s like that. That Zacke presses the right buttons, in us, in time, musically and so on. And that the kettle has been boiling long enough, up there in the north of Sweden, to start a “Revoluuuushooon…“

More from and about Zacke you’ll find on his site, and his Myspace page.

Zacke feat. Kihlen – Förlorad generation