“‘Cuz your face is white, like co, like co, like cocaina,” three of my cousins, girls aged around 18, sang in Albanian while dancing and filming themselves for Snapchat last year. On the video, they also put on red lipstick in front of the mirror in their apartment in Peja, a city in the west of Kosova, in order to get ready for another party night in August 2016. The song the three were listening to, Cocaina by Albanian rapper Mozzik, was the summer hit of 2016 in Kosova, and the neighbouring Albanian society. It has more than 32 million views on YouTube, which means that the song has been clicked six times more than the actual number of Albanians living in Albania, Kosova and Macedonia.
What Mozzik achieved with his Cocaina is exceptional but not unusual in the Albanian rap scene. Even in 2016, he was not the only one getting more than 20 million views with a YouTube clip. Another example is Flori Mumajesi’s Beautiful featuring Ledri Vula or Ghetto Geasy’s Ajo (She) featuring Majk. The latter two have nearly 40 million views on their 2015 summer hit Sjena mo (No longer together). Given the small Albanian population of the region, around 5 million, these numbers are tremendous.
Albanian rap is omnipresent in the albanosphere – Albania, Kosova, Macedonia, Albanian minorities in neighbouring countries and the diaspora. Whether you buy this music or not, the hits are unavoidable: one hears them on bus journeys inside Kosova, in bars, cafés, or nightclubs in the region, or while walking through one of the Kosovar Ottoman old city centres. Being so deeply ingrained in daily life, Albanian rap transmits ideas of masculinity and femininity that influence how men and women treat each other in the albanosphere.
