Thug Life Army

Wearing baggy pants, a baseball cap pushed off-center and a glittering, diamond-studded Star of David necklace, Kobi Shimoni, known by the stage name Subliminal, swagger on stage as if he were the Israeli incarnation of hip hop’s P.Diddy or Nelly. His third album release, TACT All-stars on TACT Records (www.tact-records.com) drops this week in Israel and includes the TACT family all-star team of rappers and R&B singers on the brink of changing the game in Israeli music. The album  includes the Shadow, Guy BooSkills (Los Angeles) Elan Babylon (Los Angeles), SHI 360, Itzik Shamly, R&B soul child Sivan and Gavriel Butler to name a few. Special guest on the album include Israeli platinum recording artists Sarit Hadad and Killah Priest/Remedy of Wu Tang Clan.

For Subliminal and the TACT family, the music has generated tens of thousands of record sales. For Israeli teens, it has given voice to their outrage at the state of affairs in their country. Subliminal and TACT has had an unprecedented success with Hip-Hop music in Israel rapping with nationalist themes into chart-topping albums reaching gold in sales with their first album The Light from Zion and the second album Light and Shadow touching on double platinum. Their strong lyrics and messages has transformed the Star of David into a fashion statement and helped integrate the music of Urban America into the fold of Israeli pop.

Hip-Hop, a quintessentially American art form, is helping bolster national morale in a country bruised by years of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. For most of the past decade, Israeli Hip-Hop artists operated on the margins of mainstream Israeli music, which has generally been a mix of Hebrew-language rock and Mediterranean crooning. Rappers such as Subliminal moved beyond schoolyard party lyrics to rail about the turbulence overwhelming their country.” In America, hip-hop is the fastest way to get rich, to talk about the ''bitches, cars and money,'' explains Shimoni. ”In Israel the words are very militant, like the situation we''re living in. You open the newspaper in the morning in Israel, and this is what you get."