Kenaareh Zaayandeh Rood do chesham baaz shod
Shesh maah ghozasht o hejrat aaghaaz shod
[I opened my eyes to the world next to Zayandeh Rood
Within 6 months my pilgrimage around the world had begun]
— Erfan, “Jahangard”
Any Iranian record released with a moderate amount of hype, will almost invariably owe its success to irresponsible critics whose ideas of “good” and “bad” have been irreparably damaged by years of exposure to loads of mainstream music. The music, the songs, the lyrics and the videos have all been at the same level until recently. A new generation of Iranian artists are striving for the mutation of our music. For those who have been waiting for a change, the time is now and there is a new wave of talented Rock and Hip-Hop artists reaching out to us.
This goes a long way toward explaining the large majority of our Iranian pop music culture. However, every once in a while an album will make its way past reviewer after reviewer and deservedly earn high marks with nary a scratch. I believe this will be the story with Iran’s hip-hop messiah, ”.
Inspiring? Hell Ya. The current state of Iranian independent rock could stand to learn a thing or two from this. Harmonious melodies and rhymes by a lyrical giant. He ends the CD with a bonus track, “Jazebeh Remix”, done masterfully by the L.A based Production team “M-Style Productions” by A-PLUS.
True, “Az Khaneh Ta Goor” isn’t flawless. If you don’t like solid Hip-Hop beats from the Persian inspired to classic American rock samples, you may have a more difficult time getting into this. But let me end this here for all you avid readers, when the beat drops and Erfan starts spitting out his meticulously crafted lyrics, you realize it’s entirely possible that he truly is prophetic– that he was meant for speaking the rhymes and that we were meant to listen. If you ask Erfan about his music, he says he is a poet before a rapper, and a musician before an artist and after listening to his album repeatedly, I concur. I hear a new and learn new words and ideas each time I listen to them.
If you never listened to Hip-Hop because you think you have nothing in common with it, you should give it a try and hear the poems that Erfan narrates on top of musical beats in what has become labeled as Iranian hip-hop. It is defiantly not the music your dad calls “musikeh siah poosta”.
