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While most of Israel's biggest rap and hip-hop stars focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict, new rap sensation, the Zula Members, concentrate on more run-of-the-mill strife.
On their album Giborim (Heroes), they rap about teachers needing to be better listeners, teens needing to become active about social maladies, drugs not being the answer to teen problems, and prostitution as a critical woe that must be remedied immediately.
"We write about what we feel. We write about what affects our age group," says Uriel Aharoni. "We don't write in metaphors, we rap straight-up eye to eye with our contemporaries."
What affects the Zula Members, all of whom are 17, are important aspects of life for all Israeli teenagers.
"More than half of a teenager's day is spent in school," notes Nimrod Bar. "Teachers have to be better listeners and more open to their students' problems."
"Teachers don't listen," agrees Shachar Pollak, who goes by the moniker Li'l Vanil (Little Vanilla). "So many problems could be avoided if the teachers would just talk to their students. Kids who come to school hoping to have a discussion about their problems and work through them end up turning to drugs or alcohol or other forms of aggression because no one is willing to listen to them."
The five-member group, which also includes Guy Afik and Dan Kovarski, says one of the main topics for its next album (to be released in spring) is the impending IDF draft: "We wrote about the draft because that's what affects us now," says Pollak. "Of course we're all going to the army, it's a requirement. And we want to do it."
The Zula Members might be a young group, and its lyrics might not be as politically poignant as Subliminal or Hadag Nachash (to...