This interview aired on Radio Sefarad’s English Corner, hosted by Linda Jiménez, and was first recorded when Antithesis visited Spain in 2009. Radio Sefarad re-aired it to mark Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day.
Transcript of the broadcast, produced by automatic speech-to-text and then edited for readability (speaker labels added; names and Hebrew terms corrected). Pending a proper proofread, so it may still contain errors. The programme closes with a live performance of Yes to Peace, No to Terror.
Linda Jiménez: First, I would like to know how you chose the name Antithesis.
Antithesis: Well, I didn’t really choose it. It was chosen for me by a friend who told me that I was the antithesis of the stereotype of a rapper. I’m a white, middle-class Jewish boy from a not particularly bad area of London. Most people have a stereotype in their mind when they think of a rapper, and I don’t fit that at all. So it was decided it would be quite fun to call me Antithesis.
Linda Jiménez: And you’re from a religious Jewish home?
Antithesis: I wouldn’t say we’re very religious. We’re traditional. We go to shul every Shabbat, kashrut is important, Israel is very important, but I wouldn’t call ourselves very religious.
Linda Jiménez: So when you were 15, you began writing raps. How did that come about?
Antithesis: It’s difficult to say. I’d been listening to rap for some time, and I just started playing with the words of well-known songs. I started inserting references to London instead of New York and Los Angeles, because that’s where a lot of the stuff I was listening to came from, putting in my own name instead of famous rappers and playing with it. I somehow got a reputation at school. It wasn’t very normal for people to listen to rap in those days in England — whether they were white or black, it was still quite underground. So people came to refer to me as the rapper, and then there were occasions where people wanted someone to write something, and I ended up writing something and it went down quite well. This was something kind of original, not just changing all the words. I just got more and more confidence to go and do my own stuff.
Linda Jiménez: Because rap is really very closely related to poetry, isn’t it? I think of rap more as being poetry than just a pop song.
Antithesis: I completely agree. I think rap is a modern form of poetry. You can say so much in a song. The way people play with the lyrics, the assonance — you see a lot of the same literary techniques applied in poetry. The aspect of improvisation was also historically very important to poetry, and is currently very important to rap music.
Linda Jiménez: Tell us about the song contest that you entered when you were 18, which seems to be the launching pad for your career.
Antithesis: This song contest was organised by my youth movement. I was very involved in a youth movement called the Federation of Zionist Youth — it’s the largest youth movement for Jews in Britain. They organised a concert to mark their 90th anniversary, sort of a competition, and they wanted people to write songs about Israel. It happened to be just at the beginning of the Second Intifada. There was a lot in the news about how evil Israel was, and it was quite difficult to hear all that when one felt there was another side that wasn’t necessarily being expressed. So I decided I’d give it a go. We had a music centre at school, and with a friend who was studying music at the time we took one of his Baroque pieces, changed it a little and looped it as one does with a hip-hop song. I wrote lyrics about the history of Israel, how it came into being, all the wars, trying to put the other side across. I didn’t win the competition, but interestingly the judges came to me afterwards. There were three judges; two of them wanted me to win, and the other had veto power because he was paying for the prize, and he didn’t think rap was commercial enough. In those days it wasn’t — but it gave me a lot of confidence to move on. I got a lot of good feedback. Listening back, I’m happy with the lyrics, but the music was absolutely horrendous, I’ve got to be honest.
Linda Jiménez: Did anything happen to that song? Did you ever record it?
Antithesis: It’s recorded. It’s the first song on my first full CD, called The Israel Question. The song’s called Just Peace, but we redid the backing significantly.
Linda Jiménez: After you finished school, you spent a year in Israel. Can you tell us what you did there? Did you speak Hebrew before you went?
Antithesis: Not really. I only half spoke it when I came back. I was on a programme with my youth movement called Machon L’Madrichei Chutz La’Aretz, which is for youth leaders from abroad — people from all different youth movements come together and study in Jerusalem how to be a youth leader. Then I went volunteering. I was in Tzfat teaching English, working with Ethiopian kids who’d recently arrived in Israel. I did some voluntary work in the army — all very boring things, folding clothes and baking and so on, but a very interesting experience. I also spent time in a social action centre in Jerusalem, so it was quite a varied and very fun experience.
Linda Jiménez: What was the social action centre like?
Antithesis: It was interesting — a fairly tough absorption centre for olim from England, America, Canada. They were trying to do things to improve society, like organising recycling in Jerusalem; they were a big force behind getting plastic-bottle recycling there. I was involved in planning their Earth Day celebration, which was fun.
Linda Jiménez: You wrote a song while you were there for the MIA soldiers, the Missing in Action soldiers?
Antithesis: That’s right. Just before I left, I’d heard one of the fathers speak about the plight of the soldiers, and it was really impactful. I heard him again in Israel. There was a small, informal talent contest on our programme. I thought this was something that mattered to me — I’d been thinking about writing something about it. I sat down, wrote the lyrics, and did it at the show. It went down very well. Someone actually told this man, Chaim Abraham — his son Benny was one of the missing — about the song, because he had a strong connection with our youth movement. He said, ‘Sammy, I want you to record this song.’ The guys at the Machon kindly paid for a studio in Jerusalem. We composed some music with friends, went down and recorded it, and it was a big success.
Linda Jiménez: When you went back to England, you studied at Cambridge — Oriental Studies. I assume that’s Middle Eastern and not Japanese?
Antithesis: In fact, it was both. I studied Japanese and Hebrew. In Cambridge they’re in the same department, for historic reasons, though they seem to be gradually splitting. I did all types of Hebrew — Biblical, Medieval, Modern. There’s actually quite a lot to do with Spain — the poets who were based in Spain writing Hebrew in the Arabic metre, which is fascinating. Abba Eban did Oriental Studies at Cambridge, so I was following in fine footsteps — and also James Bond, apparently.
Linda Jiménez: Tell us about the record you made, The Israel Question.
Antithesis: That was the first full CD I put out. It had Just Peace from the competition; Ima Mechaka Babayit, about the soldiers; another song I’d written in Israel called Looking for Home, about my feelings on aliyah, which I was processing while I was there; and a song I wrote when I got back, about the victims of terrorism. I felt that victims of terrorism weren’t really thought about. It was 2002, the worst period of the Second Intifada, and you just saw in the newspaper ‘30 dead here, 20 dead here.’ It’s very difficult to internalise that — all these people are individuals, and every single person who dies or is injured affects a whole range of people. So I took three real, true stories of people and put them into a song, to make you think about three of the different victims. I released the CD in 2003, and all the profits go to charity.
Linda Jiménez: What charity?
Antithesis: At the time we gave half to victims of terrorism and half to the Missing Soldiers’ campaign. It was a big success again — we sold it all over the world, and the youth movements used it for educational purposes. The Jewish kids in England really resonated with it; rap by then was very popular, and here was someone talking about stuff they cared about, not just something in Brooklyn where they’d never been.
Linda Jiménez: Tell us about the radio programme of Israeli music that you started in Cambridge.
Antithesis: Kol Cambridge — that was fun. I wanted to do a hip-hop show on the student radio, but there already was one, so I thought, what else do I know anything about? Well, I know a little about Israeli music. I proposed it to the people running the station; they seemed a bit bemused, but said, why not? In the first week — because there was nothing like it in England, and we broadcast on the internet as well as on the airwaves — I think we had double the ratings of the next most popular show. They extended it by a couple of hours, and it continued to smash the rating targets. I went to Israel and connected with a lot of people in the industry, getting some really top-notch interviews — gold and platinum artists — and this was student radio in England. We were even nominated for a BBC award.
Linda Jiménez: Was this the only programme of its kind in England?
Antithesis: Yes, there’s no Jewish radio in England. It’s been tried a few times and failed each time, unfortunately.
Linda Jiménez: Then you became the executive director of the Federation of Zionist Youth. Can you tell us about that?
Antithesis: This was a movement I’d been involved in since I was 15. There are a few full-time positions. The way the youth movements work in England, the people who run them are just out of university, early 20s. It was an election, and I was elected for one year in this role — I was in charge. There was no one above me, no board, no committee. So all the decisions rest with you — it’s a lot of responsibility, and quite scary, because we had all these kids running around all over the place. But it was a fabulous experience, and it was great to give back to a movement which had given me so much, and to try to change it for the better. You learn a lot too — you’re thrown into responsibility at a young age, and you have to learn about finance, management of people, dealing with external organisations and community politics.
Linda Jiménez: Can you tell us about your songs themselves? Do they follow a pattern? Do you talk about certain themes?
Antithesis: They’re all somehow connected to being Jewish — that’s an overriding theme. Not all directly about Israel, but they all have some connection to being Jewish. The second CD, United Kingdom of Racism, was a mixture of some similar material to the first — very much about Israel and its plight — and then some new things. I’d been in England for some time when I was writing it, so I was talking about racism in England. That’s the most universal song I’ve written, about all these different people in England who are suffering from racism, whether they’re black, or Jews, or Indians, or Muslims, and how I feel Britain has a lot of problems with racism that we don’t really talk about. I don’t think it’s the worst place in the world by a long way, but I think there are a lot of things brushed under the carpet. Another song on that CD was Song of Songs, where I took the biblical book, Shir HaShirim — the Hebrew in it is beautiful — and tried to take its metaphors into a modern rap love song. I quite enjoyed that exercise.
Linda Jiménez: Have you always written in English, or have you ever written in Hebrew too?
Antithesis: On the second CD there’s a song called Ivrit Daber Ivrit — ‘Hebrew, Speak Hebrew’ — and the last verse is in Hebrew. It’s about the history of the Hebrew language and how important it is, and then in the last verse I practise what I preach.
Linda Jiménez: Who is your audience?
Antithesis: I’d say young people, 12 to late 20s — people who like rap music normally, but we’ve branched out through the subject matter. Nearly all Jewish. To be honest, I haven’t spent a lot of effort marketing my work to the wider community, because — well, I’m in marketing, and they tell us to go after your prime prospects, and my prime prospects are people who are already engaged. I do see an element of hasbara in what I do, in terms of putting the Israeli side across. I do have non-Jewish listeners who write and tell me they really like what I’m doing, but they’re definitely not the main target.
Linda Jiménez: You’ve performed in the UK and the United States, and you’ve been featured on the radio in other countries. Have you had any feedback — from countries like Germany or France?
Antithesis: I didn’t get any feedback from the German guys, but in France it went down well. A lot of French people don’t have such great English, but they get the gist. I’ve since performed in Argentina and Switzerland, and the language doesn’t seem to be too much of a barrier — although in Argentina it was quite funny. It was organised by Hillel, and I had my lyrics in English for people to follow along to make it easier, so I was doing this concert and people were staring at pieces of paper, which was a little strange — but they said they enjoyed it. The message is universal because the Jewish people are universal; Jewish people around the world have the same concerns.
Linda Jiménez: What are you doing now?
Antithesis: I’m currently working in Geneva. I took a job in an American multinational doing marketing, with the intention of seeking a transfer to the Tel Aviv office to realise my ideology.
Linda Jiménez: And musically?
Antithesis: I’ve just written something new, actually — a song called Proud to be a Zionist, so not diverting too much from previous themes. I’ve got a couple of other thoughts in my head; I’m going to try to put out a new CD. The problem is there’s a big gap between the other two CDs, just because I’m so busy doing other things. It’s a hobby I’m extremely passionate about, but it’s very difficult sometimes to force myself to make the time. So I’m hoping to record this new song soon, and I think we’re going to distribute it early through the internet.
Linda Jiménez: And what are you doing here in Spain?
Antithesis: The young people in the Jewish community in Spain organised a small, informal Shabbaton — I think there are about 15 of us, from different places in Europe. It’s my birthday tomorrow, so I thought this would be a fun way to spend it. So here I am in Madrid. It’s very fun so far.
Linda Jiménez: Well, thank you very much.
Antithesis: Thank you very much.
The programme closes with Antithesis performing Yes to Peace, No to Terror — read the lyric.