“Produced by some chemical waste and cum”: TOMM¥ €A$H and His Concept of Signifying “post-Sovietness”

Abstract

Artists like Tommy Cash transfer certain aesthetic practices of hip hop such as Eminem’s “signifying whiteness” to the context of post Socialist countries and regions. By doing so they create “bastardised” forms of pop culture, inverting the role of the “Eastern European” underdog and cheap imitator of “Western” pop culture into an advantage. Comparable to bands from other transforming societies like the South African Die Antwoord, Cash draws significantly upon aspects of white trash culture, in his case the Russian gopnik style. On the other hand he offers a very hybrid star persona, situated on the borders of “west” and “east”, gaining the attention of international as well as Estonian and Russian audiences especially with his meme videos. By doing so he is less a mouthpiece, for example, for the Russophone minority in Estonia, and more a representative of the so-called generation of the Children of the New East, their own collective memories and often liminal identities.