WARSAW, Poland— The vast fields of Warsaw’s Bemowo airport have hosted concerts by some of the world’s biggest stars. Michael Jackson played there. So did Madonna. Metallica, too.
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But October 2, more than 30,000 people — many young teenagers, with their parents acting as chaperones — crowded together next to the runway waiting for a new star to get onstage:
Michal Matczak, a 21-year-old rapper with bleached-blond hair and a constant grin, better known as Mata.
“He’s like the representative of our generation,” said Joseph Altass, 20, a student who traveled from Gdynia, more than 321km north of Warsaw, for the concert.
Zuzia Waskiewicz, 19, sharing a bottle of flavored vodka with a friend, agreed: “He’s the first person talking about real things about us.”
When Mata appeared at 8pm, it was clear he was speaking to the younger generation in the audience: One of the night’s first tracks, “Blok,” was about moving out from his parents’ home and annoying his new neighbors by partying. The crowd rapped along to every word.
Mata’s impact in Poland has been inescapable. Earlier this year, one of his tracks, “Kiss Cam,” was streamed so frequently, it appeared on one of Billboard’s global charts — a first for a Polish act. When last Friday he released “Mlody Matczak” (“Young Matczak”), his second album focused on his early adulthood, it instantly topped the country’s Spotify chart. Several of his songs have over 50 million views on YouTube.
But one specific track marked Mata’s explosive entrance into Polish cultural life two years ago: “Patointeligencja” (an amalgam of the Polish words for pathology, and intelligentsia). Over spare production, Mata paints a picture of life as a student at Batory, an elite high school in Warsaw where many students are expected to push for admission to the world’s best universities. In his telling, few of the students are quietly studying for their final exams.
“Patointeligencja” was a sensation almost as soon as it appeared on YouTube in December 2019. Cyryl Rozwadowski, an editor at Newonce, a popular Polish-language culture website, said “it was such a groundbreaking event, I hardly think of it as a song anymore.”
Newspapers and TV shows started using the track to debate both the pressures on Polish youth and issues of privilege, like whether an apparently rich kid like Mata should be rapping at all. Their takes often reflected political divides in the country. Poland has for years been in a culture war, with liberals on one side and the ruling populist Law and Justice Party and its conservative supporters on the other, facing off over contentious issues and even the rule of law.
Some conservative sections of the media, including the country’s main government-run TV station, presented Mata’s track as showing the dysfunctions of the liberal elite. They regularly pointed out that Mata’s father is Marcin Matczak, a lawyer and academic known for his fierce opposition to the ruling party’s policies.
On his new album, Mata has a tribute to him called “Papuga,” or “Parrot,” slang for lawyer in Poland. His father has welcomed the association, this year releasing a book called “How to Raise a Rapper.”
A few hours before the airport concert, Mata said in an interview at his record label’s plush office that he liked causing scandal. “I’m a bit addicted to adrenaline,” he said, adding that as an only child he craved attention.
Sometimes, he feels “like an internet troll more than a rapper,” he said.
“Mlody Matczak” — released last Friday — is mainly about his new life as an adult, he said, but it also includes a track cursing Polish political figures who’d criticized him and his father. There’s a song about his grandfathers, who both died this year, one of complications from COVID-19. At one of their funerals, Mata got up to sing, and the piano player asked for his autograph, he said.
Critics in Poland are talking about his new album as being far more than scandal mongering. Bart Strowski, the coauthor of a series of books on Polish rap, said he liked Mata’s duality. On one hand, he “is an angry young rapper. ...” On the other, Strowski said, he’s “a soulful and sensitive kid” writing unusual songs filled with “incredible sociological detail.”
Mata said he was enjoying fame in Poland but hoped to find success outside the country, too. He has been thinking about whether to try rapping in English, he said, but if he did, would keep a “hard Polish accent” to stand out.
At the concert, Mata’s ambition was clear, with the show staged with the help of a theater director. During one song, he was joined by about 20 dancers in Polish folk costumes and red balaclavas.
After almost two hours, it seemed there was little spectacle left, and the only hit left to play was “Patointeligencja.” But instead of performing the song, Mata ran offstage, jumped into a blue helicopter and flew away. The crowd waited around for 10 minutes, asking whether he’d really gone, but Mata had left to find his next controversy.
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