Book review | When Paleface got fired and his English career ended, he became the “protest singer” known to the whole nation

Nonfiction book

Miska Rantanen: Paleface – Protest singer. Johnny Knig. 334 pp.

If the Finnish rap enthusiast has not followed Curry “Paleface” I’m thinking career in the last twenty years, so what the hell has this been up to?

Miettinen is one of the most significant figures in the history of Finnish rap for at least three reasons.

First, right off their debut album The Pale Ontologist he met the international quality criteria of rap – as the first Finn to rap in English.

Secondly, Miettinen later also renewed the format of Finnish rap by successfully combining it with folk and folk music.

Thirdly, Miettinen, who from the beginning of his career has been full of extraordinary self-confidence, has grown in the course of the 21st century into a sort of besserwisser of Finnish rap, who is called a “representative of his tribe” in the media to talk about any current topic at any time.

Paleface – Protest singer – was written by a long-time cultural journalist and non-fiction writer with the smooth pen of a professional Miska Rantanen. In the book, he names his subject, among other things, “Suomiräpin Jussi Raittensek“.

That is carefully said.

Both Miettinen and Raittinen have been Finnish pioneers of their respective genres, whose appreciation has been increased by their knowledge of history.

And especially: despite all their US influences, both are known as openly left-wing artists.

The latter circumstance has especially defined Miettinen’s creative work, project choices and public appearances. It has perhaps also prevented him from becoming one of the most commercially successful Finnish rappers.

Something meet Miettinen’s story, everything matches and feels logical.

Civilized, caring and open-minded parents, a middle-class, safe and encouraging growing environment, childhood and adolescent health concerns, a feeling of being an outsider, an exchange student year in the United States that shook the foundations of one’s personality, which also included the rap alias Paleface.

At the end of the 1990s, could anything other than a self-aware rapper grow out of such ingredients?

Was a rapper politically left or right, one thing seems to unite everyone in the industry: valuing the ethos of hard work above almost everything else.

Miettinen is no exception. It is quite conventional that he must have inherited part of this ethos in his genes.

Pertti-father was an ambitious banker who, as a skilled renovator, constantly changed from one office to another. The family moved along.

The constant change of friend circles and schools was apt to give Miettinen the feeling of being an outsider, which is necessary for a budding artist.

Hämeenlinna, anchored as a station for no less than thirteen years, was the most essential residence for the budding rapper’s future.

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Everything has been dealt with at most with a malignant startle.

There mom Berries enrolled his son in a writing school for children and young people. In Hämeenlinna, you could also find enough kindred spirits, nerdy and intelligent opposite-siders, with whom high school-aged people can start a subcultural lifestyle in the established “Koyhäin Friikkein Ritarikunta”.

“I want to to be a renaissance man who does all kinds of things and who is able to show his talent in many different sectors”, the twenty-something Miettinen enthused in an interview with Sonera Plaza on the eve of the release of his debut album.

Made: music, books, opera librettos, poems, plays, radio programs.

It has also been about everyday realities. As the rapper Paleface, Miettinen does not make the kind of commercial pop rap that would sell out arenas, not to mention stadiums.

It is necessary to do everything in order to get oat milk to the dinner table of a family of four.

I’m thinking a personal trough hit a moment that has later been remembered in rap circles as the “Finnish rap depression”.

In 2007, the rapper was fired from his long-term “day job” radio channel Groove FM and his third solo album Studio Tan flopped your bad.

However, without an English-language career running on the rocks, Miettisten would not have hatched the Finnish-language “protest singer-Paleface” known to the whole nation or one of the three soloists dressed in the costumes of the popular Ricky-Tick Big Band & Public Word group.

Behind Miettinen talks openly about his remaining drug use, mainly the smoking of cannabis that started already in the Hämeenlinna years, but the work does not find – or reveal – any huge bleeding wound in its subject.

Life has not thrown great tragedies. Everything has been dealt with at most with a malignant startle and various degrees of frustration.

Paleface – Protest singer as a work is in line with this: it serves information and views tenaciously, but the cathartic or shaking story of Karri Miettinen is not.

More than once while reading the book, it occurs to me that the Finnish school system has lost an exceptionally brilliant teacher in this man.

But preachers are also needed, other than in churches.