A few hours ago on the popular Instagram page of the show “Good Evening with Guy Pines” a small and prying piece of news appeared (well, what’s surprising?) with the title “The sums are revealed: Tona and Ravid Plotnik’s million dollar performances”. Just to save you from running and doing a pullow, I will say that in the Guy Pines system they have estimated that as of now, the impressive series of performances that opened in May (Here are more cards) will put in a total of about 20.5 million, and that after “calculating expenses”, each will take about 6-7 million NIS. I have no idea if these numbers are correct, or what exactly “calculating expenses” includes according to Guy Pines, but I know one thing – this prying news did not achieve what they wanted.
Guy Pines’ post. Screenshot from Instagram
This kind of news is meant to make talkbackists nervous. This is actually the tactic of a significant portion of the news in the entertainment pages a la Guy Pines that have popped up like cock mushrooms. This is the general approach, the loan concept, the economic model. The oil that drives the gossip machine is repulsive slime stored at the bottom of an angry talkback. Israel Entertainment, of course, has already made the disgusting posts a brand, but don’t let the fashion and prestige of Pines make you forget the fact that gossip is built on incitement.
And similar to previous cases of the beloved Israeli game “How much did he earn? Shishraf”, this post also tried to evoke the same emotion. But surprisingly, this time there was something different – everyone, without exception, cheered from the bottom of their hearts. Usually it’s not like that. In most news of this type, you will find responses full of contempt, hatred, bigotry and just vomiting poison. Not this time. “Abundance that an artist will come to them”, “They deserve every shekel” and even a “Respect” response from Subliminal. Another colleague, the excellent actor and rapper Michael Moshunov, wrote the comment that says it all: “Rightly so. Years of work and perseverance, how exciting.” And he knows, because he was there, just like me, to see the path these two took.
The work and perseverance that current Israeli hip-hop, led by Ravid and Tuna, has done in the last twenty years, since it collapsed on itself somewhere at the beginning of the millennium, has often been discussed – but it must be talked about, and it must be seen with your own eyes. I was privileged to accompany this rise to greatness personally. I knew Ravid when he was a boy wearing baggies, and Tuna when he was a member of the “Clan” collective, armed with dreadlocks and a sexaphile who was already driving girls crazy, even though he himself was a boy. The tribe would perform at youth parties of the G Spot Club, seven people on a stage that holds at most three, and it is doubtful that the money they earned was enough for a bus ride back to Petah Tikva. Plotnik was at those parties as part of the audience, and like all young rappers, he would wait for the end of the party, around 5 in the morning, so that he could go on stage for three minutes, and try out the worst rap pieces he had written at home.
When the “Clan” album came out in 2006 as a self-release and was recorded in a home studio, it was very expensive. I bought it the day it came out, just three months before Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and the Second Lebanon War destroyed any chance for an optimistic rap band to succeed. At that time, Ravid was a soldier who during the day operated a forklift in the intelligence corps, and at night looked for dances to rap in, because it was the only place that provided a microphone. A few years later, I sat next to Ravid on the day he released his first rap album, “Resurrection of the Dead”, together with his two members of the band Producex. It was in the legendary clothing store of Israeli rap, Mad Man, where Ravid worked as a Baggies seller – and along the way he also sold his album, in which he invested the grant money from the army, except for the few buyers who came to the store. This was the only way to get the album before the streaming era, and regular stores didn’t carry an album by an anonymous rap group.
A few weeks later, I went to a concert by the group “Tuna Man Jones”, which was led by Tuna, who at the time was working on his first album on the “Anana” label – a rare news in those years, a rapper signed to a major label – and gave an unforgettable show with a group of musicians at every performance (and a wonderful singer named Gali Sdeh) in front of – in Tona’s words – two pots and a cat. I was the cat. And although at the time I wrote in a review that “they will still become the next snake fish”, they are not. The singles didn’t work, the album was shelved, and you can hear about Tona’s discouraging experiences against the same record company in the diss song “Lan Sha Pafa Mbatti”.
Those performances by Tuna were relatively easy compared to the ones I saw with Ravid Plotnik, performances that took place even after the So-Cold Breakout, when he went on his first national tour and met – at least in an unforgettable performance at Mitzpe Ramon – no more than ten people. Ravid nevertheless gave his all in this performance, and everyone who was there will never forget it. I know of at least two of those ten who became rappers these days (hey 1 Kings and 2 Kings). The money that that show brought in was converted by Ravid’s manager at the time (a Russian Rasta named Shaba and the loudest man you’ve ever met) into bottles of alcohol that were sipped by all the guys after the show.
Everything has a context. An event does not happen in isolation in the world, and the success of Ravid and Tuna is also related to their hard work. That’s why the historic amount of tickets sold for the Live Park concert series is so exciting. Not because they bring in cash anyway, but because they mark victory after victory after so many losses they have suffered. know what? Yes – also financial losses from empty concerts, stored albums and bus tickets back to Petah Tikva. And the audience understands this, and knows that they still operate independently, without labels that provide financial support, in a way that bypasses their gossip. And this gives them respect and appreciation from the audience that gossips will never receive.
In fact, that’s the heart of the post. Tuna notoriously avoids being interviewed, Ravid doesn’t play any gossipy barangay games – these two have completely bypassed all the celebs from the Lucky Pines. They didn’t have to be Israel_entertainment, but simply create music, persist stubbornly. So in the system of Guy Pines, who won’t get a paparazzi leak from them, they have to make do with the calculations that every Israeli does when he enters a falafel stand. Even when Ravid and Tuna entered the mainstream, they are still the alternative to everything yellow and cheap. This is of course not an alternative that threatens Guy Finsims – after all, there will always be publicity seekers – but I have no doubt that they are simply jealous of Ravid and Tuna. Not in the money they made, but in their impressive way, and in the character it shows.