Dávid Szarvas, aka Tirpa, is one of the defining characters of Hungarian underground hip-hop. Not only solo, but also as a member of the duo Killakikitt with Aza, he is an integral part of Hungarian hip-hop history, yet few interviews have been conducted with him. As he said in the After broadcast, the reason for this is simply that “direct conversations are not comfortable” for him. Which is surprising from the point of view that he constantly talks about himself as a rapper.
Of course, his love of the genre goes back to his childhood, he heard Dr. Dre for the first time when he was 7-8 years old. “I’m not sure, I think Chronic was the first record that got me. I can’t explain it, but I liked it right away,” he recalls the beginnings. “Even with my head back then, I liked it very much,
I felt the impudence of them talking to the beat, fuck.”
From there, it was only one step for him to start writing lyrics and poems himself, he loved and still loves rhymes. At first, he rapped aggressively, as he puts it, “I had a lot more anger than I do now. This has now turned into humor and irony. But I think the performance and the flow, which is very important, continue to develop to this day.”
Tirpa, who studied at the Free Waldorf High School in Fót, quickly joined the Hungarian freestyle community, but she does not like to look back on her performances at that time. At that time, several people noticed him, he started hanging out with Újonc (Péter Závada), who was a judge in one of the freestyle competitions, known from Akkezdet Phiai, and he introduced him to his later co-creator, Aza. “I wanted to buy a beat from him because it was my birthday. He then said, you know what, fuck it, I’ll give it to you, because you’re pushing it well, bro. That’s how the spanking with Aza began.”
Later, he was brought together by the Budapest hip-hop community Dopeman, and it may seem from the outside that he discovered Tirpa, but this was not quite the case, since by then Killakikitt’s first album, 2009’s Ne sárákodj! already put him on the domestic hip-hop map.
Tirpa has always been more of an underground face, but about the joint work with Dopeman (which resulted in the album HAV, or Fight to the End), he said, “I had no problem with the mainstream, my goal for a long time was to spread very widely.”
Tirpa was also honest about the fact that at first she couldn’t manage her career independently, although she has improved a lot since then. “I was a lost idiot, I always needed a Dopeman or an Aza to correct me. But now I oversee everything, which is a huge change. Then I was preoccupied with other things, but I have calmed down.”
He changed not only the content of his texts, but also the work process. “My exhibitionism has taken a back seat, I prefer creating. In the past, as soon as a track was ready, I would go immediately, spotlight, let’s hit it, let it be known, shout it, spread it. Now I like it until each song is finished, while we do it, while we put our heads together. I enjoy this process much more now.”
At the end of March, Tirpa released her latest album entitled Villagenap (our review of the album), which turned out to be the result of a joint brainstorming session with Aza. “He told me, when I was already working on the track called Village Day, that this should be the title of the album, because the whole thing has the atmosphere of an absurd Village Day,” said Tirpa. He added that it is as if he is putting his own work in quotation marks with the record, and he confirms that he does indeed use a lot of irony on the record, which has been an important tool in his songs since the beginning.
Regarding the use of obscene expressions, Tirpa said that it is, on the one hand, just humor and that there is nothing wrong with those whom she shares quite aggressively on the record. On the other hand, according to him, “there is no homophobic feeling about them. Go for it, I don’t mind if people tell me that you’re a fucking dirty bastard. It bothers me that you can’t humor or joke.
I think it kills the joke if you worry about who you’re going to offend with it. It doesn’t work, there’s nothing wrong with it. You can’t worry about who gets offended. However, I am a more instinctive performer than that.”
The conversation also discussed:
- How much and what kind of personality development did Tirpa go through?
- What do you think about the fact that many people think he sold himself out?
- Will he ever continue his iconic Gadzik trilogy?
- Where did you get the name Tirpa?
- What do you think of Fankadeli?
- How do you relate to the amazing success of new artists such as Beton.Hofi or Pogány Induló?
- How did you get close to Az and Krúbi, what is the joint work like?
- What do you think about the current political situation and the pardon scandal?
- How is your relationship with your son?
The quotes from the interview have been edited for readability. The entire conversation can be heard in the latest broadcast of Telex After.
As part of a paid collaboration for this article, it is Alrite speech recognition (speech-to-text) solution we used it.
