(non-french) Euro Hip Hop

Extince is a Dutch rapper I rate with the best of the Americans. His Binnenlandse Funk (Virgin) album was my favourite record of 1998. Its follow-up, Vitamine E (Virgin), was in my Top Three of 2001. He raps in Dutch, with a Southern Dutch accent. He's like Jay-Z in that he comes up with the cleverest ways of putting others down / bigging himself up. He's unlike big American stars because he is not rich or gangsta and doesn't pretend to be. He can be very personal in his lyrics, it touches me immensely. Also a fantastic storyteller. His flow is impeccable, of course...

The biggest rapper in the Netherlands is Brainpower, who raps in Dutch as well (like Extince and many other rappers here, he started out in English - hence the English name). This Summer, he spent a month at the top of the charts in this country as well as in Belgium with Dansplaat, an infectious, umptempo number in (sort of) a Neptunes kind of style. He's released two albums (both on PIAS), reaching across quite a wide Hip-Hop spectrum. Very clever wording, great flow.

The third Lowlands entry I'd like to mention are Postmen, a group that combines reggae and Hip-Hop in a way I haven't heard anywhere else. Their debut album Documents (V2 1998) I loved to bits. The second one, Revival (Warner 2001) wasn't bad at all, but lacked the surprise effect.

It's weird, channel hopping on foreign music channels, every single country in Europe appears to have its own vibrant hip-hop scene, and every single country in Europe also ignores every other country's hip-hop scene. Ah well.

Germanic and Polish hip-hop is scary, mainly because the languages all make everything said sound scary. For my home country's hip-hop scene, there's probably nothing that can beat here. Especially seek out (should be on most P2P fileshare thangs) "La Fidanzata" by Articolo 31, which sounds like House of Pain if you switched the Guiness for grappa.

As for tasters, search out the single version of "The Unknown" by Mark B and Blade, which has either four or five alternate versions of the track on the B-side, each one by a rap collective of a different nationality. It's easily the best thing Saiyan Super Crew have ever done.

And yes, I know SSC are French, but... yeah, whoops.

belgium: 't hof van commerce
sweden: black moses (to be honest, I only know their single Oh, God from 1998)
germany: kinderzimmer productions

Job, Brainpower?!? He's extremely tedious- especially his wording. His flow is good, but what does that really matter when the content is mediocre? His collaboration with Nas was a laugh. Mostly at the latter's expense. Postmen, however, is great. There's also 't Hof Van Commerce but they are more jokey and, unlike Brainpower, aware of it.

as dom guessed, spain has a healthy hip-hop scene these days. we had a first go in the late 80's, but that was utter crap. then in the 90's the second generation started to do really good things.
the main act in spain was '7 notas 7 colores', they got quite big a few years ago. its frontman is called 'mucho muchacho', and now he does different off shoots collaborating with different people (and he shortened his name to mucho mu).
'la puta opp' is my personal favourite. they do lots of changes between records, but always keep a distinctive sound: their new album is dedicated to dancehall and raggamuffin, whilst the previous one was dedicated to funk and blaxpoitation.
other names to keep in mind are 'solo los solo' (they have some interesting combination of hip-hop and flamenco; on this note, search also 'el payo malo' and 'la mala rodríguez'), 'violadores del verso' (aka 'doble v': they have the best freestyler in spain), 'el club de los poetas violentos' ( aka CPV)...
on the instrumental note, the ones i enjoy the most are 'hippaly', although i'm not sure if they're still around.

Check Looptroop from Sweden.

i like dj vadim ft. mucho mu - adjectives and adverbs
samy deluxe (germany) has some good songs too

There was a huge Hip Hop boom in Germany back in '98 and '99. Most of the music was crap. German is not much of a language for Hip Hop - the words are too long, people keep stumbling on them. No flow, you see.

'Absolute Beginner' have the most incredible sounding MC though.

Malk de Koijn from Denmark.

Amazing, original, sample-heavy, weird productions and slightly surreal, touching and swagger lyrics (if you understand them).

One of my absolute favorite records of 2002.

How about Deichkind? stumbled across them on MTV Deutchsland on my travels and they have good flow I think.

http://www.ghhr.de/ is a very good starting-point for German stuff.

Oh, by the way: the Malk de Koijn album is entitled 'Sneglzilla' (Danish for 'Snailzilla' and is distributed by BMG.

Which Looptroop album should I start with? And is Promoe's solo stuff worth listening to?

the struggle continues is their best album. I hope you can stomach their politics!

here's some songs from the biggest selling rapper in sweden. he gets alot of hate and I'm not a major fan but these songs(made between 99-04) are all classic.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=200QNCMZ

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=208Q9Q40

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=20TM4TZ1

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=19RM85HR