Turkish Hip Hop

Turkish hip hop is the German-Turkish rap tradition that began in early-1990s Germany, where second-generation Turkish youth used English and then Turkish over boom-bap beats to answer racism and exclusion. The 1995 compilation project *Cartel* — *Karakan*, *Da Crime Posse* and *Erci E* — ignited so-called Oriental hip hop by lacing beats with bağlama and folk samples and selling hundreds of thousands of copies in Turkey. The scene then split into a German diaspora underground (*Islamic Force*, *King Size Terror*) and a Turkish mainstream led by *Ceza*, *Sagopa Kajmer* and later *Ezhel*, whose streaming-era dominance made Turkish rap a chart force.