The rise of R-Pop and R-Idols
While one might be confused at the rise of
R-pop/R-idols and what it actually is one must first understand that
R-pop has nothing to do with Russian Pop-Music or Independent Music in general as
R-Pop is less of a Music Genre and more of a set of characteristics that Russian Idols agree to emulate and fallow. In fact both
R-pop and Russian Pop Music tend to see each other as rivals and competition for the Russian and global entertainment market as a whole and over which betters represents Russia to the globe.
The History of R-Pop and R-Idols.
Unlike most music genres
R-Pop did not start in the music scene but rather among the massive rise of the Anime, Comic, and Manga market, the rise of Conventions across Russia as a whole. From 1993
Mos-Con the main convention in Moscow became increasingly popular bringing with it a larger crowd but also an increase in participants with Cosplayers becoming a major attraction to the convention who would attend the talent competition where Cosplayers would sing and dance bringing increasing attention to the Convention but also to themselves as people would begin to buy up more of their own merchandise as their popularity grew. This lead to the catalyst for R-Pop to form as more people would cosplay and entertain as a full time job creating several small underground hits although would remain somewhat limited to the anime, manga, and comics community.
This would change with the appearance of
Zhanna Niktina. Originally well known in the pornographic industry due to her blue eyes, blonde hair, long hair, exchanged bust and tallness she would become enamored with the Anime and Manga fandom, but especially with the cosplay scene where she would naturally stand out quickly becoming a favorite around the major cons. However her real stand out was that apart from simply looking beautiful she had a talent for singing and dancing which she would use to dominate the talent competitions in the cons making here a sort of celebrity in the community. While she might have remained as just a major cosplayer and later influencer
Zhanna had the opportunity to actually sell and show her talent across Russia as here background had let her gain easy access to recording equipment and distribution by her website and general internet.
By the time Vladi-Con 1995 occurred she had partnered with
Karina Semenova, and
Zhenya Volkova, women who had fallowed in her footsteps and created the R-Pop group
Love Live.
Love Live along with dozens of other groups would quickly gain massive amounts of attention from the event and more importantly fully transform into major economic drivers as their merchandise had risen to the millions as hundreds of women saw their success and moved to emulate them leading to the meteoric rise of R-Pop movement. Further advances would be the 1998 documentary
The Rise of R-Pop which apart from documenting said rise would bring R-Pop as a movement into the mainstream although most people would ridicule said movement and in general would not be treated seriously by most.
It mattered little as the documentary did its job in further driving the demand for R-Pop across Russia and world which would create a major rivalry between R-Idols and the greater Russian music industry as there was a de-facto ban of R-Pop across Russian television with both
Muz-TV and
MTV Russia proving especially willing to degrade the name of those R-Idols with constant attempts at drama, leading to the creation of
NERB by
Zhanna Niktina as a place for different R-Pop groups to come together, gather resources and help with the distribution and selling of merchandise as an alternative form of distribution to other major music distribution companies. All of this would pay off as by 2004 R-Pop had become a multi-million dollar industry with major audiences from Russia, Japan, Europe and the rest of the world.
What defines R-Pop and R-Idols
While we can now say how R-Pop rose the question remains of what R-Pop and R-Idols actually are and why they are not considered as part of the Russian Pop scene. In the most simple of terms R_Pop is a music and performance act, done by women with breast enhancements, wearing revealing clothing, done mostly in groups of up to three or more. Of course this is the most simplistic way to look at what defines a R-Idol and there is more to it than just that.
For starters while having cosmetic surgery is something one has to get it, unlike K-Pop idols, R-Idols mostly avoid the face entirely preferring to leave it intact with the majority of groups actively making it a rule to avoid cosmetic surgery to the face. Originally done by
Zhanna Niktina and
Love Live, it would for the most part become a hard rule as many fallowed their example. While in terms of appearance R-Idols wore revealing clothing most was made by themselves as most attempts to buy a pre-made costume was seen as lazy and in bad form due in large part over the large overlap between the R-Pop community and the cosplay one.
Finally the biggest difference overall when compared to the greater music and Idol industry is that R-Idols are mostly in charge of their own recording, production, distribution, and selling of their music, music videos and merchandise with little in the way of agencies. Mostly a vestige of its time when R-Pop was mostly part of the Anime, Comic, and overall nerd community, most early R-Idols had little access to real publication and so would mostly publish their own work by the way of the internet and selling of copies of their work in conventions and fan meet ups. This changed little as Russian Television was a no go and most major music publications saw R-Pop as either a threat or not worth bothering. Its here that an alternative would form with
NERB being less of an agency and more of Forum where R-Idols could meet, gather resources, and provide each other with the necessary resources to distribute their work.
All of this would also come with the difficulty of doing all of the work which has lead to most R-Idols to have small but dedicated fallowing which is made up with a near 100% of revenue going to the R-Idols and their talents. This has further seen a diversity in music, themes, tones, and genre as R-pop as a whole would not be defined by its music but by the R-Idols and their characteristics.
Why Its Popular
The most commonly cited reason one will enjoy R-Pop are the R-Idols and how sexy most of them are considered as a whole. Even then this is not unique to R-Pop as K-Pop and contemporary Pop and Rap has shown, and so another reason is that R-Idols are considered more approachable when compared to most celebrities and idols. While this might seem contradictory the general rule of avoiding changing the face with plastic surgery would prove a major boon as most people could ignore the revealing clothing and cosmetic surgeries by looking at the face. With many either having a beautiful face or simply a "girl next door" appearance, R-Idols had a rather large demographic range with many being as popular with women as they were with men.
In fact this would give R-Idols an appeal that anyone could become an R-Idol and for the most part they could as one only really needed a breast implant and recording equipment which most people were able to afford even if it took time. With an easy barrier of entry one could become an R-Idol which for the most part saw a large number of R-Idol groups who while having fans in the hundreds had a more intimate relationship as many would foster a parasocial relationship with their audience allowing for more investment, merch sales, and donations. With the lack of any major agency to lord over them and instead being made up of groups most R-Idols were able to take up a large part of the revenue from their merch, donations, and so on.
From there the saturation of R-Pop lead to massive amount of diversification in terms of costume, tone, music, performance and so on as the most R-Idol groups needed to be unique or have gimmick that made them stand out from the wave or R-Idol groups out there.
Finally the other reason is that R-Pop and R-Idols are unique to Russia as a whole in the same way that K-Pop and J-Pop idols are considered part of their nations culture and not just another type of music. Just like them R-Pop has its own rules, fan community with its own culture and is a unique version of pop-culture that would not be replicated until decades later with the advent of virtual idols.
Reaction and Effects of R-Pop Across the World
Across the globe R-Pop and R-Idols would be received differently with places like Japan, Vietnam, Latin America Ukraine, and most of the former Warsaw Pact all being the major demographic outside of Russia to enjoy and consume R-Pop as the dream of becoming an R-Idol made it popular in those regions with many wishing to gain some amount of fame and recognition and leave their less rich homes behind.
Places like Western Europe, America and the Anglo sphere was more critical of R-Pop as many simply saw it at best as cheap imitation of their own Pop music scene or as something only for pervs and weirdos. An underground scene did exist and overall there was more money to be made simply due to the larger spending power of most people, but R-Pop as a whole would not become more famous until later on into the late 2010s with the rise of Anime into the mainstream.
Finally places like China and most of Africa and the Middle East would see R-Pop as not only a perversion but as a poison that was affecting the minds of its population and so would be ban across said nations. Ironically China would still be one of the largest markets for R-Pop as the illegal trade of R-Pop content would quickly reach into the millions even with the ban.
In Russia itself R-Pop would become incredibly popular but there was diffidently a divide as those either of an older demographic or simply into other types of music tended to dismiss it outright and in many cases had a hatebase around it with entire communities existing to hating it. The rise of R-Pop lead in large part to the growth of the Russian cosmetic surgery scene as Russia became one the nations with the largest number and percentage people that had cosmetic surgery with South Korea not being far behind. As a whole R-Pop would become a major factor along with pornography and digital piracy for the rise of the Digital Silk Road, a massive network of content that was sold to places like China, Japan and the rest of Asia as Russia provided said content.
Finally done with the R-Pop write up. North Korea is next.