5 Russian hip-hop artists you should definitely listen to

No one can explain music to you better than the musicians themselves. Who do you unfairly skip on playlists? And who is worth watching right now, so as not to miss the moment when they go from the list of “new names” to the category of stars of the first magnitude? We learned from Russian artist Mars, who has built a career in music since the age of 17 and started collaborating with professional songwriters and sound producers at top studios in Los Angeles. He is known here as a star-making artist from Zivert along with producer Bogdan Leonovich and is now focused on his solo career and ready to soar to heights. Mars talks about his colleagues – about the coolest Russian hip-hop artists, whose songs should be in your headphones.

Anthem

“Mahogany” and “Blood”

Two names that I started listening to in 2004-2005. At the time, it seemed to me something extraordinary and unique. Most rappers of that time described a serious gangster life in their songs, and there was a lot of irony in the lyrics of the songs “Bloodstock” and “Cabinet Maker” (especially in the latter). And there was something special about it. I remember listening to many of them with my classmates, it was light music for us – just right for our age. He described the mahogany style as reggae chanson. During the day he worked as a manager at the Vulcan casino, and at night he performed in clubs with unusual music. That is, the hero himself was very peculiar. This probably affected me personally as a listener watching him at the time.

The same thing with “Bloodblood”, which is older than other representatives of hip-hop and very interestingly tells about their life situation. In his texts, “Krovostok” says that he was born in Moscow, on the edge of the city, began to swear at the age of four, smoked a cigarette at the age of eight, and was already “closed” at thirteen. However, he does not explain all this in terms of the fact that it is well done, but rather provokes the fact that it is not necessary. He has a great deal of self-irony and isn’t afraid to post it.

blago white

Representative of the new hip-hop school. An artist with a non-standard speech, his own words and language. He speaks exactly like this in life, respectively, this style of speaking has passed into music. That’s why I drew attention to it. It seems to me that this is really original and different from all other representatives of the new school.

“Points”

I really loved the Dots group as a kid. They had a soundtrack called “It happens in life” – an absolute hit for its time. I especially liked these lines: “Yes, it happens! Love is dying! But it’s like calling again! Watchmen! I remember when I was eleven, my parents sent me to camp, and the first thing I remember was that we were all given welcome balloons that we released with this song.

deema

Talking about what I really loved was Soul R’n’B culture. And Deema was the only one doing something completely new at the time. Alongside Pop and R’n’B tracks, Flow had the most stylized music in Hip Hop. He was a virtuoso, he knew how to do everything and always sounded very advantageous. In my opinion, Deema stood out from the general artist audience and looked very textured, offbeat. He was a hybrid, speaking fluent Russian, singing and rapping. Then they did a joint project with Timati, and this is a special culture that I followed in my childhood for a long time.