Acid Drop King will no longer make music and leaves Dead Dynasty

Acid Drop King’s girlfriend posted this information on her Twitter: “chely official statement Efim does not plan to release tracks in DD”. (author's spelling and punctuation preserved)

Official confirmations from " Dead Dynasty» has not been received yet. The performer very rarely delighted listeners with new tracks. The last time he could be heard was more than a year ago with a guest verse on the release "".

Top 30 Albums of 2017 (Part 1)

Andy Cartwright can already be called a hip-hop veteran. Despite the fact that his music career spans just over five years, he has actually managed to release at least a couple of releases that could be called underground classics, and another half dozen on top. At the same time, it was always difficult to categorize him into a certain camp. Andy Cartwright equally avoided the sad ass rap and the listing of rare items, being interested in completely different things.

He was never afraid to put himself on the same level as the listener and created through his heart and life experience, and not through a business plan and template. That is why his style is so lively, real and mature, and that is why he won once again. While fashionable sufferers were “taking back what was theirs” and fighting against the sacralized everyday life, Andy Cartwright simply released new project, casually taking everything that was his and a little more.

29. DOPECLVB – DOPET4PE

Perhaps it is on the fourth release of the Ufa quartet that we hear the guys in in full force V last time. Thomas, as you know, defected to the Empire, which led to quarrels in the team - Basic Boy on his release “Supernormal, Vol. 1” in the track “Friend” spoke about the current situation quite harshly and frankly. However, “DOPET4PE” turned out to be a diverse and diverse work, in which the unprecedented creativity of the guys again captivates from the first seconds of the timing. The guys sound surprisingly harmonious, despite the fact that each of them has their own unique style. Every track has some distinctive feature(in “Good Guys” the main theme from the cult anime “Evangelion” is sampled, and “Jungle” broadcasts to listeners a crazy surreal about life in the wild), and the main decoration was the composition “Honey, I think I don’t want to do rap anymore”: so ironic , so funny and so satirical that it’s simply impossible not to smile while listening. And the realization that the guys are unlikely to ever get together again just makes me sad.

28. INFECTION – ULTRA

Many people probably knew Zaraza from his collaborations with Horus (Lupercal) and Sasha Skul, but everyone started talking about his ambitions as a solo artist only after the premiere of the album “ULTRA”, which was more reminiscent of a 25-minute audit trip. Light acid rhythms calling for relaxation are juxtaposed with hard hardstyle themes programmed for the total destruction of dance floors. Thanks to the futuristic sound, abstract lyrics and acidic cover, when listening to the release, you get the feeling that you have gone on a half-hour journey through the vast expanses of the Galaxy, where the spaceship is your player.

27. Sasha School – 1989

One thing can be said with confidence about Sasha Skul - over the past two years he has really found himself. His provincial gonzo realism became fresher musical arrangement from Ripbeat, and it had some really catchy choruses and original ideas. From an “abstract Russian rapper” withering in an unambitious swamp with the baggage of the cult Buchenwald Flava and a vague future, Sasha turned into a thriving indie musician with a reliable niche and a devoted fan base - a wonderful and extremely rare phenomenon in our area.

“1989” preserved and increased all the strengths of Sasha Skul - skinhead-Yeltsinist-club flavor, sincerity, apt observations of the comical world around and the contrast of hope for tomorrow with the tragic. There are excellent guest verses from Lupercal, MURDA KILLA and Zaraza and fashionable re-coverings of Sasha’s old songs that are even better than the originals - of course, Sasha does not make music for everyone, but now for his cozy audience he is ready to offer a real peak of creative form.

26. FACE – HATE LOVE

Why did “Hate Love” make it to our top, and not “No Love”? Firstly, this is a full-fledged album, and not an EP, which Dremin has been throwing around all this time. Secondly, there are much more warm, lamp-like and touching lyrical compositions here and they sound much more harmonious. In 2017, it was simply impossible to hide from Face: while the masses were being torn into different camps by “Burger,” the rest of the listeners listened to childishly naive ballads about love. And to reveal Vanya from the other side, it was enough to simply turn on “Liza”, “Antidepressant” or “Festival of Colors”. In the end, the rapper completely caught up with metaphysical nonsense - “Death” and “Life after death” can of course be called hermitages, but you don’t expect to hear such reasoning from an often careless goofball. In compositions that will never gather millions of views on YouTube, thousands of likes on VK and hundreds of retweets, there is real sincerity and an open-minded look at the life of an ordinary teenager who has dreamed of becoming famous all his life; and this dream came true.

With the release of “Hate Love,” Face showed that he is capable of developing and evolving. This means that the audience of “youngsters,” as the haters claim, will be raised by the artist himself and grow up following their idol. And while one shouts at concerts that he is the freshest in the school, the other may well become the main teacher of this very school.

25. Caste – The four-headed man yells

The return of the Cast group turned out to be completely different from what hundreds of thousands of listeners expected. Through the veil of obvious satire, the band managed to create an album aimed at certain social problems in the country. At the same time, the record “Four-Headed Yells” is not at all perceived as some kind of political manifesto, but rather as a set of observations from four old friends, united by one border and one idea - to create. Some may not understand, some will probably be frightened by such a peaceful presentation, but others will conclude for themselves that Caste is about life, but not about rap.

24. Ka-Tet – Terrarium EP

For many, this is the main Russian-language grime album of the outgoing year. A huge push for the representative of White Chuvashia was the joint track and video with Oksimiron “Machine of Progress”, in which the artists competed in fast flow and sharp punchlines. But if the line “you rhyme like a mechanic” went through your ear like a knife, still don’t put an end to the entire album. “Terrarium” turned out to be a surprisingly solid and strong work, where, under the paranoid beats of the legendary Dark Faders, Ka-tet touches on highly social themes and demonstrates his impressive arsenal of technical skills. Do you miss Russian grime? “Terrarium” is a real distillation of this subgenre, made as if from a textbook - correctly, canonically and intelligently.

23. Smokey Mo – Day Three

“Day Three” is the first album by the main sensei of Russian rap and master of abstractions in 4 years. In many ways, it has something in common with the monumental “Kara-te”: some musical moves, its sincerity, mysticism, and especially the track “Full”, in the recording of which Fuze took part. But this time Smokey is trying to tell about his life from the height of his experience and the position of a true legend, trying at 34 to stay afloat in the genre of the young and daring.

If Casta tries to look at growing up with humor and enters the territory of politicians, then Alexander Tsikhov dives even deeper into soul-searching and philosophy and talks about the death of loved ones and addiction in his own language, understandable only to him and his most loyal fans. And if there are still questions about Smokey Mo the rapper in 2017, especially because of the absurdity of some metaphors and comparisons, then there are no complaints about Smokey Mo the producer.

22. Noa – EARTH / WATER

Finally, the Dead Dynasty has its own sweet-voiced vocalist, who has every chance in the near future to become a big star of Russian neo-R&B, thanks to his excellent songwriting skills. Unlike the mini-albums “Winds” and “Lucid Dreams”, inspired by soundcloud aesthetics, on “Earth / Water” each track sounds like a potential hit with its own emphasized individuality: obligatory guitar parts, 808s and witty choruses about love - everything is in place.

21. Kreem – No Chill

Arthur Krim has been in the rap game since the 2000s; many of his peers from the sphere of hip-hop culture have already released more than one or two albums by this year, while Krim himself is the performer on whom virtually the entire young Ufa community grew up. rap scene - only this year he presented his sophomore long-play.

The rapper's first project in three years attracted an impressive list of guests: Boulevard Depo, Thomas Mraz, LAUD, Feduk, DEAD DYNASTY members saluki and stereoRYZE, as well as Arthur’s old comrades. After spending long time in California, Cream emphasized many aspects of the street sound of those places and successfully translated them into his work, not forgetting to mix in something of his own - signature cynicism and relaxed flow, familiar to many scholars in the field of Russian rap.

30-21 | |

Famous Addonis & White Punk – Suicide

The Dead Dynasty's full-time beatmaker White Punk, teaming up with the well-known performer Famous Addonis for his collaboration with Boulevard Depo, releases a fresh release, loudly titled “Suicide”.

The sound of the new record fully corresponds to the style and aesthetics of the performers, because it is made in incredibly dark shades interspersed with sadness and utter disappointment in the surrounding world, after which you can hear some lyrical moments, which for Addonis, for example, is definitely new.

YUNG MEEP – STARDUST

The well-known beatmaker from Dead Dynasty, who calls himself Yung Meep, during his time in the association managed to produce a huge amount of work, including for his colleagues.

Today the artist presents own project"Stardust", including 5 audio tracks. The duet VELIAL SQUAD adorned one of them with its flow - the guys skillfully combine a confident flow and light singing. The other two instrumentals were given to vocalists NOA and INAS, whose results are like a balm for the ears. By the way, beatmaker GORE OCEAN took part in the creation of the latest collaboration.

NOA – All Mine

Today, the delight published Noa’s video for the new single “All Mine”. There are not many locations in it, and the entire focus of the picture is on the dark blue colors and how the artist dances gracefully after the rain, surrounded by girls. By the way, PHARAOH also took part in the filming of the video.

Review: PHARAOH – “Pink Phloyd”

Throughout his career, Pharaoh remained an extremely integral character, and all the good and bad things that are said about him in RuNet, in to the same degree applicable to all the material he produced. White Punk, Yung Meep, StereoRYZE and all the other producers of his Beatle are terribly skilled people, real experts in their field, capable of providing teenage angst with the most impressive soundtrack in the entire history of depressive teenage music in Russia, visual design and style always follows the most promising trends of blacks from soundcloud, Pharaoh himself is consistently expressed in the clumsy, stamped language of a Moscow office clerk who was asked to translate Bones’ texts into Russian.

The latter always reduced the listenability of Pharaoh’s previous tapes to almost zero for me, because they committed the worst sin of a person who does not know how to write rap well - he was sad and serious. The entire functionality of “serious” music is limited to the fact that you need to resonate with it and find yourself in it, and resonate with Gleb Golubin, a representative of the transcendental social stratum of Dynamo’s general directors, who, moreover, cannot clearly explain why he suddenly feels so bad, It turned out to be absolutely impossible. All this was accompanied by pretentious remarks about the fact that the listener is stupid and will never understand the truly sublime suffering of the hero - in a word, they made you understand that no one is going to entertain you. Although it was a winning commercial strategy (I won't go into detail now - if you're wondering how Pharaoh's popularity works), it did dampen my interest in Pharaoh.

Many (including us) call “Diko, for example” the most powerful and stylish video in Russian rap of the year.

However, a small part of his work still avoided falling into this marketing funnel of sadomasochism and was what Pharaoh managed to do well, in my opinion - quality Internet pop, entertainment content, which was always the last resort for a scoundrel unable to shed a tear from an adult uncle, but who knows how to have fun and write a crazy, tenacious hook. Mostly, he wrote such songs together with Boulevard Depo, the most striking example is, of course, champagne squirt in face.

“Pink Phloyd” is Pharaoh’s best record on this moment precisely because there is much more of this entertaining content on it, but less emotional pathos. Sometimes he appears in the most unexpected form - in killer verses from Suitcase and in hilarious ones from 39 and Lil Morty, or even in a tribute to my favorite character of the 2000s, Sergei “Spider” Troitsky. The first half of the album generally consists entirely of natural bangers, which clearly demonstrate how much more confident Pharaoh feels when he doesn’t have to suffer. From such tracks you don’t need to expect multi-story reflections (which he fails to do anyway), but in them Pharaoh can say something like the words “fake dodik,” which immediately adds a hundred bonus points of intoxication to the song. “Wildly, for example,” “School,” “Lallipup,” “Your Place” and a couple of other tracks, now more reminiscent of Rae Sremmurd than the notorious Bones - an excellent example of how everything falls into place when an artist begins to practice your business.

Of course, in some places “Pink Phloyd” returns to its previous state of tongue-tied emotionality, in some places the bravado sounds like pretentious shit (once again, “I’m the freshest in school” is good, “for God I’m a son, for you an oracle” is bad), but in In general, it has become much easier to enjoy listening without being the target audience of Pharaoh. I think that the decision to update the sound and make entertaining trap music is very correct, if only because Pharaoh, having shot a couple of the right clips, will be able to overcome with his cheerful flex the house drum of the Grib group that has been fucked to death, without which not a single fashionable hit can do now, and for I will be very grateful to him.

PHARAOH x Jeembo – Chainsaw

A few days ago, Pharaoh, who presented the “Pink Phloyd” mixtape less than a week ago, showed excerpts of a new joint track with Jimbo on Instagram Stories

It is noteworthy that Jimbo had previously read his verse from this composition during the “PAINKILLER” tour. Full version The track will apparently be released on Jimbo's Black Box release.

PHARAOH – PINK PHLOYD

One of the most anticipated and experimental releases of this year has just been released. Rumors about the upcoming project from Pharaoh have been circulating for many months, and today listeners will finally be able to listen to this unusual record.

The playlist of the work included 15 tracks with many features, from the expected Boulevard and Mnogoznaal to the surprise Suitcase and the “newcomer” of the Dead Dynasty - Noa. Well, there’s no point in talking about the quality of the album and the atmosphere of the compositions presented on it. After all, as always, this is done at the highest level.

NOA & YUNG MEEP – L048

Members of the Dead Dynasty association, NOA, whom we included in our top 10 newcomers [ https://vk.cc/6Jf6uk], and Yung Meep have released a new collaboration titled “L048.”

As a result, the two performers released a lyrical melodic composition, which they dedicated to the opposite sex.

Mnogoznaal: interview for “Young Generation”

Last month, Mnogoznaal held a concert in Ulyanovsk, and before it gave a short interview to the association "Younger generation".

Top 10 newcomers: who to watch in the near future

The hip-hop industry does not stand still; every day new promising artists emerge with their own authentic style and unsurpassed charisma. Nowadays, no one can be surprised by the blurring of genre boundaries, the flickering of elements of R&B, funk, soul, soft rock, rock and roll or disco in the kaleidoscope of hip-hop. A couple of years ago this only applied to foreign music charts, where key positions The Weeknd could occupy the place with his R&B/soul album “Beauty Behind the Madness,” and the top lines of the Billboard list were occupied by the sweet-voiced Beyonce, Rihanna, or the auto-tuned Future. However, today and in domestic practice, new stars of the transformed genre are emerging, having absorbed the cultural traditions of various music schools– for example, Thomas Mraz, Krestall Courier or LSP. In an attempt to predict the trends of the future of Russian-language hip-hop music and identify the heroes of tomorrow, our publication presents to the reader its shortlist of Russian freshmen of 2017.

10th place. Resident

Can you imagine what The Weeknd would sound like if he were born in one of the post-Soviet countries? But the guys from the Kyiv group Rezident can do it quite well. Specializing in languid R&B, accompanied by 808s, the 16-year-old lead singer of the group German very adequately adapts to Russian realities style features Abel and, adding elements of his own individuality to them, conquers music portals.

While Herman shows us impressive vocal abilities, especially for his age, and also acts as the author of all the lyrics, the second member of the group, Pal, is involved in production, mixing and mastering, thus performing mainly producer functions . Musical accompaniment, with rare exceptions, the artists arrange them themselves and do not need to supply beats. The guys from Rezident are no strangers to creative experiments. In the group's latest single, languid R&B is interspersed with a more dynamic tune designed to rock the dance floor.

Well, if an artist at such a young age successfully conquers creative heights, one can only guess what kind of success awaits him when he grows up and finally forms his own style.

That very electrifying single of the duet:

9th place. Mozee Montana

“Ala boome!” If you haven’t yet understood what we’re talking about, then you’re probably unfamiliar with both the sporting victories of the great boxer Muhammad Ali and the debut album of the promising Russian performer Mozee Montana. A significant portion of Mozee’s current fans flocked to her pages on social networks, having read Oksimiron’s laudatory tweets dedicated to her work. However, the performer can boast not only of recommendations from powerful of the world this (of course, the world of music), but also worthy content of musical content.

Neglecting the vocals in the tracks that have become familiar to many hip-hop artists and, even more so, performers, Mozee Montana focuses the listener’s attention on the lyrics, imbued with the spirit of the streets, and performance technique. Unlike other women in Russian hip-hop, Mozee is not shy about trying her hand at high speeds readings, and even compares himself with one of the most technical MCs in the CIS, releasing the track “Bumble, is that you.” The battle with the participation of the performer, organized by the 140 BPM CUP platform, gained more than a million views on YouTube video hosting in a relatively short period of time.

Unfortunately, Mozee Montana quite rarely indulges fans with solo material, releasing collaborations over and over again, mainly with members of the “Making Things Ent” association. However, the situation can be corrected by the announced album “Hayastan Boomin”. “Good luck, *bash them!”, as Mozee Oksimiron wished.

Mozi's latest solo project:

8th place. Kid Sole

An artist known by many for remixes of tracks by Jubilee and Yanix, who also made a mark on the latter’s recent album, and also rising star Russian R&B – all this is Kid Sole. Inspired by the work of Chris Brown, Jeremih and Trey Songz, the artist takes on his own musical career in solo mode and promises listeners to release a “Polaroid” mixtape this year, divided into 13 tracks. The release seems to be expected this spring.

In addition to Kiddy’s usual R&B sound with vocals, most likely, on the upcoming project we will also hear compositions closer to the rap sound, as one of the artist’s outer tracks hints at. In principle, there is nothing surprising in such a move, since at the beginning of its creative path the artist combined classical readings with so-called “tunes”. Among the performer’s strengths, one can highlight his vocal abilities, which he demonstrated during a live performance in the “Starkar” project.

ABOUT weaknesses It’s too early to say - we haven’t heard enough solo material from him to understand what could grow from it. However, Kid Sole is still at one of the stages of forming his own style - not at the final stage - and if he works hard on himself, he can compete with many domestic stars.

Latest news from Kiddy's camp:

7th place. Natasha Scott

The only personal photo of “Natasha” in her public page

Do you know Travis Scott that his extramarital wife lives in Rostov? It is unlikely that he even knows about the existence of Rostov. However, as a short description from the official public page of the anonymous Russian-speaking performer Natasha Scott says, she is “the heiress of Walter, the illegitimate wife of Travis from Rostov.” However, Natasha has not yet seen any analogies with the music of the Texas trap artist, while it is quite possible to draw parallels with the work of the well-known LSP, who recently pleased the public with a new album. This is not surprising, given the fact that Oleg Savchenko helped her with the recording of her debut album “Revolv EP”, and also gave the first leads to her on social networks.

In general, Natasha’s (or rather Alena’s) debut album in its sound and style is reminiscent of early LSP. Somewhat arrogant hip-hop, seasoned with a touch of vulgarity, with a list of narcotic substances and caustic attacks towards Oksimiron - a publicly available, but insufficiently complete description of “Revolv EP”. In addition to all of the above, on one of the tracks from the album the performer can please with philosophical reflections on the hardships of family life and the possibilities of self-development ( “And somewhere there is a clean entrance, and they buy brides there, but they don’t buy them, so it’s more difficult to walk together than to stand still.”), which can serve as a prerequisite for the development of conceptual creativity.

Of course, Natasha Scott is still far from the star pedestal, but perhaps she is the hope of female hip-hop in Russia. The release of the debut video for the track “HOP” can help strengthen its position on the domestic hip-hop scene.

One of the most interesting and impressive pop records this year was recorded by Mikhail Dombrovsky, aka Noa, a long-time associate of Pharaoh and participant creative association Dead Dynasty. However, he is noticeably different from his colleagues in that instead of furious aggression, gloomy coldness and working with trends ahead of the curve, he has a dreamy detachment, strong vocals and his own musical language, woven from many unobvious influences.

The artist’s latest release: video for the song “Old Friends”

- How did you get into Dead Dynasty? You are the most atypical artist for this community.

There was no casting. It’s just that the different musical parties that Gleb and I were in were united by certain people. Around this time, he released the album “Phlora”.

Back then I listened to hip-hop exclusively on English language- In general, I had some prejudice towards Russian music. At the end of 2015, when I released my , there was mutual interest. Gleb was full of desire to record a rock album, and I had the appropriate skills for this - and our mutual friends decided to introduce us.

“Five Minutes Ago” had not yet been released, Pharaoh was associated mainly with “skrr-skr”, but I saw something special in his songs: he worked so variably with phonetics, which sounded as melodious as possible and carried not a lexical meaning, but an emotional groove that made it possible to feel the music on an international level - it would have clicked even if I was not a native Russian speaker.

At that time, the YungRussia association still existed. We hung out in the basement of some old house on Mayakovskaya, I really liked everything that happened. And from what later became the album “Phosphor”, I generally had eyes worth five rubles. This is largely due to White Punk, who found a melancholic, scraping sound with guitar samples over 808 bass and cymbals that ring like the clang of sharpened knives.

I wanted to understand how this is done in general. We began to communicate and exchange experiences. First of all, I showed him my developed vocal skills - before I met Gleb, I didn’t make beats on the computer, I only worked with the guitar. The rock album remained unreleased, but Gleb and I realized that we could give each other a lot.

I was accepted into Dynasty as a sound engineer. Apparently, I’ll reveal a secret now, but in “Dynasty” there are only two sound engineers: Bryte, who finalizes, masters and brings to the finished product all of Pharaoh’s albums, and myself. My profile is vocal production: effects, compression, tuning.

And everything went on and on. I met White Punk, listened to his work, and everything slowly began to come together into what became the Winds album. Later, I also sat down at the computer, opened the sequencer and began to make my own. I had before my eyes the formulas that the guys worked on, I thought that I could try it myself. That’s how I turned into a full-fledged artist.

Noa's first album "Vetra"

- You are often called a freshman, despite the fact that you are already thirty, and your colleagues in Dead Dynasty are much younger.

- (A little embarrassed.) For the industry I am a super freshman, because there are only two full year how I work as an artist. There are plenty of musicians who work for years on end before gaining any fame. The same Gleb released his first records back in 2012 as part of the Grindhouse group along with Acid Drop King and Otis. It turns out that two years later he became popular thanks to Black Siemens.

We have a six-year difference with Max Mnogoznaal, eight years with Gleb, and nine years with White Punk, but here I prefer to make some separation. I can’t say that we communicate like buddies, in terms of calling in our free time and calling for a party or having a heart-to-heart talk about matters of the heart. Our communication is built around creative and musical themes. And music is timeless and ageless, a game of numbers, and in its language I communicate with the guys.

- Numbers game?

It was in a John Mayer song: “So I play the numbers game. To find a way to say that life has just begun”, song “Stop the Train”. So I don’t push myself into limits. I found a convertible form, and I always had the content, from the age of fifteen, when I started doing all this.

- Did you graduate from music school?

I have only three years of accordion class, and without solfeggio. And I played the accordion solely because I had some disagreements with my parents. I listened a lot back then electronic music, especially loved radio Station 106.8, because only there you could hear so much inaccessible music. The only alternative was to go to Gorbushka and randomly buy cassettes using the psy-trance or progressive trance tags. And I loved this music so much that I asked my parents to buy me a synthesizer.

And they said: “Why a synthesizer? Let's have an accordion, there are also keys there."

I didn’t refuse, but I played and realized that it was all wrong. I found it on my mother’s mezzanine very old guitar"Moscow-80". It was made of an incomprehensible material, I’m not even sure that it was wood, and the tension of the strings was so strong that I put a pack of sheets under the fingerboard so that at least I could press them somehow. Then I went to study with a teacher in acoustic guitar. Apparently, she felt something - in the second lesson she set me the task of coming up with my own song. I did it - of course, it was something simple and stupid, but it gave me an understanding of what I could do, and what was close to my sound ideals.

- How did you, a trance lover who played the accordion, get into metal?

One of my biggest disappointments was this: when I listened to Scandinavian metal - In Flames, Opeth, such melodic death and progressive death of the old style - there were no people in my circle who shared this interest. I started growing my hair, saved up some pocket money for a leather jacket and came to a meeting of metalworkers, it was the so-called pole on the Ryazansky Prospekt metro station. There were a lot of stories about these gatherings, but when I got there, the first thing they handed me was a two-liter Obolon. And when I tried to start a conversation about music and guitars, they looked at me incredulously and asked: “Are you going to drink or not? Metaaaaaall!”

It was a disappointment - I wasn’t able to talk to metalheads about metal. I realized that you shouldn’t classify yourself as a subculture, but you should look for music that reflects your essence, be it a pink cassette “Hands up!” at nine years old or purchased at Gorbushka a branded CD of the Katatonia group. At some point it dawned on me that music is a form of communication, the transfer of something inexplicable that is in the chest area of ​​​​one person to another, and there is no need to spend thousands of words. But everything in my life was difficult with communication, I tried to develop this skill in myself, read a lot of books, talked to people who were older than me, thought about how to understand myself.

Clip “All Mine”

This was what my creative quest was all about - both the first group where I was a vocalist, and participation in cover bands that played in restaurants. I really didn’t want to burden my parents with additional expenses and my own wishes. I met professional jazz musicians ten years older than me, they liked the way I sing. They offered to earn extra money - let's be, they say, “tavern makers.”

It was fun, we sang Aerosmith, Sting, “A-Studio”. Soon, of course, I got tired of it, I developed a complex that I couldn’t express myself. I improved my guitar playing skills by playing 5-6 hours a day. While I was training, I realized that it was difficult for me to play other people’s parts and that improvisation was much closer. Even when we were rehearsing for cover performances, my favorite moment was when we started improvising, and I sang in so-called “vanilla English” - when you imitate English phonemes.

Why did you end up with the genre range you have now? Heard “Trilogy” by The Weeknd and decided to go in this direction?

Even before all my guitar experiences, I worked a lot with my voice and listened to old soul - Brian McKnight, Tyrese, Maxwell. I've always loved them and thought that for a vocalist this kind of music was like technical death metal for a guitarist. Replicating all the intonations and technical features of McKnight's vocalizations is a very difficult task. But when I heard The Weeknd for the first time, of course, I was very impressed.

Then there was Bryson Tiller, who had a great song, I heard it, and something clicked. I realized that such music for me as a vocalist is the most successful form of self-expression, in which there are practically no frames and boundaries. Local rock is still a rather text-centric genre - I tried my hand at rock music, being a vocalist, including in a group that sounded at the intersection of Incubus and Pink Floyd. It sounded good in English, but when we translated it into Russian, it turned out to be neither shaky nor shaky.

And it was only after meeting Dead Dynasty that I realized that using the phonetics of the Russian language you can achieve the state that I experience when listening to Western music. Before the interview, you and I discussed Zhenya Fedorova from Tequilajazzz - he also succeeds in this. But he has such a unique and individual intonation that it cannot be used as a template for work.

New album Noa was released in September - it looks like this is also a new stage in his musical evolution

- Do you feel your own evolution as a writer on “Stranger”?

“Stranger” is the culmination of [me] as an artist. On previous releases I was looking for myself. In “Winds” I tried to dissolve my sadness and feeling of being misunderstood. In “Lucid Dreams” - to express a certain escape from reality, your own world. "Earth/Water" is just a collection of songs that I like. It was originally supposed to be a full-fledged Shades album, but I was switched, and I decided that I would only make music that resonated with me, without regard to trends, without descriptions of how I was having fun or having a great time. . In general, something that I would really like myself, and at the same time I could play it for my younger brother and grandmother.

After every release they hung some kind of labels on me, I was tired of it. "Stranger" is a record made primarily for people like me. Closed, a little sad, musically savvy and a little disliked “this Russian rap of yours”

I hope that this record will become a gateway to the world of modern hip-hop and Rʼn’B for older people. Her vibe can be understood by anyone of any nationality in any mood. My mother works as a psychiatrist, and she draws an analogy between my music and therapy: you want to listen to it when you are tired of everything. Listen, understand yourself, calm down, overcome feelings of weakness, worthlessness and meaninglessness of what is happening and fall in love with life again.

- You write the music yourself, but Dynasty’s beatmakers also worked on the “Stranger” album.

It's 50/50. I finalize my music myself. For example, Pasha Meep sends me a beat, I improvise on it and come up with lyrics, looking for vocal implementation. At my house there is an ordinary rectangular table, two professional monitors, a sound card for 7,000 rubles and an affordable tube microphone with an acoustic tap. It’s in this three-by-two space that I write everything, put it together, and bring it to completion. I read opinions that Dynasty uses the services expensive studios. But no, we do everything “on our knees.”

Live performance track “Every time” on the On Air channel

I am a supporter of the idea that music should sound good in the source and be catchy in the first demo. I had experience as a sound engineer. They send me a demo, and more often than not I understand that it is a failure. What I hear is not a song, but a new-fangled vocabulary, a desire to hype, to lick someone’s feed. Nowadays, in general, a very fashionable combination - heavy overloaded guitar, powerful drums, booming bass and whining, Lil Peep type beat is what they call it, but there is no individuality. It sounds sad. As for “on the knee” - as long as it doesn’t affect the quality. But here everything sounds high quality, both on good acoustics and on Abibas headphones for 150 rubles from the market.

And I still work with Dead Dynasty because even in the rough version their music already sounds cool, possessing something special - lyrics, vocal moves, or, for example, a combination, like Mnogoznaal, of a monumental voice and colder beats.

I had an experience: I recorded a composition at home that I strongly believed in. The demo was done on a low budget and I paid for a studio where I recorded the vocals on an expensive Telefunken microphone and had a good engineer record me. I listened to the source code and realized that there were some aspects that needed to be worked on, but overall the idea was conveyed. A week later they sent me the mixed version, which sounded like a complete failure - all the emotions that I wanted to convey had weight in the combination of voice and beat, in some special moments, and not separately in the vocal and musical tracks. Let's just say, in a combination of imperfections that add up to perfection. And I could not explain these details to the person.

I asked to open the project, did some manipulations, then went back to the original project, made changes, and it turned out much better. And this was noted by everyone to whom I played both tracks: they said that one version was flat, and the other with soul. I've been trying to figure out where the line is ever since. To be honest, I still don’t understand. But I do everything myself.

Clip "We will"

Your videos are released on the Dead Dynasty general YouTube channel. There is such a thing that mostly young subscribers of Pharaoh are dissatisfied about this in the comments.

There is a story that I still remember with a shudder: I went with Pharaoh on the Lonely Star tour in 2017 and spent part of the tour opening for him. I didn’t indulge myself with illusions: naturally, everyone came to these concerts for Gleb and looked at my several songs very biasedly. For a long time now I have been fixated on the topic of preparing for concerts, I always have to be sober, singing, I get tremendous pleasure from the fact that when the sound is set up, I hit the notes, I hear and convey my music as efficiently as possible, and those around me on stage people who mean a lot to me. The now widespread dancing to the plus is not about me at all - in general I am strictly against hack work, and have never allowed myself to do it. And so I was faced with misunderstanding from the public, and every evening after the concert I had a small nervous breakdown. I couldn't find a place for myself. But I realized that I need to move on.

Here was Yegor Creed’s hit “The Most-Most” in 2014, a very fashionable composition at that time. It's impossible to listen to her now. And I recently turned on “Superunknown” by Soundgarden, and from the very first song it shakes me to my fingertips. And this is 1994, how many years ago was that... I would like Noa’s music to become like this for the younger generation and in a couple of years they will discover my songs with new side. And not only for them, but for everyone who believes that trends in hip-hop and neo-Rʼn’B are temporary. But, of course, I’m still far from the grandees I’m talking about. I don’t have very high self-esteem, and even if everyone around me praises my new works, I still understand that I need to move on and develop.

October 10 social network Pavel Durov “VKontakte” is ten years old. Over the past years, this platform survived the departure of its creator, became part of the Mail.Ru holding and underwent significant transformation. Now VKontakte allows you not only to communicate with friends, but also unites strangers according to interests in different publics. These include both public pages on a very specific topic with a couple of hundred subscribers, and groups with hundreds of thousands of members and which have spawned new trends in the offline world. The Motherland festival, rapper Pharaoh, VV17CHØU7 parties and “Slaughterhouse” are just some of the phenomena that originated and actively developed on the social network. The Village spoke with the creators of MDK, “Russia without us”, “Goal: 1 billion rubles in a year” and other large publics that grew into musical associations, businesses and media, starting on VKontakte.

When did we start attracting investments? It turned out that they read me too
and investment bankers, -
by the way, one of them became our private investor

Ayaz Shabutdinov, creator of the public and holding company Like: I am 24 years old and I am the founder of the Like holding. According to RBC, at the end of 2015 we occupied 8.2% of the market in the “Coffee to go” segment in Russia. We have more than 1,200 beds in hostels in the CIS. We have attracted more than 80 million rubles of investment in our projects. Became semi-finalists international award entrepreneurs EQ GSEA and the “School of a Young Billionaire” by Forbes magazine, RBC Award nominees in the “Startup of the Year” category. Revenue from all projects and the franchise network from January to July 2016: 507 million 428 thousand 580 rubles. The publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber plans to publish my book. If it weren’t for the blog on VKontakte, nothing would most likely have happened.

In 2013, namely on January 1, inspired by the story of the founder of Dodo Pizza, Fyodor Ovchinnikov, I decided to start doing business publicly. The blog needed some kind of provocative name; “Diary of an Entrepreneur,” “Business Quote Book” and other formats did not arouse interest, so I decided to do something more daring. This is how the blog “Goal: 2 million rubles per year” appeared. IN next year it was already called “Goal: 30 million rubles per year” and, finally, “Goal: 1 billion rubles per year.” On the blog we publish financial reports on the work of companies. And the name changed based on our financial goals. When the blog was created, there was no such format yet, then a thousand clone blogs appeared in which guys set themselves such goals.

Such openness is both a motivator and an obligation to be responsible. In the summer of 2015, we were experiencing a big box office gap, and I can say with confidence that if it weren’t for personal responsibility to hundreds of thousands of people and the moral support of subscribers, it would have been much more difficult to get out of the nosedive we entered due to rapid growth business.

Subscribers saw how I assembled beds for the first hostel three years ago, participated in the creation of the concept, and together we chose the name of the company. Now I am sharing with them the results of a meeting with people from Silicon Valley, describing how our partners cheated us, how we are suing over a new bill banning the placement of hostels in residential buildings, how after the 2014 crisis and the fall of the ruble we closed travel agencies and I I'm still paying off the company's debts. Because of this, each person feels included.

Everyone can contribute to the development of our business. For example, we are now developing a network of barbershops, and 200 subscribers acted as a focus group. When we started attracting investments, it turned out that investment bankers also read me - by the way, one of them became our private investor. Every month we make about 400 thousand purchases, from coffee to pizza. Among the buyers, of course, there are blog subscribers.

I keep getting feedback, which many other entrepreneurs do not have. For example, after buying coffee we gave a receipt with a phone number general director: if suddenly a person was poorly served, then he could call the director of the company directly. So during the whole time there was, if I’m not mistaken, only one call. But I receive thousands of messages directly or in comments. This allows for continuous improvement. There is such a book “A Complaint as a Gift” - it’s about this. People see that we are far from perfect, but there is a colossal difference between what it was two or three years ago and what we have now. And this is also the merit of the blog’s subscribers on VKontakte - criticism on the matter allows us to become better every day.

The blog also helps fill vacancies. Once, a good HR manager and I assembled a sales department of 17 people in a week. As for product sales, the blog on VKontakte is one of the key channels. This was even written about in the “Company Secret”. Depending on the product, revenue that comes from sales through a blog on VKontakte can reach up to 30% of all sales.

I have now returned from Silicon Valley, where I went to study the experience of accelerators. We launched ours in Moscow. Most of the participants in the first stream are entrepreneurs from the blog. Among them, for example, is a company not from Russia with revenues of more than a billion rubles and a staff of 300 employees. As a result, we have the right to purchase 24.9% of the stake in the company at its current value. We are currently negotiating with the guys who own a chain of hotels in Kenya - they were valued at $4 million. It is difficult to say how much money such deals will bring in in the future. But many of them are born thanks to our publicity and blogging on VKontakte.

Motherland is my main job now. Every morning
I start
from listening to a couple of dozen new performers

Maxim Stepakov, founder: I liked this whole wave of new domestic music - Motorama, Manicure, Narkotiki, Galway, Magnetic Poetry, Ifwe. In 2012, there was no community yet that could add some coherence to this whole movement. Then I decided to start creating such a community myself. To begin with, everything was done at the level of the Motherland track blog.

The public shot almost immediately. People had no idea that there was so much cool music in Russia. A few months later we started holding concerts and small festivals. Our first event is the Fatherland picnic in the Nagatinskaya floodplain. “Hostel”, “Lisichkin Bread” and others performed there. Our subscribers came there, brought blankets with them, homemade cookies, tea and lemonade. Then we held our first club concert at the Chocolate Factory - together with the groups Ruble Gang, Region 77, and Serdtseder.

Soon we were noticed by various journalists, publications, and art directors of clubs.
In February 2013, Shurik Gorbachev called us to a meeting and suggested running our own personalized column “Motherland Playlist” on the Afisha website (and “Map of the Motherland” later on Vozdukh). This was an incentive for further development.

In June 2013, we found sponsors (two large companies) and held the first big festival, Motherland Summer 2013, on the territory of the Flacon design plant. The lineup was powerful: On-The-Go, Motorama, SBPC, The Retuses, Tesla Boy, EIMIC, Sonic Death, Trud, Lemonday, Human Tetris and many others. The very next year we didn’t have to look for sponsors - Motherland Summer 2014 in Muzeon Park was held with the support of the city.

Motherland is my main job now. Every morning I start by listening to a couple dozen new artists. Today four people are involved in the public: me, two editors and my assistant. Every year we hold several festivals, periodically organize city holidays, such as City Day, Christmas, Russia Day, and hold concerts and parties. Of course, we continue to introduce subscribers to new groups in our public. All posts in the public were published and are published free of charge. Motherland Summer is a festival with free entry. Almost all other events are paid.

It seems to me that we have radically changed the attitude towards domestic bands, and every city now has its own wonderful musicians. When we started the public, most people had foreign performers in their audio recordings. Now every second person has “Buerak”, “Killers”, Pompeya, Summer of Haze or “Pasosh” in his audio recordings on VKontakte.

(it has a separate

Dynasty. We will describe its composition in detail below. Before us is a beginning, but already very popular rap label, which originated on the Internet and found its way without any outside help. The musicians who are part of the group have proven by their own example that by making high-quality music, you can become famous without PR.

Compound

So, we have briefly described what is special about the Dead Dynasty project. We will consider the composition of the group below. The most popular member of Dead Dynasty is rapper Pharaoh. In life his name is Gleb Golubin. Gleb was born in 1996, in his youth he was seriously interested in football, but later received an injury and was forced to quit the sport. Pharaoh is a rapper who released his first track under this pseudonym in 2013. Previously, I only recorded small demos at my friends’ studios. In the same 2013, he graduated from school and entered the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University. Gleb gained popularity a year later, when he released a video for the song “Nothing Has Changed”, and then immediately prepared the mixtape “Wadget”. After some time, he becomes a member of the creative association Dead Dynasty. The creator of the team is Boulevard Depo.

MNOGOZNAAL

Pharaoh released the mixtape Dolor in 2015. After this, he finally cemented his name in the rap industry. Less than six months later, he released another mixtape, this time with i61, called Rage Mode. In 2016, he published his latest work, Phosphor. This rapper is one of the most famous members of Dead Dynasty. The association also includes a person calling himself MNOGOZNAAL. He is the second most popular participant in the project. This performer was born and raised in a small town called Pechora. Already as an adult, he moved to Ukhta, where he lives to this day. In addition to Dead Dynasty, he participates in the creative association LTMA. Basically, nothing more about this, but people are usually not very interested in his personal space. They prefer to learn about the life of a musician from his tracks. MNOGOZNAAL's compositions often carry that unique atmosphere that takes the listener to another, strange philosophical world. It's hard to describe his music that easily. To get acquainted, we recommend watching the SIN CARA video.

Stealth

The Dead Dynasty group cannot do without JEEMBO. He is one of the most mysterious, but still popular members of the team. This artist regularly releases good quality tracks, but cannot boast of a full-fledged release. But it is worth noting that JEEMBO has a unique flow, which has already appealed to many listeners. Despite the small amount of material released, this performer easily finds new listeners, and sometimes even gives concerts (which are held with great excitement). These were some of the most popular representatives of this creative association. But it is worth noting that in addition to the above, the label includes several more artists, beatmakers, producers, and even one tattoo artist. So we introduced you to the features of the Dead Dynasty association. The composition of the group was described in detail above. main feature The project is that its popularity has increased only thanks to the Internet.