(from spotify)

I was born in the USSR a few weeks before it dissolved, so I ended up spending much of my formative years in the post-Soviet Union slums, raised by a single, young mother. Since that corner of the world was suddenly no longer shielded from the outside world of arts and entertainment, my exposure to media consisted of a lot of weird Soviet cartoons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sailor Moon.

In the mid 90s, before I was really exposed to Hip-Hop, I was obsessed with Michael Jackson when it came to music, but I mostly just wanted to be Spiderman or Donatello. I experienced my first dose of Hip-Hop in my pre-teens, having then left my previous environment and travelled the world a little; a friend lent me Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest on CD. My whole world was changed the moment I heard Electric Relaxation -I no longer wanted to be a comic book character, I wanted to be Q-Tip. And so I started rapping.

These days, I use music as a cathartic release. My goal isn’t to ascertain “universal truths”, to “heal” the world, nor is it to find people that relate. I’m not trying to understand or help anyone else; my approach is entirely selfish. I’m just trying to crack my own code the best I can. If me doing so somehow ends up helping someone else along the way, that’s dope as fuck.