Songs of traitors

And now, when 2022 has already begun in full force, we will remember the unkind word of the 2021st . The authors of Coolites recall the worst that happened in the cultural field in the past year.

On November 24, 2021, Alisher Morgenstern did not return to his house in the cottage village near Ufa. Leaving a collection of expensive sneakers and cars, a popular rapper with his wife and security guard secretly went to Belarus, and then to Dubai. The day before, the news came that the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, stated that Morgenstern - probably metaphorically - "sells drugs on social networks and involves a huge number of our youth in his sphere of communication." The artist’s departure was immediately connected with the statement of the head of the UK, who was especially interested in his songs after Morgenstern publicly doubted the expediency of lush festivities on the occasion of the Victory Day. As a confirmation that the escape from the country was timely, a message came about the closure of the KAIF restaurant in Moscow due to a certain unscheduled check . Two weeks later, Morgenstern released the video “Home”, in which Bastrykin answered the following:

“I trade only in social networks only with my e ∗ police.
VEE LEA RESTIK, but I will not die of hunger (kAIF) .
He left Russia, because it became cold there, hmm. ”

The 2021st in Russia turned out to be colder than usual: the year was remembered by the unprecedented level of state repressions against activists, politicians, journalists and any dissenters. The arrest of Navalny, the “palace business”, the defeat of the FBK*, the mass hunt for foreign agents, the liquidation of the “memorial” **. Russian musicians did not stand aside - they appeared on protests and performed in support of the victims of law enforcement agencies, and most importantly, they wrote and sang songs in which anger and dissatisfaction with what was happening . Caustic and irritated social comments arose in the most unexpected places: not only on the new albums of the classics of the rock “DDT” and “crematorium” , which honed the skill of the Azopov language even under Andropov, but also among the stars of the new generation of Russian rap - for example, LoqieMean , dug “my dad is building a quasi” in the track “Batya Nation” , or the “dad” or the “battens Boulevard Depo , called "SK" recorded a new version of the old Russian hard labor song.

Five years ago, rappers preferred to stay away from politics and social agenda, now there is no longer - apparently, it was boiling. The suffocating Tsitgai is most of all from the two main rap albums of the 2021st- “beauty and ugliness” Oxxxymiron and “Outing to the city” Noize MC . Miron Fedorov, at a reversion release, spits the abbreviations of the RKN and the TFR and with masochistic voluptuousness flaunts the fact that he is a foreign agent . Ivan Alekseev, who recorded the strongest album in his discography, speaks even more clearly: draws a parallel between the current twenties and those that were a hundred years ago-in front of the Great Stalinist terror, and scribbles a bitter and firing “song of the traitor”-an ironic autodonos on a Lubyanka in the rhythm of the cha-cha-cha .

Irony irony, and the denunciation genre is again popular in Russia - letters addressed to prosecutors and SK demanding to check the songs and performances of the musicians were eagerly composed by representatives of all kinds of public organizations. Some Veterans of Russia asked to check the work of Oxxxymiron and Noize MC , activists from the Coordinating Council in defense of public morality fought with Tilya Lindemann concerts in Novosibirsk, and the Yekaterinburg Public Center for the Protection of Family Values ​​“Ivan-Ti” informed the prosecutor's office about promoting prostitution and debauchery in the rapper Instasam. As accurately summed up Oxxxymiron , "here everyone is a foreign agent, if not guarded and not a cop."

And also about historical analogies: many have already noted that the 2022nd anniversary of the “philosophical ship” -a mass expulsion of the opposition intelligentsia, taught by the Bolshevik authorities. It seems that now we can already talk about the “rapper steamer”: followed by Morgenstern from Russia, two more rap stars have left-Elja, against which the administrative case of drug promotion, and Face , which was canceled concerts . Once Face stated on his political album the “paths of the path”: “I am the enemy of the state, my language is true” -now he can feel what they should be in reality.

Formally, excessively freedom -loving and sharp in the language of artists will pursue for propaganda of drugs and debauchery or insulting the memory of veterans, but their main danger to the state is that they have too much influence on millions of people - or, in the words of Bastrykin, involve a huge number of our youth in their sphere of communication. But they say and sing (so far) what they want, and their language is without bones. The state, which destroyed the Institute of Independent Media and seeks to control every movement on the Internet, cannot endure this. The influence of Roskomnadzor on popular artists and their pages in social networks is not yet distributed, so point pressure and indicative intimidation are used. The question is how effective it will be: will the artists get scared and will they stop saying what they think and write down the songs about it?

Let us return to the occasion of the Morgenster. He seemed to be not afraid. In the peak of Bastrykin, the rapper-tricster, who moved to the Arab Emirates, turned into a real foreign agent and launched the “most free media of the Runet”-the telegram channel “Not Morgenstern”, which is already under a million subscribers. While there are publishing information with memes and staring over the news from Russia . However, experts from the media business have already evaluated the high potential of the influence of the resource: even conspiracy theory sounds that Morgensterna obliged to create a channel popular among children and adolescents in order to promote the “necessary ideas” for the 2024 presidential elections there. Even if this is true and Morgenstern became a double agent who has come to a deal with the authorities, he continues, metaphorically speaking, “there is a grandfather”, involving more and more young people in his networks:

* Recognized in the Russian Federation a foreign agent and an extremist organization.
** recognized in the Russian Federation a foreign agent.