Is Oksimiron's new album a complete failure? Or is there still something valuable there?

We publish two reviews at once - one is not even completely abusive

“Nationality: No,” an album released by Miron Fedorov without any announcement after a year of silence, judging by the reaction of social networks, almost no one liked it. The rapper did not comment in any way on the “Creative Method” podcast, where he was accused of grooming and sexualized violence, but the new record is criticized not only for this. Many were surprised and even outraged by the unexpected choice of the main theme: in the new album, Oksimiron does nothing but boast of wealth and a good life. The collapse of the reputation of Oksimiron - one of the key artists of the last decade - and his attempt to return to creative life seem to be events that require serious reflection. Therefore, we are publishing two reviews of this work at once. Unfortunately, these are anonymous texts: we do not name the authors for security reasons.

Attention! There is swearing in this text. If this is unacceptable to you, do not read it.

Opinion one: the album's concept is unclear, but the lyrics are still good

You'll have to start with the timeline.

Oksimiron announced the mini-album “Nationality: None” in May 2024. The title is a quote from the wanted card of the artist, against whom the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal case. By that time, Oksimiron had already been classified as a “foreign agent” and was fined twice for violating the “foreign agent” law. And also, two songs were banned (in one they found separatism , in the other extremism ) plus they were fined for “discrediting the army” (in fact, for anti-war statements). In September 2024, the rapper made another announcement - the Dolce Vita world tour. This name already looked mysterious: there were no such releases in Oksimiron’s discography. The announcement promised "a completely new show with an atmosphere of abundance, luxury and slight anxiety." It also contained the following words: “Sweet life. Is it possible to better describe what is happening around? and “Why the bitter truth? Get your visa to the sweet life!

The cancellation of the tour (or rather, postponement, but a mysteriously large postponement - all the way to 2026) became known in November 2024. Oksimiron’s communication traditionally consists of understatements, teasers and hints - and here the artist referred to his health condition and did not explain anything else. Tickets were selling well, they even announced a soldout in Warsaw and scheduled an additional concert, and there were still four months left before the start of the tour - it was clear that the reason for the postponement was definitely not bad demand.

But instead of a tour , the Creative Method podcast was released four months later.

Oksimiron not only did not comment on its content, but since then there has been no news or songs from him, and his social networks have not been updated. Suddenly, a couple of weeks before the New Year, a link to that same mini-album “Nationality: No” appeared. “This is a spontaneous decision for the Christmas tree - the Jew didn’t plan to return for a long time,” the rapper raps in the opening song “How are I doing.” And it makes it clear: the illness is real, and not a reason to cancel the tour in the midst of a scandal (the author of the investigation, Nastya Krasilnikova, confidently says that by the time the concerts were canceled, Oksimiron already knew that it was being prepared).

In addition to the sad joke that his conversations now are “healthy - for now,” and the doctors tell him: “healthy for now,” there is other evidence along the track that Oksimiron’s new release is songs from remission. Take for example the same “How are I doing”: the philosophy “I live well: alive is already good” in the verse, the comparison “Risen as in 33” in the chorus and the conclusion “When should we be alive, if not now?” in the final. “A year on sick leave,” he says about himself in the track “Lost & Found.”

It looks like this is the same album in the Dolce Vita concept that the rapper was preparing for the tour. But, to be honest, even careful and repeated listening to the release does not help to fully understand its essence.

An eloquent description of one’s wealth has been a main theme in American rap for at least fifteen years. Russian borrowers joined it later - over the last five years or a little more, with the advent of streaming platforms, large royalties and fat advances. Oksimiron always laughed at this and, as far as one can judge, considered it a sign of philistinism and spiritual poverty. And the rare personal expression of wealth and success was often accompanied by intellectual reflection: it’s lonely at the top and so on.

It is difficult to understand what is causing the current immersion in the topic. Let’s say we can say that “How are I doing” is a song not so much about “I eat crabs”, but about “alive is already good.” That “Vintage” is actually not about “I dress smartly,” but about “my rap is vintage, not for everyone compared to your vulgar brands” (rap about the total superiority of one’s own rap has been Oksimiron’s main theme since the track “I’m a hater,” that is, literally from the first day). That “Adventures” is about his rap dominance and about the genre as a whole. That “Lost & Found” is about a lost home and found love. But the theme of an exaggerated and caricatured sweet life here serves as the core on which all these plots are impaled. Next comes an ode to love (“Song of Songs”), an ode to his craft (“Russian Foreign Music”) and a completely unexpected final track “God in the Details,” where the MC gives way to the lyricist to express delight in the highest plan.

Oksimiron’s own plan is incomprehensible to me. Either he wanted to show the generation of rap conformists and rap consumerists how the real rap aristocracy of the spirit flexes in material wealth. Whether it's just flexing the rap muscle on a new machine, after all, this release is definitely no weirder than the previous "Family Album." Is it still worth looking for a deeper meaning: after all, this is always expected from Oksimiron?

In the spring of 2024, Noise MC’s album “Not All at Home” was released - perhaps the last major anti-war record by great contemporary Russian artists. It is impossible to live this trauma indefinitely without damage to the psyche, and the same Noise will inevitably come to search for other themes in his work - otherwise there is a risk of turning from a musician who feels the nerve of time into a mobile propaganda poster.

Oksimiron is another significant political activist from rap music. At the peak of his popularity, he loudly supported the opposition, personally went to protests, and once - from today it sounds like complete surreal - he held a concert of rappers “I will sing my music” with a live broadcast on Dozhd, demanding the release of the arrested Husky and not to interfere with his giving concerts. Husky was then released, and since then he has been singing his music freely.

If the hero of Noise is going crazy inside the news flow, but is trying to go to the light, then the hero of Oxy has already muted the telegram with alarming news and settled in the province by the sea: “It’s easy and calm at the front: I’m only talking about personal things.” He is no longer inside this game, although he reserves the right to comment on it: “Rapperswere banned from everything - rappers swallowed everything, / They are not against war - and they will only ask for peace in the store” (the effect is enhanced by a play on words with the name of the luxury brand Amiri, popular among rappers). Well, speaking about himself today, he, in particular, reports that he “don’t give a fuck about generals, don’t give a fuck about any agenda” - just like Skepta, who once said : “We don’t listen to no politician. <…> And we don’t care about your -ism and schisms.” And beyond the borders of his country he still finds his internal emigration.

Oksimiron’s lyrics once again remind us that he graduated with a gold medal from that rap school where all the best people taught, from Eminem to MF Duma. In Russian rap there are still a lot of artists who, to make a punch about their rap longevity, will appropriately dissect Brodsky’s quote. Another thing is that the new rap generation is studying according to a different program. That’s why Icegergert is on the charts now, who is helpless with punches and rhymes, but knows how to do a good job, has a sweet face and produces lines-memes for TikTok on a conveyor belt.

Musically, “Nationality: None” is also very retro: several low-tempo tracks with soul choruses, two sexy drill tracks, one monotonous action movie to “pummel the rap.” If this is the basis of the program for the Dolce Vita tour, such a tour will be a bit boring - you need to sell seats right away. At first glance, these tracks also shouldn’t qualify for a noticeable place in the charts - however, four tracks made it into the top 100 singles of Yandex.Music, even if not at the very top. On the Apple Music album chart in Russia, Oksimiron is in first place, in VK Music he is in sixth, surrounded by Makan and Friendly Tag.

In the chorus of the song “Russian Foreign Music” there is a line “there is a boring, dissatisfied audience in the hall.” The public is really dissatisfied : even Oksimiron’s mixtape “Time of Troubles” did not receive such irritated reactions - a “trick” of old tracks instead of the promised new album. Not only the creators of the “Creative Method” podcast, but also the listeners did not receive Oksimiron’s answers (and the game of old money, it seems, was perceived as a mockery - and a terribly annoying one). Judging by Twitter and muztelegram, his career is over. If you look at the charts, things are not quite like that.

Oksimiron’s story has come full circle: his debut album was released 14 years ago and was called “The Eternal Jew.” Its author sat far from Russia, felt like a wanderer and made the best, in his opinion, rap, which did not coincide at all with what was listened to back then in his homeland. Did he expect the wanderings to be truly eternal? He scribbled it all on himself.

Opinion two: Oksimiron’s strong point has always been frankness, but now he is building a wall between himself and his listeners

Oksimiron is no stranger to media asceticism. He tried the “keep silent for N months and release something important without warning” method at least twice: the rapper disappeared for a long time before the battle with Slava CPSU in 2017 and before the release of the video “Who Killed Mark?” in 2021.

What's different this time? That's all, really.

Oksimiron’s creative and career path has long been going, if not contrary, then certainly not in unison with the development of the rest of the genre. In the late 2000s and early 1900s, he managed to attract listeners who were far from the non-technical, boyish, conceptual Russian rap of those years. Fedorov offered this conditional humanities student a loquacious and aggressive hip-hop that existed somewhere between German battle rap and English grime.

From 2014 to 2017, Fedorov himself and co- wrote several big songs, but most importantly, he took part in what critics, listeners and other musicians will call a “game changer” in Russian rap: when three albums were released in one November 2015, which presented a completely different, different image of the genre.

Scryptonite's "House with Normal Phenomena" showed that rap in Russian can be complex in terms of sound - and generated a large wave of followers for whom sound is more important than text. ATL's "Marabou" was both electronic dance and meaningful. Oksimiron’s “Gorgorod” invited not so much to listen to music as to follow a dashingly rhymed conceptual dystopia about a writer in crisis. And at the same time, take a closer look at the figure of Oksimiron himself.

By that time, Fedorov had managed to wander around Europe, study at Oxford, enter into a creative alliance with the artist Shock (which then fell apart after an attack by the patriotic rapper Roma Zhigan), return to Russia and take part in the rise of rap battles.

Oksimiron compensated for the lack of musical research with words and the power of a figure - both real and fictional (that is, the writer Mark in Gorgorod). His method is not to separate the personal and the creative, himself as an artist and himself as a person: it was not without reason that Slava CPSU criticized him at the battle for the constant “I” in his tracks. From the very first tracks, he is a reality hero, and listeners can watch the zigzags of his fate: here he survives in troubled east London, now he returns home, now he achieves popularity and tries to comprehend it.

Evoking compassion is one of Oksimiron’s most important skills. The most striking example is the 2021 track “Who Killed Mark?” Fedorov spent ten minutes telling how, a decade earlier, he made a deal with Roma Zhigan so that he would not publish a video of Miron being beaten - and how he suffered with this for ten years. A side note: a few days after the release, Victoria Kuchak, the future heroine of the Creative Method podcast, spoke for the first time about moral abuse on the part of Miron, but then these accusations dissolved in a stream of universal sympathy for the artist.

Also in November 2021, Miron released a mixtape of old tracks and the album “Beauty and Ugliness.” By that time, Fedorov’s paths with the rest of the genre had noticeably diverged: instead of technical rhymes and meaningful lyrics, at the expense of music, Russian rap chose hedonism, the cult of money and imitation of Western trends. “Beauty and Ugliness” did not tell the listener anything about the current state of Russian hip-hop, but Miron did not need this: to gather maximum attention, the power of his name and the power of that very reality of his name was enough.

Before the full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine, Oksimiron was part of the Russian music industry: for example, the “Beauty and Ugliness” promo on Moscow banners was made by the “Zvuk” streaming service from Sber. After February 24, Fedorov condemned the invasion, left the country and began releasing tracks with comments on recent events (like the “League of the Dangerous Internet”).

“Nationality: None” came out at perhaps the worst moment in Oksimiron’s career. On the one hand, forced emigration drew an even greater line between it and the rest of hip-hop in Russia - ethical, geographical, industrial, whatever. On the other hand, the rapper did not react at all to Nastya Krasilnikova’s investigation: both he himself and his manager Zhenya Murodshoeva fell silent and went into information austerity. After which any future release by Oksimiron by default contained two intrigues: is it true that the rapper got sick, and how will he explain the stories of the girls from the podcast?

Alas, it was at this moment that Fedorov decided to take the path of withdrawal rather than revelation. “Nationality: none” reveals virtually nothing about Miron 2025. Everyone is waiting for confessions, but they receive notes from a hedonist: I live well, I have money and a girl, I rose from the dead, I was sick with “jaundice” (meaning the press), haters gonna hate. “Nationality: none” is escapism: an escape from the “dark twenties”, the pressure of society, and oneself.

“Nationality: none” is a cloud of tags and juggling rhymes: Central Cee and “Center E”, Dua Lipa and Duolingo, lines like “I Z - only when changing the layout.” But, perhaps, for the first time since “Gorgorod” (originally conceived as a story from the point of view of a fictional character), Oksimiron’s release, in fact, does not contain Oksimiron himself.

If Russian rap stylistically distanced itself from Fedorov even before the war (and ethically after), then Krasilnikova’s investigation alienated socially sensitive and civically concerned people from Miron - a fairly large group in his audience. Probably for the first time they were waiting for his release not out of interest in his figure, but for the sake of explanation.

And other, less involved listeners were actually expecting the same thing: even if the investigation did not convince everyone, this was the main highlight of Miron’s life in recent years and by far the most sensitive blow to his reputation - and many wanted to see how the artist would get out of this situation. To this blow, Fedorov chose to respond in approximately no way: “Are they digging under me? Fuck it, okay. I'm a reptilian - don't give a fuck about snakes. Fuck awards, fuck drama, fuck media and collaborations. Fuck the generals, the liberals, fuck any agenda.”

It seems that this is Oksimiron’s first album, which turned out to be of no particular use to anyone - with the exception of that devoted part of the listeners who either ignored or criticized the March investigation. And, perhaps, himself: when Fedorov declares that his life is good, he himself admits that this is an affirmation.

"Jellyfish"