Translated material
What have you become?
Oksimiron* released an album after “a year on sick leave”
Oksimiron. Photo: social networks
18+ THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) IS PRODUCED AND/OR DISTRIBUTED BY FOREIGN AGENT FEDOROV MIRON YANOVICH OR CONCERNES THE ACTIVITIES OF FOREIGN AGENT FEDOROV MIRON YANOVICH.
St. Petersburg rapper Miron Fedorov* (Oksimiron), who in 2022, like many Russian musicians, became a “man of the world,” released a new album “Nationality: None.” This is his first full-length album in exile, but those who expected biting lines that get to the very essence from the truth teller are rather disappointed. Few people were expecting an album from Oksimiron, who was silent throughout 2025. He himself admits in one of the tracks that releasing it was “a spontaneous decision, under the Christmas tree.”
Oksimiron is already one of the key characters in the history of Russian rap. He is a rap intellectual, a rap poet, who talentedly sketches what is happening with sharp, sharp rhymes. Demonstrating high-level verbal freestyle, Oxy raised and continues to lift the genre, which could have been drowned in the primitive glorification of drugs, crime, money and other brutality for the audience hanging out “behind the garages.”
Until 2022, he harshly recited political topics in his tracks - from flashing lights to “banned organizations”, which were already beginning to multiply in the country through the efforts of high officials. Afterwards, he left Russia and was almost the first to organize solo tours outside its borders, gathering Russian-speaking halls in Istanbul and Berlin. At the same time, he released resonant singles like “League of the Dangerous Internet,” in which he rhymed about Mizulina Jr.
At the same time, in September 2022, he managed to return to his native St. Petersburg, probably to settle matters, and at the same time shot a video in the city for the daring song “Oida”** (25 million views), saying “hello to the Investigative Committee and the prosecutor’s office.” Later, the song was declared “prohibited for distribution” in Russia, since it revealed “calls for actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.” I managed to star in a couple of Russian films, which the caring authorities also closed for viewing: “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” by Kirill Serebrennikov and “Empire V” by Victor Ginzburg.
But by 2025, a slightly different information context had formed around Oksimiron. In March, three girls publicly spoke out against the rapper, accusing him of sexualized violence, including against minors.
And four months earlier, in November 2024, Miron announced the postponement of his large-scale tour of Europe and America for a year, citing health reasons.
“What were you sick with? It was jaundice"
Although the title of the album “Nationality: None” contains an absurd line from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ wanted card for Fedorov (apparently, he is wanted for one of the political articles), the album, both in content and musically, looks much softer than all the rapper’s previous work. The sun of Russian rap poetry began to sing about love, and the most popular word in the album is now “I”.
The very first song (“How are I doing”) is an attempt to explain the very disease that so completely knocked the artist out of concert activities. More precisely, in Oxy style - troll the public on this topic: “What was he sick with? So many different rumors. I’ll tell you a secret: it was jaundice.” Otherwise, the range of emotions ranges from the theme of death (“My death mask will be an almond scrub. This is an ode to commerce. I raised so much - bury it in Venice” and “I live well. I live well.”) to mockery of ill-wishers (“I have bad news - everything is just fine”). Where previously there was an understanding of the “Russian world” (in the broad sense - mentality, traditions, national complexes, vices, stereotypes), now there is glamor with crocodile skin and big money. “You are the god of style, I am a modest icon”, “The ninth wave of income, have not lost the skill of finds”, “Everything that does not kill me makes me richer.” He called one of the songs “Bank”: “I’ve been earning money for so many years, but the announcers say: well, this is old money.”
Status: busy and in love
At one time, Sergei “Chizh” Chigrakov hooked an entire generation with the line “Shouldn’t I sing a love song?”, in which he expressed his attitude towards the primitive pop dominant in musical mass culture. It seemed that more than one rap generation already adheres to, plus or minus, the same message, but the hardened cynic Oksimiron decided to sing on the theme of love in all seriousness. The rapper's love lyrics turned out, in principle, not so bad. At least, if we talk about the final composition “God is in the details” and the melodic track “Song of Songs”, where he finally moves from words about his beloved to a certain lyrical heroine: “Your silhouette - it was not a dream. You are my gem in this ashen age of guided missiles.”
"Status? Well, how can I tell you? Busy and in love,” summarizes Miron, as if hinting that the polygamous period is a thing of the past.
Russian foreign music
It is more surprising that Oksimiron has settled down in the political sense. In the second part of the album, politics finally appears, but it looks like a kind of obligatory program.
“This Russian foreign music quickly penetrates to you,” is Oxy’s possible reflection on the appearance on the streets of his hometown of the group Stoptime with a repertoire of Monetochka’s songs*, not even published by Monetochka itself. But here he is again about himself: “He is active invisibly in St. Petersburg. It’s not clear what needs to be smoked to decide that I can be smoked.” Before this, on another track - the same thought: “How can I be expelled? I’m at home in any emigration.”
The new greetings to the Investigative Committee and the prosecutor’s office came out sluggish, but for the colleagues who remained in Russia, Oxy found a couple of affectionate ones - though just as sluggish:
“Rappers were banned from everything, rappers swallowed everything, they are not against *** and they will only ask for peace in the store.” As a result, in his almost only political statement, Oksimiron simply sent everyone away: “*** against the generals, *** against the liberals, *** against any agenda.”
Even if we consider the 2025 album not the most successful, we can continue to hope that the “poet therapist,” as he called himself in one of the new songs, will be reborn from the ashes of illness and accusations of violence and will rhyme for us not only Gref with sin (“Don’t rejoice in prison, it’s a sin, the guys are collecting for the younger ones on Sberbank — this is Gref”) and not only about “our landscape,” which “to whom is the beach, to whom is camouflage,” but will describe global black hole in words, as a talented physics professor could do it with formulas. In the meantime, on the record “Nationality: no” he just says, rushing past us: “I see how the world is going crazy, I see from a convertible.” And most likely, the first thing this album reminded the majority of Oxy fans was a track from his main and most stellar album, “Gorgorod”. The track, itself sung very much about now, had an equally prophetic title - “Who have you become?”