- aka rapper Basta - will perform at the State Kremlin Palace, accompanied by symphony orchestra. At the traditional concerts dedicated to the artist’s birthday, it will be presented new album"Basta 5". The album will be released in two stages - April 20 and May 9. On the eve of the concerts, Gazeta.Ru met with Basta to discuss a new round of his creative life, participation in the show “The Voice” and much more.
— We met a year ago last time, during which time you managed to assemble the Olimpiyskiy, work a season in the Voice, and now have two concerts in the Kremlin. Then I don’t know what – “Blue Light”, “Old Songs about the Main Thing”?
- Yes, and my old songs ( laughs). I actually don't know yet myself. We plan to do it in the summer big festival Gazgolder Live at Arma, let's try the venue.
— How do you generally feel considering all these events?
- I like. After “The Voice,” many people discovered my music. I was now on tour in Russia and saw how the audience at concerts changes. There are a lot of adults who, of course, come to listen to certain songs - by Vysotsky, “ dark night", "Mom." There were a lot of warm meetings - with adults it’s a little different than with young people. They also call me by my first name and patronymic - a nightmare, of course, but at the same time very touching. All this makes me understand that, thank God, I didn’t do anything shameful. I feel calm in the subway and on the city streets.
— Do you really take the metro?
- When there are traffic jams - of course. Well, off to the airport. This is not a game, for me it’s really normal and comfortable. And there has never been a time when a person came up and said: hey, you, so-and-so. People say hello and smile.
— Do you feel increased responsibility due to your popularity?
“I’m trying to get rid of these feelings.” I had a period when I simply destroyed myself by thinking about responsibility and obligation. I was 19 years old at the time, and then I gave it up ( smiling). This is the most destructive thing that can happen. Thanks to my attempts to get rid of responsibility, it seems to me that a lot of things worked out in the end. For example, I came up with Noggano, who could kill the Basta project by itself...
- Why do you think so?
“Well, because people might be upset that I’m not such a sweetie.” But I went for it consciously and did not lose. The situation was similar with “Golos” - I went there because the program was interesting experience, and was not afraid to ruin the relationship with his listener. It seems to me that life is made up of such passionary impulses. At some point I came to the conclusion that crazy actions bring the most benefit.
- Certainly! 100%! I’ve already written eight songs for Noggano, there are a lot of them... Now, the closer the release of Basta’s album comes, the more rejection I have towards it - I want to sort it out as soon as possible and move on to other things. For Noggano there are several very interesting solutions - from songs in the spirit of “The Dog Ate the Goods” to some kind of soul-searching by a crazy bandit. The conditions that I set for my hero on this album are quite strange, but working on these tracks is very interesting. In general, than more difficult task, the more interesting.
— Will Nintendo have a new album?
— Yes, songs are also written. The song we were supposed to include on the Hardcore soundtrack was not the one that ended up on there. We even shot a video for it in a very correct aesthetic: on an iPhone during a tour in Irkutsk, Izhevsk, we bought a mink hat and went to local strip clubs. In general, Nintendo will definitely be there, although it is not yet entirely clear in what direction. At some point we wanted to make a second album in English. Well, in the kind of English that I usually speak - very bad: “Van-van zys, van zys, van zys.” In general, I release Basta’s albums every four years, now I’m 36 - there will be something to do until I’m forty.
— Now tell us about Basta’s album. What will it be like? All I know for now is that there will be two discs.
— As for the volume, I didn’t have the task of making a double album, I just accumulated a lot of songs. While still on tour, I edited some texts and edited the music. There is a song “Lighters up” - now I want to record verses with Scriptonite and ATL. In general, the album turned out to be very dark and strange, but I like it. Apparently it coincided with something, maybe I’m having a midlife crisis. When I wrote some songs, I felt like a ghostwriter who was composing for himself... There will also be “Devil” with poems by Galich and “Tram” with poems by Okudzhava. Stylistically, it’s not even possible to determine what this whole thing is. There are a lot of songs about love, but ominous ones. It seems to be believed that if it’s about love, then it’s such a cutesy thing, but I, like every adult, have come to the conclusion that love is the biggest hardcore.
— You’ve also written for cinema lately.
— The songs that I wrote for “Motherland” and the film “Ke-Dy” by Sergei Solovyov were also included in the album, yes. And this work ultimately helped me a lot. Buslov invited me to watch “Motherland” before the premiere, I agreed with the intention - I have something for Noggano new song"Rolex", I want Petya ( Buslov. — "Gazeta.Ru") made a video for it. In general, I arrived at the cinema, watched the film, and was completely torn: I left the theater and, I swear, wrote the text in 10-15 minutes. I haven’t had anything like this for ten years - even now I’m talking about it and it gives me goosebumps. I also quickly realized with music - I had this minus lying around for a long time, but the tempo needed to be slowed down. In short, I blew myself up, made a track very quickly, and sent it to Buslova. He asked me to record an accordion there, and I struggled to record a few notes there, but I liked it so much that I later added an accordion to several tracks.
In general, thanks to Petya, I already have a song and there will also be a video for Noggano.
Or, for example, when we were working with, he came to me one day and brought Polozkova’s poems about fish so that I could set them to music... It was interesting - I love experiments, and in the film the girl sang the song very beautifully. But when I wrote this track, I came up with a chorus that didn’t fit there at all. It ended up being a song that I'm proud of. And there were many such seemingly random stories. The sound turned out to be a lot of references to Soviet romanticism, a lot of synthesizers. Such internal imperialism is the expansion of the boundaries of space into infinity.
— Something similar is happening with rap now, a real flourishing. What do you think this is connected with?
- Yes, I wouldn’t talk about the heyday or breakthrough of Russian rap, this is a triumph of Russian literature - that’s what I wrote to Oksimiron when we discussed his album. Among the popular Russian rappers, there are no rappers in pure form. Oksimiron - punk, anarchist; Scriptonite is a very cool read, but what he does is rather rock; ATL - I’m actually a fan of it... No matter who, everyone has an indirect connection to rap, everyone is different. People are just interested in phenomena, and each of these artists is a phenomenon. And this culture will remain, I am sure, as the golden era of Russian rock ( laughs).
Well, yes, it’s all Russian rock, in fact.
I mean the message that everyone I’ve listed puts into this music is that it’s not rap at all in the sense in which it happens in America, for example. This is something completely different. We don’t have this limitation: if you start making this kind of music, then you can’t do anything else, there’s no such narrow-minded bullshit. I’m like a Chinese - I write the music I want, I write lyrics, I draw, I shoot videos. You can call me a crazy graphomaniac or, perhaps, a narcissistic cretin, but I’m simply not interested in any other way.
— Why don’t Russian rappers react to important socio-political events and write songs about them, like black rappers do about Ferguson?
— I wrote the song “The Sun Isn’t Visible” quite a long time ago, it is still relevant, I constantly sing it at concerts. What else should I write? About the fact that the dollar has fallen? We need to talk about all this, not write songs. We shot a video in Chelyabinsk, it was shown on TV, about the state of our federal highways. There used to be budget money, it was possible to lay asphalt once a year, but now there is less money and it is necessary to lay asphalt once, but it doesn’t work. Still, it’s clear. I'm a fan of his outlook on life. It is clear that we all must die, old world must collapse, and something new will be built on its ruins.
And as for social criticism— before you lament and engage in other Komsomol activities, you should take an honest look at yourself.
I know who I am - an old corrupt official, I have an absolutely soviet mentality. Yes, I can drive an expensive car, admire Parisian restaurants and the self-sacrifice of Solzhenitsyn or Dovlatov’s books, but I’m the same scoop as they were, in fact. Only soviet man could write the kind of things that Dovlatov, of whom I am a big fan, wrote. This is a scoop. It is in us, it is in our children, and perhaps only in 70-80 years will something change here. This is a slow evolutionary process.
- Let's now return to where we started. You have already reached, it seems, all possible peaks that Russian artist available. Do you understand where to grow next?
- Yes, we need to meet old age with dignity, I think about it a lot. I’m thinking at what point I need to leave the stage... On the other hand, there are people whom I focus on - who have been doing this all their lives, because they managed to find new look to music who had the courage not to turn into cynical old shit.
— Aren’t you afraid that you will be drawn into Russian show business? Many people talked about this after your appearance in “The Voice”.
- No, I'm not afraid. I have the advantage of ten years without all this crap under my belt. I came there through another door. I can easily give it up because I won't lose anything. There are some compromises that I cannot make, and everyone knows this very well.
— What kind of compromises are these? If they tell you to refuse swearing, will you agree?
- There are different situations. If I speak at City Day in my native Rostov, I, of course, will not swear from the stage. And I don’t think at all that singing a swear song is “true” - jump out of the garage if you’re so cool. There are some frameworks that I follow - everyone knows them, with whom I work. On the other hand, when I write music, I do everything exactly as I see fit, and focus only on this. Only then is there any truth to it.
Everyone's off to the concert! Yes, yes, on big concert Basta. Soon, very soon, there will be a concert of one of the most sought-after and popular rap artists.
Basta’s love for music, and in particular for rap, manifested itself when he was a high school student. Further training took place in music school. The first performances took place in the late 90s. At that time, Basta performed with the group Kasta and released a joint album, “In Full Action.” After some time, Basta stepped aside. A new round in Basta’s work is associated with his arrival in Moscow and meeting Bogdan Titomir. The first disc was released in 2006 - “Basta 1”. It was then that the masses did not fully appreciate creativity famous performer, however, tickets for Basta caused a mixed reaction, especially from sophisticated rappers who could not fully immediately appreciate the talent. A little later, Basta presented his project to Noggano, which was highly appreciated. Tickets for the Basta concert are now on sale, and you can buy tickets for Basta from us.
Basta for today famous rapper, for whom rap is an original style with which he talks about the eternal: love, happiness and bitter losses. At Basta’s concert, tickets for which can be purchased from us, the rapper will present to the attention of listeners the latest compositions from his constantly updated repertoire. Basta will delight the audience with already favorite hits. Tickets for “Basta” in Moscow are worth purchasing today, as this is a guarantee that you will be able to attend the performance of an extraordinary performer.
Concert rap
A year ago, Vasily Vakulenko (Basta) was the first Russian rapper to perform at the Olimpiysky sports complex, and this concert became a good quantitative indicator of the musician’s popularity. Subsequently, television bosses took Basta to the jury of the show “The Voice,” thus finally legitimizing rap and its heroes as part of the pop mainstream. The only thing missing was concerts at the State Concert Hall, and Basta decided to do them, and first announced one, on April 21, and then, due to the sold-out crowd, added a second one, on the 18th. BORIS BARABANOV reports.
For Basta himself, the sold-out crowds in the Kremlin are a good reason to ask himself the question: are there other peaks that he has not conquered? Having settled comfortably in the pop world, he can now for many years play concerts around the country and not experience problems with the public. There is another important signal sent by rap to the market this spring. In addition to Basta’s Kremlin concerts, two more rap concerts gathered large venues in Moscow. This is the reunited group Centr and a performer named Oksimiron, in both cases the stadium Live was sold out in the seven thousand capacity hall. And at the same time, music lovers note the complete absence of bright new names outside of hip-hop. Zemfira collects 30 thousand twice at the Olimpiysky, at the Afisha Picnic she plays Leningrad, at TV Rain’s birthday party and at the “fashionable” Bosco Fresh Fest the headliner is Mumiy Troll. In all cases, we are talking about artists who are around forty or older. That is, none of the musical subcultures, including pop fueled by cash injections, has produced a new stadium-level artist over the past ten to fifteen years. Only hip-hop. And this is Basta’s great merit.
Vasily Vakulenko played a very long concert, and its first half, especially the combination of “Motherland” and “Mama,” confirmed the opinion that in the image of Basta he is almost Stas Mikhailov for a young audience. Mr. Vakulenko, of course, was ironic both at the platform to which artistic fate had brought him and at his habit of confusing words in the texts; as usual, he easily and funny fought off requests from the audience to perform this or that song. But the general mood of this part of the evening was still in keeping with the traditions that had developed here. And the passage through the rows of seats (there was no standing stalls), and the selfie with the spectators’ phones, and the marriage proposal that a spectator from the fourth row made to his girlfriend, and the lullaby performed in a duet with his daughter - all this was a complete “cute” . There were also appearances by the “Voice” participants, typical of pop concerts, who appeared last year in Vasily Vakulenko’s team.
The second part of the concert was characterized by a more elastic and rich sound; it had dynamics, for which Basta is loved by the male part of the audience. The Kommersant correspondent listened to Basta accompanied by an orchestra more than once, but this evening in the Kremlin the powerful orchestral rear, commanded by conductor Felix Aranovsky, was not only a decoration for the demanding “adult” audience, but an absolutely justified part of the production. For the first time, there was no doubt that these were the muscles that Basta’s songs needed. It’s difficult to say whether this was the result of judging in “The Voice,” but Vasily Vakulenko also improved as a vocalist. It’s not that he has any supernatural range, but it became easier for him to cope with compositions that were more vocal-oriented than recitative. For example, in the hit “Once and Forever” there seem to be no traces of classic rap left at all.
IN new program there were many songs from the album "Basta-5", which is released on April 20, Basta even specifically asked the audience not to turn on the cameras during their performance. Among the new material were things that ended up in Sergei Solovyov’s new film “Sneakers.” Basta is the third folk hero after Tsoi ("Assa") and Shnur ("Assa-2"), Solovyov chose him for the role of the "voice of the era", and this is the subject of separate discussions about the place of rappers on today's cultural horizon. The songs “Partizan” and “When I Look at the Sky,” included in “Sneakers,” represent some completely new quality of Basta, an almost complete switch to the register of traditional “melodic” songwriting. And when Tatyana Drubich appeared on the screen in the video for the song “When I Look at the Sky” as a mother, the Kommersant correspondent’s heart literally sank. Probably only with him - in the hall there were mostly quite young people.
In general, this whole idea was worth implementing for one thing - for the sake of performing the song “The Sun Is Not Visible” in the Kremlin, which remains the most accurate song diagnosis of the post-Soviet world of the 2010s. Basta did not swear on the Kremlin stage, but the audience reproduced the entire original text in chorus and exactly.