Rapper ST: a poet without a homeland is not worth a penny

To beat “one hundred out of one hundred”, to not be afraid to set ambitious goals, to grow in creativity and help others grow, to remain faithful to his work, his wife and his favorite soccer team. If it were possible to characterize the rapper ST in a few sentences, I would choose these.

Not so long ago, he presented a new album, as part of the launch of which the artist dared to a 24-hour concert. For a whole day with short rest breaks ST rocked, read and inspired the audience with his resilience. About how it was possible to realize this concert, personal songs on the new album and plans for the near future read in the interview.

Poet

– There are very few guys in rap who have crossed the threshold into adulthood and are successfully rapping and recording tracks. How do you do it and do you agree that there are really few people like that?
– It all depends on what is a few – 10, 20 or 2? It’s hard to stay clear to your audience and very easy to start flirting with the young in pursuit of a fleeting hype. Maybe that ruins it for some. As for me, I just love what I do. And there were moments when I fell out, because there’s always a search – for yourself, for a new sound. The main thing is to remember who you are and why you’re doing it.

–When you first started out, did you encounter people saying, “Sasha, get a normal job, who will pay you for rapping?“
– Naturally. I think it can be compared to guys who make millions from video gaming. Their parents must have said something like, “All you do is sit in front of the computer, you’ll never make anything out of it, you’re losing all the money.” And then they buy their parents apartments. It’s the same with rap music. Everybody got beat up for rap music. Parents thought that you can only earn money in the classic scheme – school, institute, office. That you could get money for music seemed impossible.

–What could you have become if you hadn’t become a rapper?
– A Russian language teacher.

– You have an album out. I think it’s very personal. Tell me what you put into it and what message did you write it with?
– There are definitely personal songs on the album. That’s the beauty of rap music, you talk about what’s going on with you. It’s up to the audience to decide if it’s close to them or not. I’m also inspired by the stories going on around me – my friends’ lives, impressions, experiences. All of that together influences me. I wanted this album not to be about clubs and bitches, but to share stories, to communicate with the audience. As weird as it sounds, I wanted to listen to them. So that people who happened to hear my songs would realize that I hear them too.

–Is it possible to compare your album with some literary work?
–It‘s definitely not for me to compare myself with someone. The listeners will probably do that if they want to. I am me. Naturally, we all grow up on certain literature, music, fine arts and willy-nilly absorb bits of different authors that influence us. Naturally, I was influenced somewhere by the works of Yesenin, somewhere by Tupac Shakur, Kurt Cobain, Dezl. All this slowly shaped me as a person.

I have point B – to say a thought, and then I just think out the path.

–What’s the most important track for you in the album?
– It’s hard to single out. It’s like putting up an album post with any one song. Everyone will think it’s your favorite and will only listen to it. The most personal song, of course, is “Parents” – that’s a hundred percent. The song for the widest audience is “Louie Louie.” And if we talk about rap, I really like “One on One”, because it is directly made in the canons of aggressive emotional rap, which is peculiar and close to me.

– How do you accumulate your creative energy? After all, besides doing your album, you write songs for other stars, take care of your family.
– I have no idea.I’m not good at scheduling at all. I feel like if I planned everything, it would be easier. That’s why I often find myself saying that today I have Superstichi, yesterday we closed the lists of participants, I have to deliver the book because the second edition is out. Before that I was preparing for the record, I was releasing the album, we wrote a new song for Oli (Buzova – ed.). The show “Battle of the Talents” on STS Love, which I’m hosting, is also coming out soon. Somehow it all just happens and spins on its own.

– What’s it like with songs? Do you sit in a cafe and an epiphany comes?
– Very differently. Sometimes one line comes into your head and a song comes out of it. Sometimes you get the idea that it would be cool to say exactly that – how do you get that across? That was the case with the poem “Pigeons”, the idea came up that people online are like birds, when they shit on you it’s to the money. I have point B – to say the thought, and then I just think about the path from there.

–Continue the line from Yevtushenko’s poem “A Poet in Russia…”
– I have my own: “Our fields are as vast as our soul, a poet without a homeland is not worth a dime.” It seems to me that no other country in the world can produce more poets. Someone can tell me about Byron, Shakespeare, but this is a completely different poetry. Russian rap also still carries something different than Western rap anyway. When it becomes just a tracing, it loses its components. Domestic poetry dominates and develops in this respect, it’s great.

Record

–Tell us about your 24-hour concert, how did you get the idea to do it?
– We had a meeting before the album, and we discussed that nowadays people go naked on stage, nail eggs on the square, and take part in scandals. But I’m far away from all that. Especially when you release an album with the title “Poet”, you don’t want to make a farce out of it.

I think that artists have stopped showing their skills and proving why they are on stage. I wanted to do something that no one had ever done before.

Besides, I have a lot of songs that I’ve wanted to reread for a long time. And so, word of mouth came up with the idea for the record. Since no one had done it before, we started thinking about time. Five hours doesn’t sound good, ten hours doesn’t sound good, but twenty-four hours does. Of course, we had no idea what was in store for us. That’s good. Because I wouldn’t have been able to fit into such a movement if I had known (laughs). It turned out to be much more complicated than I imagined.

–What was the most difficult moment?
– Because it was in the “Ruki Vverkh” bar, I could see when traffic jams appeared on the road and realized how much time was approximately on the clock. But at some point, when I thought the middle was long gone, the cameraman came up to me and on his watch I saw that it was five to twelve. And I realized that it wasn’t even halfway through… And you can’t call it a feeling of fatigue, it’s just some kind of childish resentment. And there were a couple more moments when I thought it was two hours, but it was eight. You lose track of time.

–Were the last hours easier?
– Since the last hours were a few times for me (šypsosi), my moral and volitional qualities were already at work there. I was in a state of zen. And only then I realized that if it didn’t work out, it would have been a grand fiasco. Because people are very good at getting things done. And if you decide to do something and you fall, you’re finished. You could see that on the broadcast. In the beginning they wrote that I would die in an hour, in two hours, in five hours, and the last hours people were already drowning and cheering.

If you decide to do something and you fall down, you’re finished.

Also, performing live is so much easier than just in front of cameras. My fan Kolya Glukhov came. This is the one fan worth trying for. There was a moment when the whole team was already tired, and Kolya stood and rocked. I had a mess of lyrics in my head, I was peeping, and he was playing all the albums by heart. And I felt so ashamed. And at one point we switched, and he sat down, but I could read in his eyes, “I’m with you.” I don’t even know what good I can do for him after that. That’s one fan worth a thousand.

–The most important question: how did you get so many songs?
– I only performed my songs, and not all of them. I couldn’t find the minus of many mixtapes, they just got lost over the years. Naturally, I repeated myself, but we just called it b-sides.

–What could you even drink, eat during the record?
– I ate almost nothing. My wife, of course, tried to feed me. But the break was only five minutes, and I didn’t want to waste time on that. Especially since food travels both ways through the body. Drank the green tea that Assol brought from Baikal. Unfortunately, there is no instruction like “if you are going to do a concert for 24 hours, buy cutlets, buckwheat…”, although we can now write one. But everything is individual, of course.

–Did you drink any vitamins to keep your energy up?
– I am very grateful to our phoniatrist Osipenko Ekaterina, without her all this would have been impossible. She was always spraying sprays, massaging my temples, smearing me with “star”. And then I went to work afterwards.

–What helps you to keep yourself in good physical shape, that you could dare to run a marathon distance in a concert and generally keep active during the day?
– Inner stupidity. And the confidence that it can be done. I don’t think I’m in good physical shape, especially since I’m periodically hospitalized. On the other hand, I’m still young and healthy, so I have strength. Although, to be honest, before the concert I caught a cold, I had a sore throat. There is no such thing as when you decide to make a record, and you have slept for a week, you have no pain, you feel well… Fate will always test you to the last. Or that’s my fate. I’ve been smoking since I was 17, but for four days before the record I didn’t even touch a cigarette. And there were moments when I thought “just one cigarette – nothing serious”, but I immediately realized that if I couldn’t keep my word to myself here, some higher forces would definitely prevent me from fulfilling my plans there.

I don’t think that if I am a media person and I am a Spartak supporter, we must be friends with everyone and they must listen to my tracks.

Soccer

– Looking at you from the outside, we can conclude that you are a one-lover in terms of genre, women and even soccer club. Tell me, how did your love affair with Spartak start?
– Very banal. I was visiting a friend and saw a beautiful book. I read a few chapters right during the party. Took all three books from him. They were “The Angel Behind the Right Shoulder”, “White Minority Hardcore” and “We Will Come to You” by Dmitry Lekukh. I was in my early 20s. Then I got into the stadium, the center, and then out of the gate.

–Do you remember any match that kept you in suspense from start to finish?
– I remember how we beat Orenburginthe last minutes. And in general, it is always very difficult to perform at matches. In the past it was not very popular. You had to realize that when you play before a crucial game, if the team loses, it’s your fault. Because you’re fucking unlucky. There’s no other explanation. That’s why, when we played CSKA, I read before it and thought: “as long as we don’t lose, it will be a fiasco”.

–Have you been involved in fan fights?
– No. And now they happen less often, because there are cameras everywhere.

–Do you always watch from the fan stand?
– Mostly, yes.

–Do fans often recognize you?
– Yes. I like it when they come up to me. They are my red-and-white brothers. I don’t like it only when they take pictures “for company”, because everyone takes pictures. It still feels very much.

– Have you been on a field trip? Which one was the most memorable?
– Probably the very first one. It was Ufa. I remember back then I didn’t have time to buy airplane tickets and flew business class for miles. Oh, how many jokes I heard then. Everyone joked that I was a star, and I kept trying to justify myself. Soon I will fly to Rostov with the guys (the interview was recorded before the Rostov-Spartak game on April 14 – Ed. note).

–Do you know if anyone listens to your songs at Spartak?
– Good question. I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t think that if I’m a media person and I’m a Spartak fan, we have to be friends with everyone and they have to listen to my tracks. Everyone has their own life.

– Do you support any other team?
– I empathize with “Real Madrid” and “Paris Saint-Germain”. I was interested in Chelsea for a while, but not for long.

– You have a lot of tattoos. Do you get them on some occasion or for aesthetic picture?
– It varies. But I put meaning into each one. The inscription “One hundred out of one hundred” is my first one. I think a tattoo is like a passport. When they find you, they should immediately understand who you are, where you come from and what you do. It’s not just pretty pictures. I don’t have anything against them either though, I have the Simpsons on my legs.

– Do you have any goals for your upcoming travels? What countries would you like to visit?
– I really like flying to Los Angeles. I really wanted to take Assolle there, and this year I succeeded. I had a plan: a convertible, sunset, palm trees, and I would show her the song “Louie Louie”. But Assol got caught on the four days a year when it rains in L.A. But we did get to see the Lakers.

I love walking around Amsterdam, it’s quiet and peaceful. I want to visit Baikal. It was a mutual dream with Assol, and we were offered such a trip, but I couldn’t go because of the tour with Leningrad, but she went, and she was absolutely delighted. Now I want to go even more. And New Zealand, I guess.

–And Everest?
– No, it’s too difficult. You don’t need to climb a peak just to climb it. I don’t need it, I have my own Everest.