Rapper Pharaoh gave a frank interview to Yuri Dudy. Pharaoh spoke to GQ about studies, music and plans for the future Pharaoh interview

I had a great interview with Pharaoh during his tour in Tulu. The rapper spoke about his sports past and musical present. Read the full version, we have the most interesting moments.

You've been touring all fall. A city that surprised you?

E### cases happen sometimes. Here in Ulyanovsk I tried to leave the concert and jumped into the car with the organizers. A crowd of three hundred rocked this car, broke down the door, someone flew into the salon - I flew out through another door. Fortunately, the orgs appeared and settled everything.

Did they want to touch you?

I don't know what they wanted. They often invade personal space without any purpose. Their actions have no purpose, there is instinct. They can just stand next to you and nothing happens. Sometimes a person can follow you around Moscow for 15 minutes - and simply without a goal. It’s clear that he’s plucking up the courage to either take a photo or ask for something. But he doesn't ask.

Do you live on your own or with your parents?

I'm nomadic. I do not have permanent residence in Moscow. By friends, by acquaintances. My parents and I agreed a long time ago that I have my own life. I stop by to visit them, give gifts, have dinner.

Translate for me, old man, what is the song “5 minutes ago” about?

About the fact that the main layer of those involved in show business in Russia is now located where I have already been. I'm always ahead. This is an allusion to the situation in hip-hop, in football, in many other areas. It's no secret that in our country everything happens late. We live later than the States and Europe. But not me. I live according to my time. What I did two years ago is what 60 percent of people in the industry are doing now.

What do you need with today's earnings?

To have a satisfying meal - thanks for that.

So, what about the car? Apartment a little later?

Now you’re asking me about the car and the apartment, but I don’t think about it at all. When I have the amount that I can spend on it, I will spend it. And while they are gone, I don’t even think about it.

Is there Russian music that bothers you or has bothered you before?

Of course, I'm a music lover. Once upon a time I was freaking out about Disco Accident. From Zhukov. Later - from Guf, from Suitcase. Also with Anka Pletneva from the Vintage group, a real sex symbol. At that time, Maxim Fadeev wrote songs for her; “Eva, I love you” always resonated with me. If we take it in general, in Russia there is a lot of music in Russia, it’s a matter of taste.

This year, the Internet was in turmoil: you sent the other rapper L’One to the fucking ##. Why?

I don’t know, I wanted to send it - and I sent it. I wish him health and happiness. To be honest, I don’t have any feelings for Levan - neither good nor bad.

How was it from the very beginning? My buddy and I recorded a track while sitting in our basement. The homie had “I wanted to come up with a dab / But Leva did it / Nah## Leva” in the chorus. Funny. Everyone was crazy then that Leva was walking (imitates deb), although no one has walked like this for a long time. We went to perform, performed, shouted this x###, this x### was filmed, it ended up on the Internet.

Then there was the Boiler Room party. I had already performed and was going to have a drink with Adil. Lyova sneaks up on me in the crowd with her guard of about five people, drags me out into the street and begins to ride on my ears. I don’t understand anything - because it’s complete shit. The frenzy began and it became clear that Levan had come to put on a show. If I wanted to talk, I would have found my numbers and just called. We talked one on one. He said that he really didn’t like the situation, that his relatives looked and they felt very offended. “Leva, I’m sorry, but it’s nothing personal. Let's not do the circus, but be adults. You are much older than me, but you are organizing the circus here, not me.” And that's it, we parted ways.

There were no fights, nothing happened. I don’t understand why people associated with Leva released information that there was a fight. I woke up the next morning, read all this x###, immediately forgot and went to breakfast.

Is Putin handsome?

Certainly. I speak for myself. I live in my own country. I live as I want to. I say what I want. I eat what I want. I'm fucked. I have nothing to complain about. When p###ts comes, I will say: p###ts comes.

You are a member of an association of artists called YUNGRUSSIA. Young Russia – what is it like?

This is the one that e###. And not the one that e###. After the collapse of the Union, Russia was not in a very good position - there were few prospects for learning, development, and creativity. With my concerts and my music, I want to make people understand: now is not the time to sit still and endure. Time to get up and do something. Now everyone has their chance. A chance to find something to do to enjoy it, and then say to myself: I didn’t waste my time on a piece of this fucking stone.

How should you spend the next year to say: I am satisfied?

I have to record a good release. And graduate from university. This is very hard for me. I spent three years there for a reason, I don’t want to take the fourth and merge, that would be a weakness on my part. There were many things in life that I did not complete. I gave up and quit halfway. Now I want to take it out. X## with him with a diploma - it won’t be useful. I just want to take it out because I understand: I can.

Pharaoh, youth hero and former Dynamo Moscow football player, in a long interview with Yuri Dud.

It’s already cold autumn, it’s already Friday evening, Tula. The door of the city's main rock club - a hangar hidden in the middle of garage cooperative #28 - has been stormed by a wedge of several hundred teenagers for the third hour. To get inside, each of them will give a thousand rubles. There would be no drama in this if you didn’t know that the average salary in the city just this year exceeded 30,000 rubles, and the quite popular Subway eatery opened here just a couple of years ago - before that, local entrepreneurs said: “Our people don’t imagine how you can pay 120 rubles for a sandwich.”

The man for whom Tula teenagers are ready to both freeze and pay is Gleb Golubin. Five years ago he became the hero of the Football Club program and looked like this:

Several years - several changes.

Gleb, the son of football manager and agent Gennady Golubin, played football at Lokomotiv, CSKA and Dynamo schools until he was 13 years old. His coach was Sergei Silkin, and his partner was last summer’s participant Rifat Zhemaletdinov. Having stopped his football career, Gleb Golubin turned into a referee for a couple of years, but then gave up that too.

In 2016, Golubin is known as Pharaoh, he is the most fashionable young rapper in the country. His latest video has already racked up 14 million YouTube views, his tour of Russian cities reaches Kamchatka and Norilsk, his photo shoot is published by Esquire magazine, and Reebok chooses him to present the fall collection. In general, if you have a younger sister or brother, it is almost certain that they listen to Pharaoh.

Pharaoh diligently protects the image of the most mysterious artist of the Russian rap scene and almost never gives interviews. I negotiated the meeting for four months and was able to achieve it only at the moment when he was 200 km from Moscow. The dressing room of the Tula club is located directly above the stage. On the table there are cold cuts, fruits, nuts, beer and Jägermeister. On the refrigerator are autographs of groups who came here before - from “Cockroaches” to Arthur Berkut. In addition to the main star of the evening, Roma the Englishman and Oleg, the Belarusian rap duo LSP, are drowning in the sofas.

– Are you from the site? - Oleg introduces himself. – You have a hell of a basketball department, in some places it’s simply the best. What's this guy's name - Panchenko? I'm a bitch all day long. For the entire x### read. So I read that for###sya. Tell me, if you know this person, thank you.

I sit down with Pharaoh.

– You’ve been touring all fall. A city that surprised you?

– E### cases happen sometimes. Here in Ulyanovsk I tried to leave the concert and jumped into the car with the organizers. A crowd of three hundred rocked this car, broke down the door, someone flew into the salon - I flew out through another door. Fortunately, the orgs appeared and settled everything.

- Did they want to touch you?

– I don’t know what they wanted. They often invade personal space without any purpose. Their actions have no purpose, there is instinct. They can just stand next to you and nothing happens. Sometimes a person can follow you around Moscow for 15 minutes - and simply without a goal. It’s clear that he’s plucking up the courage to either take a photo or ask for something. But he doesn't ask.

– How do you live in Moscow?

– There is such a life – low life. Not on the surface. I've always lived like this. Not because they bother me at the university, on the street, in the yard - I’ve always lived like this, I’m not a big fan of flashing my nickname.

– How often do you leave the house?

- Only for special needs.

– Do you live on your own or with your parents?

- I'm nomadic. I do not have permanent residence in Moscow. By friends, by acquaintances. My parents and I agreed a long time ago that I have my own life. I stop by to visit them, give gifts, have dinner.

– Do you take the subway?

– Lately, no. It's stuffy there.

– You are a student at the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University.

- Bachelor. Lately I've been there a lot more often than before. I have a lot of tails from last year - I’m renting them out. How do people behave? Sometimes 15 little kids swoop in: “Can I take a picture?” They are standing nearby, already taking pictures, but they also ask: “Can I?” Instincts precede words.

– Why did you go to the journalism department?

– When I went, I didn’t choose a profession. I started from resources and prospects. I understood: I have a humanities head, I have been reading literature all my life, and not solving equations, I had nothing wrong with English, at one time I studied Italian. Therefore - journalism department. I won’t have any fucking brains, I’ll sit for another four years and think about what to do with my life.

– Our profession is a corpse?

– The ideals that my classmates believe in have been gone for a long time. Many guys look very naive...

In general, being a journalist is a profession where you have to work as a farmhand and at the same time remain in the shadows, I’ve always had some difficulty with this. Sitting down to write a huge text, doing some painstaking work is personally difficult for me.

And the profession... Magazines somehow survive. All the same, there is a certain prestige and prospects there.

– I’m more about freedom of speech.

- Well, for now I'm making music. I say what I want, and no one has shut my mouth yet.

– Have you ever been banned from performing because you sing about the wrong thing?

- Not about what is needed? What is this about?

- About nonsense. About super pleasures.

“I wouldn’t say that that’s all I sing about.” This is the very minimum percentage of what both I and the guys have. Previously, rappers were bullied for their wide trousers, but now they don't bother with it anymore. Oh, you can fuck###sit for drugs - there seem to be some echoes of words there. Lord, go to hell, mind your own business. I'm here with my guys doing what I always wanted to do. I’m talking about what I see in the country. Out of 10 words, you tear out one and shout that I am for drugs. If so, then you are just stupid.

- But are you blowing?

- I do not know what is this. I don't know how or from what language this is translated.

– Do you smoke marijuana, hashish?

- Heh, am I at an appointment with a narcologist?

– Translate for me, old man, what is the song “5 minutes ago” about?

– About the fact that the main layer of those involved in show business in Russia is now where I have already been. I'm always ahead. This is an allusion to the situation in hip-hop, in football, in many other areas. It's no secret that in our country everything happens late. We live later than the States and Europe. But not me. I live according to my time. What I did two years ago is what 60 percent of people in the industry are doing now.

– Why are we falling behind?

- About sweets.

- OK. It's about the sweets that are easy to buy in Amsterdam.

– Actually, not really. This is specifically about sweets, which - I would say - the main thing is not to overeat.

“It’s a good image, but there’s a crowd of 600 very, very young people waiting for you below.” Not all of them will understand your allusions.

“I don’t deny that due to my lack of experience—I’m only twenty—I don’t quite understand it, I don’t convey it to people very well. But I'm working on it. And at the same time, I think: all this can be understood if you use your head, if you dream a little.

– So you’re not afraid that because of your tracks, Tula schoolchildren will smoke weed more actively than before?

- Everyone has their own head. I'm not calling for this. Give an example of at least one song where I urge: smoke more! There is no such song.

“Mini Gattuso. Plump, short, bun. And he played a pure defensive midfielder, who picks up dirt, pulls it out, does all the dirty work,” Dynamo youth midfielder Magomed Ubaidulaev remembers what kind of footballer Gleb Golubin was. At the end of the 2000s, they studied football together at Lokomotiv.

Gleb’s father, Gennady Golubin, worked at Dynamo Moscow (team manager and deputy general director), managed Dynamo in Bryansk and the Konoplev Academy in Tolyatti. Now he works at the isport agency (the founder is the same Pavel Andreev) and manages the affairs of young Russian football players.

“Gleb studied very well, but there was no goal of becoming a professional football player - just every boy should play sports,” Golubin Sr. tells me. – We were initially determined to study, to university. To become a great football player, too many things must come together - luck, health, and talent. It’s a great happiness when you reach a big level, but in my time I’ve seen a lot of guys who had nothing to do after football. Therefore, Gleb needed to earn money with his head, especially since he had all the abilities for this. Everything comes easy to him.”

– Do you remember the day when football ended for you?

- I remember it like today. I was 13 years old, there was a friendly match, once again they didn’t even let me near the lineup, I was sitting on a bank. Everything was so deflated that I didn’t want to see anything. I was for###o, I thought that I couldn’t force myself either mentally or physically. Every child who goes to a football school - especially a good one - has a dream: I will become a football player, they will take me to a fucking club, everything will be awesome in life. When such illusions collapse earlier than necessary, they make a fatal mistake in the head.

– Why didn’t it work?

- I'm lazy. There was a period in life when there were two roads: football or something else. I thought: I had nothing but football. There were problems in the team, and I decided to try something different.

– Your coach was Sergei Silkin. Any story about him.

– We played with Real Madrid at a tournament in Spain, and he didn’t let me out - as soon as he entered the post, he pushed me away ##. All my life I have played either as a defensive player or as a forward – I have never left the center. It’s the last minute, the draw is 2:2, he calls me over and says: you’re coming out on the left. I think: “On the left? Well, they## themselves” My left one has never been working. I go out and immediately - the moment. I shoot from the left, almost from the field line, and hit the crossbar. I get upset, I go to the locker room, pass by Sergei Nikolaevich and hear: “Well, yes, a wooden horse will piss himself faster than you can score.”

But if anything: I remember all this with irony.

– Which football players’ posters hung in your room?

– Quaresma hung for a long time. Also Ibrahimovic. Also Edgar Davids. And Milan's midfielder... yes, Gattuso.

I liked everyone at Dynamo. I liked how the team played when we took bronze in 2008. By the way, the guys and I were at the last match with Tom and served balls there.

I liked Danny - he did things that were just p###t. Well, in general, I want to express my great respect to Dynamo under Kobelev - Andrey Nikolaich, respect to you. These are the best years of my life that were associated with football.

– Then you tried to become a judge.

- Oh, this is a dark story. I finished football and thought: shouldn’t I do something else to stay in shape, to develop myself further. They suggested trying ref. I thought: interesting. Once again, learn the rules, and don’t sit at home, but go out and do something. I did this for a year or two and finished. It got boring.

– Last summer you worked at Pavel Andreev’s agency isport.

- Yes, I brought coffee. I needed to close the practice for a month - I closed it there. There was no one in the office, only Levan Matua and Jan Golubovsky, a former hockey player. I brought them coffee and sort of looked after the site.

– How does your father feel about what you do?

“He’s proud of me, he told me so himself.” But this is understandable: his son achieved self-realization at the age of 20.

Gennady Golubin:

– Gleb did a very good job as a judge. He had the toughness and character to make decisions. He behaved very correctly on the field, even when he was in the lower youth leagues. The lower the level, the worse the coaches behave, especially when they see that they are being judged by a young guy who can be put under pressure. He clearly stopped all this. He would have made a good judge, but he simply realized that it was not for him.

Every man must succeed in this life. This is the most important thing for a man. He is my son, I will never say that I disagree with something. He studied music himself; I had no involvement in this matter. I didn’t take it seriously, but when it turned into 13 million views and concerts all over the country, my mother and I began to take a closer look. Music is definitely a different generation. But I think his texts are quite serious - his education makes itself felt.

“He is an ideological person; he had no place to prove himself in football,” Magomed Ubaidulaev explains to me. – Music is what you need, where you can make all your dreams come true. He was always full of ideas, fantasies - I didn’t understand them, but he wanted and wanted everything. And now I have achieved it. And when I see him, I understand that he is a different person. Happier than when he was playing or refereeing."

Alexander Gorbachev, editor of Meduza and one of the main music journalists in Russia, explains to me why, when the Pharaoh comes to town, young people beat him to the gills:

– Pharaoh combines a topical sound agenda (the so-called cloud rap, music that is both clubby and muddy, even asocial in its own way) with an eternal emotional agenda characteristic of a certain age - bastard loneliness, alienation, internal and external dislike, escapism from the system, who wants to appropriate you. Moreover, he does this as efficiently as possible for the network space in which his music lives, in this way - his songs are as memo-intensive and fragmented as possible, they are like meaningful information outbursts; in this sense, of course, Pharaoh is better because he is younger - the rest of the elite of today's Russian hip-hop is still older and did not grow up on the Internet, but Pharaoh did... Plus, to all this, Pharaoh also creates a great myth around himself - all this semi-anonymity, mystery, its own artistic community, its own visual language and so on. A reference for today's thirty-year-olds - for us, it seems to me, the Dolphin once performed a similar cultural function; with the exception that the 90s were more about accelerators, and the 2010s are clearly about retarders.

– But he’s stealing music from someone American?

– No, of course, this is its own music - and the further, the harder; It seems that the fact that Pharaoh has cool beatmakers is not denied even by people who are allergic to his lyrics. Cloud rap, music that is both focused and somehow unfocused, chirping with a club rhythm and overwhelming with low atmospheres, was, of course, invented abroad - but as far as I understand, there it exists in a much more marginal and subcultural mode; I’m not sure that anyone other than Pharaoh could give it such a massive impetus.

There is no reason not to believe Gorbachev, but amateur rap reviews on YouTube (you will be surprised, but many of them collect well over 500 thousand views, that is, more than any video about Russian football) assure: Pharaoh rips off everything from Western stars, especially in the Black Siemens video, which came out a couple of years ago and brought him his first dose of fame. I’m going for additional expertise to Andrey Nikitin, the music editor of Afisha.Daily:

“Are the Pharaoh tracks a copy of the Western ones? Absolutely not. Can we say that they are one hundred percent free from borrowing? Also unlikely. A young musician tends to listen, absorb and learn from what is happening around him. Haters reproached Farah for stealing everything from Bones and a little from Yung Lean - well, trust your ears and listen to these artists back and forth. At a minimum, you won’t get the impression that everything here was completely stolen. Most likely, you will even come to the conclusion that these are quite different artists from each other. What they have in common is that they make such a gloomy, hopeless and rather unconventional rap - it’s not that they didn’t do this before, but at least it didn’t reach the masses. Although, if you want, you will hear something from early A$AP Rocky that is from early Pharaoh. But this only means that “rap” music, the sound of which on average changes dramatically every five years, has begun another turn.

Legalize's early work is replete with direct translations (!) of the punchlines of the American rapper KRS-One. So what, is this a shame? Nevermind, Legalize simply taught local rap that you can do it this way too, people began to look up to him, the genre moved a step higher. Pharaoh also did something that was not common before but has become normal now. Not everyone can boast of this.”

– What are the most incredible feelings you have experienced from music?

– My first solo concert – October 25, 2015. More than 1000 people came to the “Theater” club - to say that I was wow is to say nothing. I understood that there would be a lot of people, but still: when you get such feedback at that age, it’s very cool. At the same time, I’m not so much talking about the number of people – I’m talking about their eyes. You look at them and understand: you perform for these people and make them happy, leave something in their souls and hearts. From the number of happy eyes I then oh###.

The energy was fucking awesome. The boys and I go out - I’m 19 years old, some are a little older, some are a little younger - and we open a club in Moscow. At that moment I realized: everything I did, all the choices I made in life, were not in vain. I remember well how I walked into the dressing room with the full feeling that I was about to come back for an encore. F##nulled the track “Grape Day” for an encore, came back, just fell on the sofa and looked at one point.

– What do you need with today’s earnings?

– To have a hearty meal – thanks for that.

- So, what about the car? Apartment a little later?

– Now you’re asking me about the car and the apartment, but I don’t think about it at all. When I have the amount that I can spend on it, I will spend it. And while they are gone, I don’t even think about it.

Gleb has at least a dozen tattoos on his body, including his year of birth (oh, 1996) on his ribs and Nirvana’s signature face on his shoulder. It seems to me that the face is tattooed carelessly - Gleb explains: “This is the signature style of my tattoo artist.”

– Every football player has a club in which he dreams of playing. Which artist do you dream of performing together with?

– If only with Cobain somewhere there (points to the sky). I point there because I am convinced that he was killed after all, that he was not himself.

– Is this the most important artist in your life?

- There is no most important thing. There are people who inspire, who look at the world the same way I do. Name three? Kurt Cobain. Marilyn Manson. And Kid Cudi. Cobain inspired loneliness. Manson - freedom of thought. Kid Cuddy - both.

I’ve been listening to Nirvana since childhood; my cousin gave me a cassette. It’s clear that as a child I didn’t understand what he was singing about - you’re on a wave and you like it. When I began to understand what, why and why, I found brilliant things that later shaped my views on life.

- Why are you sure that he was killed?

-Have you seen his wife? (Courtney Love - website)? I watched documentaries, read books. I can't say for sure, but I'd like to believe it. What does this have to do with the wife? He wanted to leave music, all his sales, merch, etc. would stop. And so - after his death there is so much money that she will feed for the rest of her days. And even for a daughter – what’s her name, Frances Bean – that’s enough.

Manson? If you look at his visualization, it becomes clear how veiled everything is for him. What is genius? The fact is that a person knows so much about x## that he can competently compose this knowledge and ultimately do something cool of his own. Manson in this sense is the most striking character in the history of rock music. He dressed in women's clothes - he didn't give a fuck. The wave of suicides in America in the 90s was blamed on him - he didn’t give a fuck either. I read his autobiography, this is a man whom his grandfather crushed on Catholicism - perhaps, like I once did with football. And in the end, it all turned in the opposite direction for him.

Kid Cudi is a protégé of Kanye West, whom he took under his wing in the late 2000s because he had a very original sound. In those days, rap was stuck on cruelty, violence, murder and drugs. And Cadi’s work is a more psychological story, a separate concept. For example, throughout his creativity there is a theme of the moon. I initially liked it when I didn’t understand the lyrics yet. And when I started blinking, I realized: oh###! He writes as if my story, in the music you feel yourself, in the lyrics you hear yourself.

– Do you understand American rappers or do you run the lyrics through a translator?

– I understand most of it. But I’m looking at something - because a lot of new slang constantly appears in the language.

– Is there Russian music that bothers you or has bothered you before?

– Of course, I’m a music lover. Once upon a time I was freaking out about Disco Accident. From Zhukov. Later - from Guf, from Suitcase. Also with Anka Pletneva from the Vintage group, a real sex symbol. At that time, Maxim Fadeev wrote songs for her; “Eva, I love you” always resonated with me. If we take it in general, in Russia there is a lot of music in Russia, it’s a matter of taste.

“I want you to have a great time and for me to have a great time,” Gleb Golubin addresses the Tula hall. “Goat up everyone!” Hundreds of “goats” are at the top.

– This year the Internet was seething: you sent f## another rapper L’One (his great interview site is ). Why?

- I don’t know, I wanted to send it - and I did. I wish him health and happiness. To be honest, I don’t have any feelings for Levan - neither good nor bad.

How was it from the very beginning? My buddy and I recorded a track while sitting in our basement. The homie had “I wanted to come up with a dab / But Leva did it / Nah## Leva” in the chorus. Funny. Everyone was crazy then that Leva was walking (imitates deb), although no one has walked like this for a long time. We went to perform, performed, shouted this x###, this x### was filmed, it ended up on the Internet.

Then there was the Boiler Room party. I had already performed, I was going to have a drink with Adil (by rapper Scryptonite - website). Lyova sneaks up on me in the crowd with her guard of about five people, drags me out into the street and begins to ride on my ears. I don’t understand anything - because it’s complete shit. The frenzy began and it became clear that Levan had come to put on a show. If I wanted to talk, I would have found my numbers and just called. We talked one on one. He said that he really didn’t like the situation, that his relatives looked and they felt very offended. “Leva, I’m sorry, but it’s nothing personal. Let's not do the circus, but be adults. You are much older than me, but you are organizing the circus here, not me.” And that's it, we parted ways.

There were no fights, nothing happened. I don’t understand why people associated with Leva released information that there was a fight. I woke up the next morning, read all this x###, immediately forgot and went to breakfast.

– Is there anyone you would like to send to f## now?

- Oh, well, this is petty... Although Donald Trump annoys me. With your racism. And with his fat e###nickname.

– What was the last thing you read?

– Some article by Stalin about agriculture. This is a course on the history of Soviet journalism.

– Do you have an opinion about Stalin?

- Eat. I usually judge people I have seen myself. I didn't see Stalin. But my grandmother says that he was a very strong man who raised the country at that time. I believe her. '37? I wasn't there, I can't say anything. But I know that we won the war, then everything was fucked up, I’m now on tour and giving a concert.

– Is Putin handsome?

- Certainly. I speak for myself. I live in my own country. I live as I want to. I say what I want. I eat what I want. I'm fucked. I have nothing to complain about. When p###ts comes, I will say: p###ts comes.

– You are a member of an association of artists called YUNGRUSSIA. Young Russia – what is it like?

- This is the one that e###. And not the one that e###. After the collapse of the Union, Russia was not in a very good position - there were few prospects for learning, development, and creativity. With my concerts and my music, I want to make people understand: now is not the time to sit still and endure. Time to get up and do something. Now everyone has their chance. A chance to find something to do to enjoy it, and then say to myself: I didn’t waste my time on a piece of this fucking stone.

– How should you spend the next year to say: I am satisfied?

– I have to record a good release. And graduate from university. This is very hard for me. I spent three years there for a reason, I don’t want to take the fourth and merge, that would be a weakness on my part. There were many things in life that I did not complete. I gave up and quit halfway. Now I want to take it out. X## with him with a diploma - it won’t be useful. I just want to take it out because I understand: I can.

Gleb finishes his set, gives up the stage to the LSP duet, flies into the dressing room and, wringing out his T-shirt, collapses on the sofa. I interrupt his meditation to say goodbye. On the way, I understand that the tour manager was not lying: quite young mothers are cackling at the doors of the club (certainly not all of them are 40), some of them, having abandoned their cars in emergency mode right on the highway, were joined by their husbands.

On November 30, Pharaoh will give his biggest concert to date - at the Yotaspace club in the capital. Ticket prices start at 1,500 rubles, but it is already clear that there will be a cue ball, that is, about 3,000 spectators. An average of 4,300 people attend Dynamo Moscow matches, the same one for which Pharaoh could now play.

– Do you have an explanation why rap is so popular in Rus'? – music journalist Alexander Gorbachev is my last hope to understand why everything is so. – It feels like young people don’t listen to any other music at all. This didn’t happen in our time!

– Firstly, subculturality: in Russia, pop music is historically text-centric; Hip-hop here, understandably, fits even more than rock, and besides, it is not limited to songs; this is a (now very large) community with its own rituals, slang, media, and so on - and a sense of community, of course, is very important.

Secondly, versatility: over the past ten years, hip-hop has learned to absorb almost all other styles of pop music - Russian to a slightly lesser extent than American, but also: from quite shameless pop music (some MC Doni or the same Timati) to rock (Noize MC or Anacondaz) with all the stops in the middle.

And thirdly, as the group “Casta” sang, it rushes, it shakes, it hammers.

There were also questions about the football past, idols and the state of rap culture in Russia and the West. “Here it (rap culture) is new, and therefore no one knows what to do with it, and it is developing very chaotically, incomprehensibly, without interest and in pursuit of some very ungodly, stupid, dirty things and ideals that people make up their own minds. Because people here have no idea what the culture is like there. People here have a different consciousness, a different understanding of reality and mentality. But at the same time they try to conform to the culture there, without knowing it from the inside. I used to make fun of it all the time because it was stupid.”

From the interview you can also find out how Pharaoh managed to combine studies and concerts, what inspires him and what are his goals in the world of music. “I am not a song, I am an artist. And an artist is not only a song,” he said.

This month, Pharaoh began releasing singles from the REDUM: The Redflix Series, inspired by Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining, in which the hero, according to some interpretations, sold his soul to the devil for alcohol. He has already presented two tracks - this

Who's hyped on who?

On the cover of the new issue of the Dog magazine are Sergei Shnurov and Pharaoh, friendly heroes of different generations. On the magazine's website you can also find conversations with musicians - we traditionally made a summary of interesting moments.

Pharaoh about the music of Cord

In fact, I would classify Seryoga as one of the loudest and most talented musicians who have made themselves precisely according to their structure. Because, for example, I could draw a huge parallel with the same Bob Marley. A person could say completely different things with music that has the same mood. And despite the fact that everything..., he could pat you on the head with his music and say: it’s okay, we will break through.

Cord about concerts

Music generally performs the function of a bathhouse. Since the Russian people stopped going to the bathhouse, they go to concerts. There are temperatures in which you can’t live, just like at the PHARAOH concert, I was there. The main thing is to remember that under no circumstances should you live at a concert. A bathhouse, like a concert, is something ... where it makes sense to enter and definitely leave. It’s definitely not worth transporting things there.

Cord about formats

In our time, it was impossible to even imagine that YouTube would appear. There was a clear idea of ​​some kind of format. And it was necessary to correspond to him in order to fit into a television or radio station. You depended on some... critics, thank God, there are none of them anymore. And in their competitive environment it is much more difficult to exist. Previously, at least, the move was clear, now the moves are unclear. Where this door is located, where you need to enter, is completely unclear.

Cord about the difference between him and Pharaoh

He's a hacker and I'm a security guy. I prefer to open a safe than to write a program and... money from a bank that is located far away - which is what PHARAOH actually does. I prefer the old fashioned method of using a screwdriver and hammer to reach in and take what's mine. It seems to me that the whole discussion can be ended on this positive note. A hacker and a security guard, that's the whole difference.

Recently a new “vDud” with Farah was released - including the conversation about Shnur. Watch this interview if you haven't already:

*at the time of publication of the material, the “Five Minutes Ago” clip collected 38,085,486 views on Youtube

SERGEY MINAEV: I came across a video on the Internet in which you go out to referee a children's football match and tell the players: “I won’t allow you to foul.” You are thirteen years old there, you are a classic boy from a good family. Looking at that video, it's hard to believe that just five years later this good boy will sing: "I saw your bitch, it's just disgusting." At what point did that boy break? How did he get from the football field to the stage?

PHARAOH: Initially, I expected to devote myself to sports activities, and then came a stage of disappointment in everything I do. To be honest, it was important for me to become myself, to do what I want, and not what is expected of me. Because that’s my character, that’s the circumstances. When at an early age you achieve freedom (because you never had it and you are still in a borderline state), you take full responsibility for your actions, for your choices. When you do this at the age of 13-14, you consciously go through the state of pi*** (catastrophe. - Esquire).

CM.: You were still a child at that moment.

F.: Yes, a child, but in a sense already an adult. I had football, football hardened me: the team, training camps, we fought wall to wall. Having such experience, I just took it and said: I’ll continue to live on my own.

CM.: Did you grow up wealthy? Didn't you need some things that maybe your peers needed?

F.: I am, in principle, a person who did not really need anything. What I needed was inside, not outside.

CM.: Warm?

F.: I wouldn't say it's warm. This is a constant passage of various tests of the spirit. I was always drawn to go through something. I never told anyone about this, realizing that there would be no point. I was alone with myself and made my own conclusions, tried to understand myself. There were only my decisions, and it was not necessary for anyone to know about them, it was just that at the stage of growing up I passed a barrier: this is interesting to me, but this is not. I just tried not to touch my parents; I understood that it was hard for them at that time. Everyone says about me: major, major. But there was also poverty in my life. I thought so: they will understand me later.

CM.: So this is not a typical rebellion against parents?

F.: It's more of a rebellion against oneself. I understood that in the sports world I depend on the coach and the referee. There you stew in a small world where you constantly encounter people - it doesn’t matter whether you like them or not. I didn't feel at ease. At one point, something clicked for me, and I decided to just do everything my own way.

CM.: What did your parents say?

F.: I don't know, I haven't talked to them. There were different situations, I would not like to talk about them, because this is a family matter. But x*** (problem. - Esquire) that I had to go through made me who I am. I've broken myself a million times and continue to do so, because if you don't break yourself, you fall into a comfort zone and relax.

CM.: You said: I don’t want to play sports, I want to play music, but for this I have to go through the circles of my little hell.

F.: Maybe big. Everything is relative. The period of creativity from 18 to 20 years old was punk. There was rock and roll, fire, struggle, dependence or independence - it doesn’t matter, that’s not what we’re talking about. At a certain point, I realized that you can talk differently with your audience. A new stage has begun. I have become more mature.

CM.: Listening to your new mixtape, which essentially became a full-fledged album ( Pink Phloyd. — Esquire), I thought that in the texts about “chicks” who “divide you like marmalade”, you’ve been feeling cramped for a long time and it’s time to speak out somehow more seriously, or what? Tell all these boys and girls who turned over your car after the concert in Chelyabinsk: “Guys, this is what I really think about life.”

F.: I would like to convey to these guys that the choice that they are going to make, that will affect their whole life, has to come from somewhere here (pokes himself in the chest. - Esquire), and not from the environment, not from parents. I just want to tell them that in life you have to chew out your own, be yourself. Everyone has their own “I”, which can grow into something great, or it can burn out and destroy. I would like to convey to people that not everything is decided by money, brands, not everything is decided by e*** (sex. - Esquire), there are things in this life, in this country, that are much deeper, more basic, and more honest.

CM.:“Not everything is decided by money and brands, there are basic things” - and then I open your VKontakte page, and there is Pharaoh at the show of the women's line Iceberg, Pharaoh on display Chanel. Do you think the artist you call one of your idols, Kurt Cobain, would attend a women's line show? Iceberg?

F.: I'm not Kurt Cobain.

F.: As for social life... Well, I went to two or three events, I was interested. I'm interested in getting into another circle. The world is not so flat. During the time I’m alive, while I’m trampling this earth and breathing in oxygen, I want to learn a lot, try a lot, feel a lot - I’m interested in all this. I'm basically interested in design. I’m not interested in the material and the rags themselves, I’m interested in what impressions they leave, what emotions. Until I try it, I won't know if I like it or not. Right? What’s stopping me from coming and trying, smiling at a couple of people, taking a photo and s*** (leaving. — Esquire)?

CM.: Nothing gets in the way. I'm talking about something else. The media is pretty quick to package people up and turn them into characters. Don’t you feel the danger of suddenly finding yourself in the “gossip column” in five different magazines? Somewhere between Olga Buzova and “influential businessmen.”

F.: I don’t give a fuck (don’t care. - Esquire), Honestly. I'm not Olga Buzova.

CM.: No matter how pretentious it may sound, do you feel at least some responsibility to the millions - and there are actually millions of them - of your fans?

F.: Perhaps I didn’t realize before, I didn’t even imagine that I could come to the point where I am now. Now I understand very well my responsibility not only to the people with whom I share my thoughts and my musical preferences, but also to myself. I understand that I’ve been through so much, lost so much, boasted so much that I can’t lose it all at once. - Esquire). I need to take care of myself and I don't destroy myself anymore. I don’t want to stand still, I want to do something further, do it differently: beautifully, aesthetically, magnificently.

CM.: Jumping ahead five minutes. Where do you see yourself in the near future? Just a famous artist, a big brand, a business empire?

F.: I just want to leave a mark. So that five years pass, and you return to this mixtape, turn it on and get high, because I put my soul into it.

CM.: You speak the way very vulnerable people speak.

F.: I wouldn't call myself vulnerable. I have encountered situations that forced me to lick my wounds for a long time and stitch them up. And yet you continue to give yourself to people! And in response they spit in your soul. And you start to think: damn (damn. - Esquire), either I’m doing something wrong, or they’re f***ing (abnormal. — Esquire), or we don't understand each other. These things are an experience. Life is made up of experience. It causes you to become covered with a chitinous covering. But I can't say that I'm vulnerable. Maybe vulnerable in relation to people very close to me.

CM.: Those closest to you hurt you the most and deceive you the most.

F.: I usually notice this right away. As Vladimir Vladimirovich said, I know when I am being deceived, but I will never tell a person about it right away, I will wait, see what he does, find out the reason. I am the same. I trust no one.

CM.: Is there no one you can trust? Are there few people around you who love you?

F.: This is the time.

CM.: Time is always like this.

F.: People are like that. People are rotten. There are good people, there are plenty of them, but they prefer not to interfere. They stand aside and watch. Both men and women.

CM.: I know what you have with women from Instagram. I don't know what's going on in your generation. Are you getting married or just living together? I see, for example, how the institution of family and marriage is changing.

F.: In my opinion, he doesn't give a fuck (end. - Esquire) Today.

CM.: Why?

F.: Because a huge substitution of values ​​occurred due to the advent of the Internet, new music, and a new era. Everyone plays: women play, men play. But the institution of marriage is not a game. You bind yourself to another person with whom you walk side by side, who covers your back, and you cover his, you are equally responsible to each other.

CM.: And then you have children.

F.: Yes. But as soon as people enter such a game, they immediately lose. Therefore, the children they succeed do not have a strong family, they do not have a warm place where they can return, come if their own world is collapsing. Children see that their parents play with each other, lie to each other, and suffer. Instead of just talking to their child, they start an Instagram account for him. When you give your child an Instagram account, it’s a total p*** (a nightmare. — Esquire), the apogee of pi***, in my opinion.

CM.: I've seen a lot of accounts where 12-year-old girls dress like 25-year-old women.

F.: I can’t imagine how they will look at themselves through the prism of social networks when they are 18-20. Who will they be? They will never be real, because they become pictures on the Internet! Even my classmates get married for the sake of a picture. She’s like: I’ll go now, put on a wedding dress, they’ll take a photo of me, mom will be happy, everyone will be fucked (great. - Esquire), me too, I'll play. Perhaps the dude with whom she is going to play now loves her p*** (for real. - Esquire) and is ready to give his life for her, and she goes to play with him. Like in a TV show.

CM.: By the way, what is your relationship with the TV show? “I have always been real, I’m sending you to the *** box” (quote from Pharaoh. - Esquire)?

F.: I've never watched TV. As a child, maybe I watched cartoons on STS. TV destroys the brain, it’s some kind of cardboard world. I don't take what's going on there seriously. I have noticed many times that TV is *** (lying - Esquire), because he himself was an eyewitness to some events. And looking at how they were talked about on TV, I understood that it was wrong. I don't want to waste my time on this.

CM.: Of course, you saw the story in “Evening Urgant”, where Garmash read poems from your track “Five Minutes Ago”. I think that, of course, they didn’t finish the game. Garmash reading “five minutes ago I fucked a bitch in a Mercedes” - that would be very in style Saturday Night Live. That would be absolutely brilliant.

F.: It would be brilliant, but that’s what TV is for, so you don’t have to wait until the end. That’s why the Internet is now fucking (winning. — Esquire) TV. I'm not interested in TV and what happens there. Dot.

CM.: What interests you, what do you do when you're not writing music?

F.: I want to draw. I read, watch old movies, enjoy nature, my family, close friends.

CM.: What are you reading?

F.: Now I'm reading Hesse's Steppenwolf. I’m reading Dostoevsky’s Notes from the House of the Dead. I want to fill the emptiness around. If not women and whiskey, then books, films, tours.

CM.: Your main tour to date begins in September.

F.: Yes. We want to come to everyone and look at everyone. Fifty cities in three months. I’m going to perform, sing my mixtape to everyone, I’m going to give people emotions, a piece of myself and return to my mother, hug her, talk to my father.

CM.: Is there something you would like to tell your father, but never got around to? You can’t tell him this in person in the kitchen, but you can say it from the page of a magazine or from a TV screen.

F.: I want to say that I am grateful to him with my whole life for simply making me a person, for breaking me at a certain moment. If he didn't do that, I wouldn't be who I am.

CM.: I think this is a good point.

F.: I think so too. ≠