Blaxta Boy

Blaxta-Boy is a rapper and juggalo from Kiev, Ukraine. He was born on 1 June 1981 in Altai (Russia) but was raised in Kirovograd, Ukraine.
Already as a kid he used to fall in love with contemporary popular music of 80s heard from the tapes collected and listened to by his parents. At the age of 7, mother took him to a music school to teach playing the violin.
From 1989 to 1992 his family lived in Merseburg (Germany) where his father served as a military officer. By watching MTV, Blaxta-Boy became a fan of plenty of pop-stars. This was the time he first got acquainted with some rap-music broadcasted by “Yo! MTV Raps!” The most frequently shown artists were: Vanilla Ice, Kris Kross, Naughty by Nature, MC Hammer, etc.
As there was no opportunity to attend classes of playing the violin in Germany, Blaxta-Boy had to change it into piano. For him to practice music lessons, mother bought a legendary Casio keyboard. The instrument was very simple. It had about four times fewer keys than a normal piano and the keys were pretty tiny. Nevertheless, in about 8-10 years it would be almost the only instrument Blaxta-Boy composed his first beats with.
After returning from Germany, Blaxa-Boy continued attending piano lessons along with secondary school. Already as a teenager, he becomes a bigger and bigger fan of the music popular at that time. Mostly it was so-called “euro-dance” music. His favorite projects were: Ace of Base, 2 Unlimited, Dr. Alban, Culture Beat, E-Type, DJ Bobo, Outhere Brothers, East 17, etc. One of the most characteristic features of that music he liked was rapping performed by a black artist. As a rule, it was quite melodic and therefore sounded cool. One of the first russian rappers, Blaxta-Boy liked much (not being a rapper yet) was young Mr. Maloy. His music was interesting and the lyrics – humorous. Humor is one of the most powerful components of lyrics for Blaxta-Boy (especially if it is stupid). Because of humor, Blaxta-Boy used to become a fan of some other groups. Among them Krasnaya Plesen. Actually, this is mostly a russian punk band. But it also had some rap songs as well as Sector Gaza did. Another comedy group was ICP which produced the greatest impression on Blaxta-Boy and still remains for him the best one ever. Humor is one of the most appreciated and frequently used by Blaxta-Boy method in writing lyrics.
In 1997 euro-dance is fading away and new music appears, so-called “euro-rap”. For Blaxta-Boy it serves as a link between pop music and hardcore american rap. He is more and more feeling as a rapper. His most favorite euro-rap group becomes C-Block. He loved every single song from their “General Population” LP. He also wrote down the lyrics of some songs and tried to rap simultaneously with the song played. Once Blaxa-Boy’s friend gave him a couple of cassettes with “real rap” (House of Pain, Cypress Hill, Beastie Boys). Blaxta-Boy did not like it much. It sounded not as melodic as C-Block did.
In the same year one of ukrainian TV channels (ICTV) used to broadcast MTV at night. Blaxta-Boy recorded it on video-cassettes. There were a lot of american rap videos. It was the time Blaxta-Boy got acquainted with the music of Snoop Doggy Dogg, LL Cool J, A Tribe Called Quest, 2pac, etc. He knew half of the rappers from back in the days, but he started understanding this music only now. In 1998 California Love sounded to Blaxta-Boy absolutely different from the year of 1996 (when it appeared first). It really rocked. From that MTV Blaxta-Boy heard first about Notorious B.I.G., but unfortunately this was the news of him having been shot and killed. From the same piece of news Blaxta-Boy learned that Tupac was already dead for half a year.
In 1997 Blaxta-Boy bought one of his first cassettes with 100% pure american rap. It was “Doggystyle” distributed by Moon Records on the territory of Ukraine. Blaxta-Boy knew what kind of music Snoop Dogg was. So, for Blaxta-Boy buying it was a very serious decision. He realized, it was a step into the world of pure hardcore american rap. When buying, he hesitated much because of not knowing if he would like this music. He did not have a lot of pocket money to make mistakes. He knew what it was like to be disappointed by the record bought. However, he did this and never regretted because the album was the shit! For some period of time Moon Records was the only label to distribute cassettes with american rap in Ukraine. Blaxta-Boy used to buy dozens of rap albums released by it.
In 1998 Blaxta-Boy finishes secondary school and enters Kirovograd State Pedagogical University, faculty of foreign languages. He is already seriously addicted to rap and listens to nothing but it. Rap helps him to study. He learns dialogues by rapping them to beats. He listens to tons of English lyrics trying to understand them. He likes when a rapper narrates some stories from his life or even better if these are some unreal “fairy tales”.
Unfortunately, he felt pretty much alone as a fan of this style of music. Nothing is really going on with rap in his native town. People do not know what hip-hop is. Nobody listens to it. He already tries to make some beats. It is difficult to call them beats because they are made with a little Casio keyboard which is not even capable of recording! So, recording was made with a tape-recorder, instrument by instrument. At the end, the quality of a track was low but it still was some kind of beat. Blaxta-Boy loved and loves composing music.
At the end of October 1998 a historical event happens in the music life of Blaxta-Boy. A celebration of Halloween is held at his university. Every group had to present a performance on the stage. During its performance, one group used the music which “shocked” Blaxta-Boy. It was Insane Clown Posse. Soon after, he found the person whose cassette was playing. It was a girl who had been in the U.S.A. and brought “The Great Milenko” to Ukraine. There have been no other record in the whole life of Blaxta-Boy which he loved more than this one. He bumped to it for 2 months! ICP impressed Blaxta-Boy so much, he had nothing to do but call himself a JUGGALO.
At this time he is thinking on his rapper nick-name. He wanted to make up a name nobody had. As he was a fan of “black” music, he started from the word “black”. As he was eager to become a star in this music, the second word was “star”. Besides, there was a computer game club called “Black Star” in his home town he loved to attend with his friends to play Sega. Then he mixed these 2 words and received the word “Blaxter”. In Russian it sounds as “Blekster”.
Blaxter continues making music and writing some funny lyrics. In 1999 he makes his first performance at the university at some concert. He performed with his friend who was perhaps more dancing than rapping. And the beat was a Tupac’s instrumental which Blaxter fortunately found on one rap collection CD he bought.
In September 2000 Blaxter moved to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, with his mother and sister. By this time he already had a cassette full of his first songs. It could be called an “album”, but the music was made of primitive Casio patches and Blaxter’s flow was weak. Still for Blaxter some songs were really hot. He wrote about his hood, friends, drinking moonshine, smoking trees, having fun.
Student Blaxter transferred from Kirovograd University to Kiev National Linguistic University. The next academic year was a challenge for Blaxter. He did nothing but study therefore this year was a loss for Blaxter’s music. Neither did he take his favorite Casio from Kirovograd to make some beats nor did he have any time for writing lyrics.
The situation with hip-hop in Kiev was completely different from Kirovograd. A lot of rap groups performed at weekly hip-hop parties organized in clubs. Rap collections were released. Half-rap magazine “Extreme” was issued. A radio rap-show “Brooklinskie Pirozhki” was broadcasted weekly. Kiev seemed a complete paradise after Kirovograd.
In 2001 being a 3rd year student Blaxter found a job of a private music teacher for 2 kids of a Nigerian diplomat. He taught them playing the piano. They had a huge Yamaha synthesizer Blaxter could only dream of. After lessons he was allowed to play it and compose some music.
In 2002 being a 4th year student Blaxter goes to a secondary school to work as an English teacher as he did not see any other way to earn money at that moment. And he needed money badly because renting an apartment in Kiev is not an easy bidness.
At the school he got acquainted with a couple of guys (colleagues-teachers), who happened to be musicians too. Both of them were good at programming music with a PC. One of them even programmed one of Blaxter’s latest tunes, recorded his voice and made a first “computer song”, a fairy tale called “Dragon”. This was also one of the first songs with “improved flow”. Blaxter worked hard on his rapping skills and felt a considerable improvement. It was a new, higher level. Blaxter found the way he should and is going to sound. Now he has only to keep working on it. Soon after that Blaxter started using one computer at the school to program music, as he did not have his home PC yet. A new collection of songs appeared. Blaxter’s first hit-song called “Nursery School” was among them.
In December 2003 Blaxter had his first club performance. The hip-hop parties were organized by N.P. Gerik in an underground club. Thanx to Gerik, Blaxter was lucky to have about 3-4 performances almost weekly. There were not many people attending the parties but that was a nice experience for Blaxter.
In 2004 Blaxter made his first studio record. It was the song called “Nursery scool” or “Kindergarden” (“Detskiy Sad”). It was recorded by Kozyr from “Noviy Soyuz” and engineered by Art from “Karaty”. It still remains one of the best Blaxta-Boy’s songs. It is also the first song to get on the internet. Doberman kindly placed this song on his web-site “rapvokzal.com” and made a kind of promotion for it.
In 2005 Blaxter gets employed by the embassy of Pakistan as a secretary and translator of the ambassador. He finally earns some money to start buying his own PC. Within a month or two he buys a complete computer. Now he can produce his music and record demo-songs as often as he can. A number of other hits were born. Among them: “Meloman”, “Drunk Faces feat. Small-Ka and Taras p3s”, “Work Ya Booty”, etc. Most of the songs were quick to get on the local web-sites and sometimes on Russian ones with the aim of promotion.
In 2006 Blaxter “releases” his first internet-album called “Childish Rap” (Detskiy Rap). It was just a collection of his songs made by that moment. At some moment Blaxter decided to change his nick-name a bit. He became just Blaxta instead of Blaxter. The reason of it was finding out that the word “blexter” existed before and “blexters” are the people who are fans of hard metal, death metal music or something.
In the same year Blaxta participates in two battles: rapvokzal.com and 7th hip-hop.ru battle. In the Rapvokzal battle Blaxta fails at the 3rd round vs. Udav from Shanhai Rec. almost with an equal score: 3-4. At the 1st round of hip.hop.ru battle Blaxta gets into 500 best MCs out of 3500. At the 2nd round he gets into 128 best MCs out of those 500. Besides, according to the score his song had, Blaxta could be considered second best rapper in Kiev after Fame and one of 20 best MCs of the whole battle! At the 3rd round he raps against Base from “Nebezdari” (Baikonur, Kazakhstan). The final score was higher than Base’s and Blaxta was already the only one from 5 Kiev MCs who won the 3rd round and was chosen for the 4th round. But, when Blaxta already had an opponent in the 4th round, there appeared an announcement all over the web-site: “A mistake was made by the computer counting scores. Not Blaxta but Base wins the 3rd round”! Can you imagine that?! It would be less disappointing to find out you had lost if it were known from the very beginning but not like that. Both battles seemed to be corrupted. But anyway, there is no better way of training skills than participating in battles. They only made Blaxta stronger.
In 2007 Blaxta performed at the hip-hop festival “Life in da hip-hop”. Though he did not win again, a lot of people liked his performance best of all.
In 2008 Blaxta again decided to modify his official nick-name into “Blaxta-Boy” (in Russian it sounds as “Black is with you”). Now, the biggest reason is Timati’s label. However, his friends, people who know him from back in the days still call him Blaxter or Blaxta.
At the moment Blaxta-Boy is working on his new LP which he plans to drop this year. All the details of the project will be described as soon as the album is ready.
Stay wit Blax. Peace.