Yarmak (rapper)

Childhood and Youth

Alexander Yarmak was born in Borispol on October 24, 1991 . After school, he entered the faculty of aircraft of the National Aviation University , where he began to play in KVN for the team " National Aviation University ", with which he reached the finals of the Higher Ukrainian League ^[2] .

Solo career

In 2011, YarmaK uploaded its first video for the song “Pidarasia” on the social network VKontakte and Youtube , which a few months later gained more than a million views ^[2] . In 2012, Yarmak presented his debut solo album “YasYuTuba”. In 2013, the musician directed the series How Style Was Tempered, where he played a major role. Later that year, he supported the protests in defense of Pavlichenko’s rights and wrote the song “Freedom to be honest” on this subject.

In early February 2014, a few weeks before the tragic events on Euromaidan , Yarmak and TOF released the song “22” and presented a clip compiled from the video chronicle of the events of the Revolution of Dignity (later the song was called the unofficial anthem of Euromaidan ^{[3] [4] [5]} ) The text of the song speaks of Ukraine as a beautiful and tortured girl who does not kneel before anyone. Exit “22” was perceived ambiguously. The Flow portal notes that Yarmak “was the only artist who wrote a song about what everyone needed to hear” ^[6] . The song was also noted in his book on the Maidan "I am from the hundreds of heavens" by Marco Rudnevich ^{[7] [8]} and Ivan Malkovich in an interview in the studio of Gromadsky ^[9] .

In 2015, he presented his third solo studio album “Made in UA” ^[10] . In April 2017, the fourth album “Restart” was released, which included 16 songs, including the first Ukrainian-language solo song called “Yours from below” in a duet with Olga Chernysheva ^[11] .

Stolniy Grad

On November 15, 2013, the Stolniy Grad group was founded, which also included Fir, Mikhail Inshin (Mikhalych), Tof and Marty. In 2014, the group released its debut album “Freedom City” ^[12] . In 2015, Yarmak and the group recorded the second album, “While the Areas Are Not Sleeping” ^[12] . At the beginning of 2017, the group split up ^[13] .

Personal life

In July 2016, he married the model Anna Shumyatskaya, whom she had previously met for several years ^[14] . June 15, 2019 a daughter was born

Reviews

The editor of the music site The Flow, Andrei Nedashkovsky, noted that the album “City of Freedom” markedly distinguishes Yarmak’s music from other Ukrainian rap stars with an emphasis on working with local audiences, calling it “the music of Ukrainians and for Ukrainians.” The second album of the group, according to Nedashkovsky, is “a technical representative rap of young people who are tired of war in their country and rap concentrating on (self) destruction”, the final song of which (“Take me away”) is an anti-war ballad ^{[ 12]} .

Yarmak himself considers Restart to be his best album ^[16] .

Rewards

In 2013, the video for the song “Boy’s Heart” became the leader among all Russian-speaking artists on YouTube, and according to the New Rap portal, he won the Video of the Year nomination ^[17] , and the Restart album, released in 2017, immediately after the release, he won first place in iTunes, regardless of the genre in Ukraine ^[18] .

In 2015, representatives of the social network VKontakte compiled a list of the most popular artists in Ukraine, in which Yarmak was twice: in first place solo and in seventh in the Stolny Grad group ^[12] . Also in the same year, Yarmak was included in the rating of the most popular stars of Ukraine, compiled by Forbes , where he took 8th line ^[19] .

• Official site