Lev Leshchenko became a popular rapper
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Basta recorded a New Year’s duet about love with the master of Soviet pop music
One of the New Year’s hits in December, quite unexpectedly, was a joint track from Lev Leshchenko and rapper Basta. It’s not often that leaders of non-format culture record with Soviet pop legends. Of course, I would like to know more about how this could even happen.
It is also interesting that there is such a New Year’s Eve in the song “We Can’t Live Without Each Other,” which belongs to the authorship of the union (sacred to any frantic fan of the Soviet past, of which there are more and more) Alexandra Pakhmutova and Nikolai Dobronravov. The cover of the single features a pink Christmas ball strewn with sparkles; upon closer listening, it becomes clear that the seasonal connection to the main holiday of the year begins and ends with this ball. There is absolutely nothing more “masquerade” in the song.
The track is exclusively about love, mature and perhaps even the last. It became popularly known as “Ribbon”, since the poems contain the image of a beloved woman as a finishing ribbon that will “accept” the lyrical hero. The musically complex, multi-stage, deeply meaningful track attracted Basta’s attention. The idea of the joint track belongs to the rapper, who admits that he considers the song great. The artist did not immediately bother Lev Leshchenko and simply used existing recordings: he took a sample from the 77th year of the last century, retained the entire verses of Nikolai Dobronravov and added long “panels”, verbose and harsh, as is customary for rappers, of his text with free orchestral passages .
This overload of textual information and musical “improvement” risked making the product indigestible for the average listener, but judging by the public’s reaction, it went well. Leshchenko also liked everything, but he decided to rewrite his voice and replace it with a modern sound. As a result, the master sent a fresh vocal recording, and a completely original track was born.
By the way, this is not the first duet with “Ribbon”. Over the years, Leshchenko performed it together with Larisa Dolina, Lolita and Anastasia Makeeva. At the anniversary concert in 2022, he sang it in a duet with his wife Irina. Initially, the song was performed by Muslim Magomayev, delicately accompanying himself on the piano. On the Internet you can find both performances – by Magomayev and Leshchenko – from approximately the same period, the mid-70s of the last century, then it went to the people. Alexander Gradsky also sang the song in the 80s and even recorded it in English. Other performers also took it into their repertoire – Yulian, Gasim Khalilov, many modern vocalists at talent shows – Vlad Sytnik, Vasily Urievsky, Sergei Volchkov, Andrey Lefler.
But the “original” competition between Magomayev and Leshchenko for the “canonical” version of the song was still perceptible among the older audience, who loved both one and the other artist. Leshchenko once talked about this in 2007: “There was still one song that connected us with Muslim. Muslim sang it, I sang it, but then Muslim stopped singing it, I don’t know why, and I kind of took it over, made it mine and still sing it.” Lev Valeryanovich admitted that he always dreamed of performing it with Magomayev together and once invited him to the piano. Muslim agreed to play, but did not sing – the video recording remained: Magomaev plays, and Leshchenko sings.
By the way, Basta is not the first rap artist in master Leshchenko’s duet experiments. Two years ago, a life-affirming joint track with Lock Dog “We Will Live” was released. Around the same time, a duet with the Russian fashion indie group Therr Maitz appeared with a cover of the hit of the Kino group – “Good Night”. Contrary to all the laws of the genre, 81-year-old Lev Leshchenko is gaining momentum among young people.
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Lev Leshchenko as a popular rapper
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