The Okko video platform released a documentary about the rapper, whose fame as a jester and brawler ran ahead of his musical popularity – “Pasha Technik. Who is the underground behind? The answer to the question asked in the title Igor Gavrilov I couldn’t find it in the feed.
Neither Pasha Technik nor the band that launched his career, Kunteynir, have ever appeared in mainstream media or been released on major record labels. Mr. Ivlev’s career developed in a marginal environment. But the more time passes after his death, the more often he is mentioned among those without whom it is impossible to imagine domestic rap.
The Kunteynir group made its presence known in the 2000s. Its activities stopped when Pasha Technik went to prison for five years after being accused of possession and distribution of drugs. After his release, his solo career attracted much more attention.
Pasha Technik was a cult character in the original sense of this definition, that is, widely known in narrow circles. Actually, it was not a career in its pure form. He combined the skills of a rapper and a comedian.
Throughout the entire film “Pasha Technician. Who is the underground behind? viewers are told many times that the main character had a special charm: every meeting with him was unforgettable, he radiated kindness and joy. He didn’t do anything special for this, he simply lived the same life on stage and on the set of a YouTube show as he lived outside of them.
He did not limit himself in terms of the use of prohibited substances, and this guaranteed success to any show.
On stage and in the frame there was a jester, a man-meme, whose rap over the years increasingly faded into the shadow of his contradictory charisma.
In archival videos, the authors have to “bleep” obscene remarks and words from a prohibited context. Understanding why these videos were successful is now difficult. In the frame there is a cheerful character, but increasingly poorly oriented in space. He gradually loses his human form until he dies in a hospital in Thailand. No one has any doubts about the causes of death. As soon as there was even a hint of sobriety in his life, “well-wishers” with prohibited substances immediately appeared on the horizon.
The result is a confident film about man’s powerlessness in the face of temptation. And the biggest mistake of the film’s authors is that they were never able to explain to the viewer why Pasha Technik’s music is so valuable. In fact, the film lacks any more or less detailed analysis of at least one of its tracks. It is clear that the underground artist Pasha Technik has no big hits left that will “live for centuries.” Such is the marginal nature of his work. But at least for the sake of formality, it would be worth citing a couple of lines that “hit home” and are scattered into quotes. Anyone, even the most underground rapper, has them. If they are not there, it means that what really made Ivlev popular was not rap, but fun.
In addition to the members of the Kunteynir group, rappers of different generations speak about Pavel Ivlev with great respect, from Ptakhi and Feduk to Scully Milano and Molodoy Kaluga. Music journalist Nikolai Redkin (YouTube channel “Broken Dances”) compares Pasha Technik with Yuri Nikulin, and blogger Satyr calls him an outcast who has achieved mass recognition. The script for the film was written by music publicist Danya Pornorep, who calls himself a “trap critic.” He acts as a presenter, but speaks little and sluggishly.
On funeral Pasha Technika was attended by many more people than might have been expected—several thousand people—and they chanted his name as the coffin was carried out of the church.
One girl says on camera that she came to the funeral from another city, having taken out a loan of 15 thousand rubles for this.
Another is pushing a stroller in front of her. She believes that when her child grows up, she will be proud that she was at Pasha’s funeral. The artist’s mother, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna, talks about what a surprise it was for the family when many people, already at the end of his life, began to send money for treatment. The death of Pasha Technik was the peak of his career. It turned out that everyone who turned on the video with Pasha, at first glance, just to have a good time, “to have a good laugh,” really needed him, and his death became a personal loss.
