On paper, “Like a Flower Through Stone” by OG Kazakh rap group Black Cost doesn’t make sense. There’s the fact that it was uploaded to YouTube by a user named Tanner Stauss, whose channel otherwise almost exclusively consists of clips from The Big Lebowski. Then there’s the clip’s shimmering 4k resolution, despite being filmed all the way back in 2008 – an aspirational quality for underground rappers today, and unheard of even for mainstream American artists back then. Kazakhstan is hardly the first country that comes to mind when one thinks of hip-hop, so the video immediately begs the question: how on earth did this track come into being?

Deeper still, the video itself has a uniquely captivating quality. Through black-and-white shots of Black Cost’s four-piece rapping in front of industrial shipping containers and children running about a derelict playground under the looming obelisk of Soviet-era apartments, it tells the story of a nation in transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I would also later learn that, as one of the first rap groups in the country, Black Cost inadvertently set in motion a long chain of events that led to the wide-reaching geopolitical shifts that Kazakhstan’s now-flourishing rap scene finds itself at the centre of today. “Like a Flower Through Stone” began to seem like a prophetic title.

I first made contact with the track’s videographer, an American camera technician named Tanner Stauss, in January of this year. Speaking over the phone, he explained how he found himself in the landlocked central Asian country in the mid-00s as a film graduate, brought over by a Kazakh production company to operate the then-cutting-edge RED film camera. On set, he met a man named Sakaen Bitaev who was friends with Black Cost, and, after weeks of buttering him up for his lucrative equipment, the duo set about producing their enigmatic video. 

The group were keen for Stauss to upload the video on his channel in the hopes that it might attract an international audience, and provide a more authentic view of Kazakhstan than had been given in Borat a couple of years prior. However, despite forming a friendship, he eventually lost contact with the group. It took almost a year of searching for a fresh lead on Black Cost before I was suddenly emailed a +7 Kazakh phone number by a YouTuber named Rap History KZ. At the other end was a man named Kicha, one of two surviving members of the group’s original four-piece which also included rappers Hazard, Anthrax and Forward. 

“I started making rap in the early 00s, learning from Western artists and adapting it to our realities,” Kicha told me. “More than anything, I was inspired by life in Kazakhstan and the challenges that young people faced.” It’s a determination that’s writ large across the “Like a Flower Through Stone” video, which seemed to contain a striking and almost tragic sincerity, reaching into the void and across language barriers to tell a story otherwise unheard. “In that song, I rapped in Russian because it was more familiar to many. It was the language that I grew up speaking,” Kicha continues, referring to how Russian had become the lingua franca of most ex-Soviet Union countries. In fact, one of Kazakhstan’s biggest names to date – a rapper called Skriptonite – is also one of the most successful Russian-speaking artists more widely, exclusively performing in the language and currently residing in Moscow. 

I started making rap in the early 00s, learning from Western artists and adapting it to our realities. More than anything, I was inspired by life in Kazakhstan and the challenges that young people faced – Kicha, Black Cost

However, in the last couple of years there have been moves towards articulating a national Kazakh identity, a process that is reflected in the nation’s recent decision to switch from Russia’s Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin script adopted by much of the international community, as well as its rap scene. “Now, more artists are rapping in Kazakh,” says Kicha. “I support this change because it helps preserve and promote national culture, and it makes rap more accessible to Kazakh-speaking people.”

“There are many more artists, and different styles and directions have emerged. Artists have become bolder in expressing their thoughts and exploring new paths, using both Kazakh and Russian languages,” Kicha continues. Pulled in about as many directions as its newly global-facing government, the scene is almost unrecognisable compared to when “Like A Flower Through Stone” was first released, but this growth has not come without its rifts. 

In 2015, the boy group Ninety One was formed in Kazakhstan’s historical capital of Almaty, taking their name from the year the nation gained independence from the Soviet Union. Blending elements of US hip-hop and K-pop with the Kazakh language, Ninety One were credited with pioneering a new genre called Q-pop and immediately rose to notoriety. While much of the younger generation were swept by a zealous fan craze, dubbing themselves ‘Eaglez’ after Kazakhstan’s national animal, older generations criticised their use of makeup and swearing, insisting that it was incompatible with Kazakh culture. Caught between traditionalism and globalisation, the group’s debut tour in 2016 was scuppered by protests and nine out of 12 of their shows were cancelled. 

Meanwhile, Kazakh-born, Russia-based rap group CAPTOWN, consisting of rappers Zaton, FortyGunz and Bluez, represent their identity differently. “Music has no language,” they told me over the phone in October last year, instead choosing to promote Kazakh culture from within the Russian sphere of influence. They scoffed when I brought up Q-pop, stating that “we are probably among their critics”, but the group still wear their Kazakh heritage proudly. The phrase “tastes like a Kazakh shit in my mouth” appears at the start of almost all of their songs – a signature which, for them, represents the promotion of national culture in their music. “It’s important that when people listen to our music they feel the taste of Kazakh shit in their mouth,” they say, laughing.

Despite these differences, Kicha doesn’t discriminate between the many branches of the Kazakh rap scene today. “The language of rap is certainly important, but what’s most important is sincerity and content. You can rap in any language as long as you’re speaking the truth and conveying your thoughts to the listeners,” he explains. “Language is a tool, but the essence of rap lies in the story you tell.” Like a flower emerging through the brutalist concrete of the Soviet Union, the Kazakh rap scene today is still spreading its roots, slowly carving out its own space amid the tug of history and globalisation. 

Below we spotlight five rappers representing different facets of the Kazakh hip-hop scene today. 

ZAQ

Founding member and lead rapper of Ninety One, few people represent the rifts in Kazakh society quite like Zaq. “I was inspired to rap by Eminem, like many people. I grew up in a small village and my uncles listened to him loudly on a tape recorder while they worked outside. I rewatched 8 Mile about 20 times,” Zaq tells Dazed over email. “The new generation has the internet, which expands their vision and gives them the opportunity to keep up with the times. They are unafraid to look for themselves, to experiment and to declare themselves.” 

“Before, artists could earn good money only on toi (Kazakh weddings) or if they sang in Russian and moved to Moscow. Therefore, there was no demand for quality pop music or rap in the Kazakh language,” Zaq continues, explaining his motivations behind joining Ninety One. While the group sparked national hysteria during their debut tour in 2016, the country has begun to get comfortable with these international influences, which gives him hope for the future. “We don’t have that problem [anymore], it’s like two different worlds,” he explains, “We are experiencing a renaissance of Kazakh music – this is not the peak for Kazakh hip hop, it is just beginning.”

YENLIK

Raised on Kazakh folk music, Yenlik first encountered hip-hop in university, and has blazed her own path fusing the two influences. “I realised that rap is similar to our ‘aitys’, which is a kind of Kazakh rap battle,” she explains. “But, at that time, Kazakh rap sounded completely different. So, I thought of writing rap in Kazakh, in my style.”

Incorporating traditional melodies and instruments into her music, Yenlik profoundly represents the whirlpool of influences that young Kazakhs grow up with today – an icon for the modern hybridised Kazakh identity. Her breakout release, “DOP”, speaks to a common experience among Kazakh youth: the pressure to provide for their parents’ generation who survived the transition out of the Soviet Union. 

CAPTOWN

There is a good reason for CAPTOWN’s decision to relocate to Russia. With their appearance on Russian freestyle platform 3 КОТА widely regarded as one of the best yet, the group are promoting Kazakh culture to the rest of the Russian-speaking world. Single “Временно” is dedicated to the struggles of their parents’ generation under Soviet rule. “Our parents grew up in the 90s, which was a very difficult period for post-Soviet countries,” they explain. “We wanted to say that we're proud of them, of how they handled these hardships, even if they were forced to resort to some criminal actions during these times. We wanted to emphasise that problems are temporary and that we just have to forge ahead, no matter how difficult it is.”

IRINA KAIRATOVNA

Beginning life as part of Russian comedy series KVN, Irina Kairatovna ventured into music in 2017 just as Kazakhstan was embroiled in some of the biggest protests in history. While rapping in Kazakh and sampling traditional instruments like the dombra, the three-piece are unafraid of criticising the status quo. Track “Wu Kang” addresses the recent controversies surrounding international influences in Kazakhstan, while viral track “5000” accuses the government of corruption and bribery amid a society that is consistently ranked as one of the most unequal on Earth (the latter video currently stands at 90 million views on YouTube, equivalent to ten times the population of Kazakhstan itself). Equal parts comedy, political commentary and rap, the group speak to a younger generation that is questioning the contradictions within Kazakh society today. 

SHIZA

Hailing from the southern city of Shymkent, and having collaborated with almost all of the aforementioned artists, Shiza’s dedication to the newly emerging Kazakh rap scene is evident. His breakout single, “Shym”, is an ode to the city he grew up in, sporting a flow that is heavily rooted in the lyrical specificities of the Kazakh language. It’s off-kilter, unorthodox, and offers a glimpse into the bloom of cultural hybridity that the flower of Kazakh rap is just beginning to offer.