Руки вверх
MORGENSHTERN is a Russian rapper, singer, songwriter and music producer, born 17 February 1998 in Ufa as Alisher Tagirovich Valeev. By the end of the 2010s, he had gone from creating parody videos on YouTube to becoming one of the most visible artists in Russian-language streaming rap. His career was shaped not only by songs such as Novyy Merin, Yung Hefner, Pososi, Cadillac, El Problema, ICE, Cristal & МОЁТ, Dulo and Poslednyaya Lyubov, but also by the way he presented his music: deliberate simplicity, self-irony, a provocative image and the transformation of the release-making process itself into standalone internet content.
Morgenshtern is a surname that the artist initially used as a stage name and later made official. In 2020, he publicly showed a passport bearing the surname Morgenshtern, objecting to media outlets continuing to describe it exclusively as a pseudonym.
Ufa, Early Recordings and Unfinished Education
Alisher grew up in Ufa and became interested in rap while still at school. He had been making music long before achieving mainstream recognition: recording early songs, shooting videos and learning how to create content for the internet. After school, he studied for a time at Bashkir State Pedagogical University and later at Ufa State Aviation Technical University in a field related to computer science. Morgenshtern did not complete higher education, instead focusing on music and YouTube. There is no reliable basis for claiming that he specifically studied at the Faculty of Foreign Languages at BSPU.
EasyRap: Fame First as a Media Project
Morgenshtern's first large audience did not come through the traditional music industry. In 2017, he launched the YouTube series EasyRap, in which he parodied the styles of well-known rap artists and demonstrated how relatively quickly a track resembling a popular hit could be assembled. The format simultaneously mocked the clichés of Russian rap at the time and allowed him to showcase his own skills in arrangement, songwriting and video content.
It was here that one of the defining characteristics of his future career emerged: Morgenshtern was selling the audience not only the finished song, but also the story of how it was created. This model later reached its most extreme form during the making of Legendary Dust, when the recording process itself became part of the public show.
From Parody to Original Material
In 2018, he released the album Before I Became Famous. Around the turn of 2018–2019 came the project Smile, Fool!. By this point, he was gradually moving away from the image of a YouTube parodist and building an independent music career.
A major turning point came with Novyy Merin in 2019. The track established a model that would define the next stage of Morgenshtern's career: a trap beat, an extremely simple and instantly memorable chorus, ostentatious lyrics about money and status, and a visual presentation designed for rapid circulation across social networks and video platforms. Yung Hefner became another notable release from the same period.
Slava Marlow and Legendary Dust
One of the most important creative partners of the 2019–2020 period was producer Slava Marlow. Their work together had a major impact on Morgenshtern's sound: minimalist trap arrangements, heavy bass, short melodic loops and deliberately simple vocal hooks became the foundation of his most successful tracks from this era.
In January 2020, Morgenshtern carried out one of the most talked-about experiments of his career: creating the album Legendary Dust in roughly one week. A significant part of the process was shown to the audience, turning the making of the record into both music production and reality content. The album was released on 17 January 2020 and contained ten short tracks.
This project best demonstrates why Morgenshtern's influence cannot be explained by musical style alone. Trap and Auto-Tune existed long before him; what proved far more distinctive was the combination of rap with the logic of YouTube and social media, where the speed of creation, the visibility of the process and audience reaction became part of the work itself.
2020: Cadillac, ICE and El Problema
Legendary Dust was followed by a run of singles that pushed Morgenshtern far beyond his original internet audience. On Pososi, he continued his deliberately provocative approach, while Cadillac, a collaboration with Eldzhey, became one of the biggest Russian-language hits of 2020. The same period also brought ICE, Lollipop with Eldzhey, El Problema with Timati, and Cristal & МОЁТ.
At the same time, the artist began moving more actively beyond the Russian scene. On WATAFUK, he collaborated with American rapper Lil Pump. It is therefore incorrect to suggest that his international collaborations only began after 2022.
Million Dollar: Two Albums in One Week
In May 2021, Morgenshtern carried out another unusual release concept. First, on 20 May, he released Million Dollar: Happiness, followed roughly a week later by its companion project Million Dollar: Business. The two albums were contrasted not only by their titles but also visually: the first used a deliberately grotesque image, while the second leaned into an overt aesthetic of wealth and business success.
This period also includes Dulo, Novaya Volna with DJ Smash, and the international collaboration Leck with Imanbek, Fetty Wap and KDDK. By this point, Morgenshtern's career had fully moved beyond the YouTube series that launched him: he had become a standalone mainstream music project.
Leaving Russia and the Song 12
At the end of November 2021, Morgenshtern left Russia after public statements by Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee, accusing the artist of promoting drugs through social media. The statement itself was not a court ruling, but it became one of the events after which the musician left the country and continued his career abroad.
In March 2022, he released the song and video 12, which responded to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The ending of the track included a call for peace and an audio fragment connected with the events of the war.
On 6 May 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice added Morgenshtern to its register of foreign agents. This legal status continues to affect the distribution and public presentation of his work within the Russian information space.
LAST ONE: The Album After Emigration
On 21 October 2022, Morgenshtern released the full-length album LAST ONE — twenty tracks with a total running time of around forty minutes. The title itself and statements surrounding the project created the impression that it might mark the end of the Russian-language chapter of his career, but his later discography showed that LAST ONE did not become a literal final point.
Compared with the short releases of previous years that were often designed for immediate viral impact, the album felt more like a substantial summation of the period that had begun with Novyy Merin and Legendary Dust. After it, the frequency of major album projects decreased, while the artist's musical image gradually began to change.
After the Trap Peak: Poslednyaya Lyubov
One of the most notable later releases was Poslednyaya Lyubov in 2024. The song differs significantly from the loud braggadocio tracks of the Cadillac or Cristal & МОЁТ era: instead of ostentatious consumption, it centres on a melancholic song structure and emotional vocals. A remix by Robin Schulz followed later.
This shift was not an isolated experiment. By the middle of the 2020s, Morgenshtern was increasingly distancing himself from the image of an artist for whom shock value, money and provocation had been almost mandatory elements of every song.
ALISHER: Returning to His Own Name and Moving Toward Rock
On 14 February 2025, Morgenshtern released the five-track EP ALISHER. The title itself shifted the focus away from the MORGENSHTERN stage persona and back toward Alisher as a person. Apple Music classifies the release as Russian-language rock, which reflects the noticeable change in musical language. Tracks on the project include POVOD, DOM (London, Prague, Nice), KRASNY FLAG and PUSTOY VOKZAL.
Here, heavy trap beats give way to guitars, more traditional song structures and more openly personal lyrics. It represents one of the most significant stylistic shifts of his entire career: an artist who became famous through irony and deliberate superficiality began using his music in a much more direct and personal way.
Dead Sea Live and Tsvetok
In February 2026, Morgenshtern released Dead Sea Live (Acoustic Live), an eight-track live project featuring acoustic versions of his material. Apple Music also places it within the rock category. The format further emphasises the distance between his contemporary work and the electronic trap aesthetic of his most commercially successful period.
In March 2026, he released the single Tsvetok. The later stage of his discography therefore developed not as an attempt to reproduce the Cadillac or Legendary Dust formula indefinitely, but as a search for a more melodic, song-oriented language.
How Morgenshtern's Sound Changed
Morgenshtern's early music is best described through trap, hip-hop and pop-rap. Typical features include short tracks, heavy 808 bass, Auto-Tune, minimalist melodic loops and choruses designed for instant memorability. This formula was especially clear during his period of collaboration with Slava Marlow.
However, musical technique never existed separately from media strategy. EasyRap turned rap production into a comedy format, Legendary Dust turned it into a reality show, while the run of singles from 2019–2021 was closely tied to music videos, memes and a constantly maintained public persona.
It is therefore more accurate to view Morgenshtern's main contribution not as the creation of a new genre, but as a change in the way Russian-language rap could be produced, promoted and consumed in the era of YouTube and streaming platforms. His success demonstrated that the recording process itself, conflict, humour, image and release speed could become as much a part of the music product as a traditional album.
His later work shows the opposite movement. Poslednyaya Lyubov, ALISHER and Dead Sea Live significantly reduce the distance between the artist and his stage persona, increasingly replacing deliberate irony with rock, acoustic and confessional elements.
Main Discography
- Before I Became Famous — 2018
- Smile, Fool! — 2019
- Legendary Dust — 2020
- Million Dollar: Happiness — 2021
- Million Dollar: Business — 2021
- LAST ONE — 2022
- ALISHER — 2025, EP
- Dead Sea Live (Acoustic Live) — 2026, live acoustic release
The discography shows a fairly dramatic evolution: from internet rap and trap to the two major conceptual releases of 2021, then to the post-emigration LAST ONE period and finally to the much more personal, rock-oriented music of the mid-2020s.
Morgenshtern's Place in Russian-Language Music
Morgenshtern became a major figure not because he was the first to use trap, Auto-Tune or provocative lyrics. All of those elements were already part of hip-hop. His distinction lay elsewhere: he brought the logic of video blogging into a music career, allowing the audience to watch not only the result but also the process itself, while each new release became the continuation of an ongoing media storyline. EasyRap and especially the public recording of Legendary Dust demonstrate this principle most clearly.
Within just a few years, the artist went from parodying contemporary rap clichés to using them with extraordinary commercial success, before gradually beginning to dismantle his own image. This succession of roles — YouTube parodist, trap star, creator of mainstream pop-rap hits and later a more personal rock-oriented performer — makes his biography considerably more complex than the original image of a late-2010s provocateur.
At the same time, Morgenshtern's most lasting influence is connected with the media model of contemporary music: fast release cycles, direct communication with the audience, turning the artist's personality into part of the creative project and erasing the boundary between a music release and internet content. In this sense, his career became one of the defining stories of Russian-language popular music in the streaming era.
