The 22-year-old rapper is so popular – he recently held three sold-out concerts at Hungary’s largest stadium – that even Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a steadfast champion of traditional values, does not known to be suitable for its youth or culture, also yes confirmed he was a fan.
Mr. Orban said he especially like the song “Rampapam,” a reggae-flavored song that celebrates the joys of cannabis. It was a surprising choice given the prime minister’s conservative views and one that raised questions about whether he had actually heard or just watched its videos shows musicians playing soccer, the leader’s favorite sport.
But Attila Bauko, a Hungarian superstar better known as Azahriah, has attracted so many passionate fans in Hungary that Mr. Orban, who has been in power for 14 years, seems to want a piece of his power. the quality and charisma of the rapper star.
“Because they saw a lot of people liked me, it seemed like They want to be friendlier.” for the three nights he performed.
The official favor “should have been commendable, but felt strange and uncomfortable” when so many of his young fans disliked the ruling Fidesz party, Azahiah said.
When tickets for his recent concert sold out within minutes of going on sale in October, Mr. Orban’s office put an image of the singer and a “sold out” sign on a TikTok video advertising one of the prime minister’s speeches.
The video was later deleted after a wave of online ridicule. Azahriah sold 138,800 tickets online while only a few thousand people turned out to hear Mr. Orban perform his own greatest hits – a familiar series of complaints against the European Union.
Azahiah first attracted public attention a decade ago when he started a YouTube channel at age 12. He occasionally played the guitar but mostly just talked, attracting young people to follow his troubles. His was at school in Ujpalota, a popular Budapest market with Communist-era concrete apartment blocks.
His personal story resonated. His parents divorced and he was raised mainly by his mother, an officer in the Hungarian army. His father moved to Germany to work as a mechanic, following a path that left many Hungarians disappointed with their future in their home country.
He became an entertainment celebrity after he started calling himself Azahria, a biblical name that roughly means “helped by God,” and in 2020, he collaborated with Desh , an established artist, to record his first hit, “meadow.” His first album, “I’m Worse,” was a collection of mostly English songs.
Then he switched to Hungarian and “Hunglish,” a combination of the two languages, with the occasional addition of Spanish and Roma.
His rapid rise to the top of the Hungarian rankings – earlier this month, he had four of the top five songs on Spotify’s most listened to list in Hungary – so fast that psychologists, called by the media in Hungary to explain the This statue, talks about “mass psychosis.”
Gergely Toth, Azahiah’s manager, recalled that when he first signed Azahiah three years ago, he was an artist who specialized in performing at concerts in front of 1,500 people.
“I’m in the middle of this whole thing and it’s hard for me to even explain what happened,” Mr. Toth said. “People cheered for him like they cheered for the Hungarian national football team.”
However, politics hindered Azahria’s chances of representing his country at Europe’s musical equivalent of the World Cup, the Eurovision Song Contest. Authorities are concerned about Eurovision’s reputation as Europe’s largest corporation gay eventin 2020, Hungary ended its participation in the annual competition.
“It would be great if I could win Eurovision as a straight white man,” Azahiah said.
David Sajo, entertainment editor of Telex, a popular Hungarian online media outlet, said he himself is not a big fan, but he praised Azahriah for broadening musical horizons. of Hungary through a blend of Afrobeat, Caribbean ska, Latin music and other genres. “quite basic and generic in the West, but unique here.”
Mr. Sajo said Azahiah’s big break really came in 2022 with a scandal that could have ended many other careers. After a performance at the province’s banh xeo festival, a video appeared online showing the artist having sex backstage with a female fan.
“Suddenly his name was everywhere day after day, in every gossip magazine, every mainstream newspaper and every internet site,” Mr. Sajo said. “Before that, he was just a Gen-Z celebrity. After that, he became a national A-list superstar.”
Azahiah said that the episode was embarrassing, but admitted that “it made me more famous”.
His most ardent fans are young women like Luca Szeles, 20, who comes from a small town in northern Hungary and is studying to become a kindergarten teacher. She bought tickets to all three recent concerts and slept on the sidewalk outside Puskas Arena to ensure she would be at the front of the line to see each concert.
She says she has a relationship with Azahiah unlike any other artist, including Taylor Swift, whom she also likes, because he sings about “real things in my own life ” — like his reference in a song about growing up in Ujpalota.
She said she had been watching his YouTube channel for years but really got hooked in 2021, when he released “Mind1,” a sad song performed with Desh. She recalls, at the time, she was going through a difficult time at home and connected with the song’s lyrics “every night you wait to see what tomorrow will bring, but you know everything will be the same” ”.
But his fans also include older people, like Julia Bakos, 50, an economist, who attended a recent concert with her 10-year-old son. She said her musical preferences once belonged to Depeche Mode, a 1980s British band, and Hungaria, a Communist-era group, but she loved Azahria because he “had something for everyone.” people” and constantly switching between genres and languages.
And unlike many stars, she said, “he seems like a decent person” who tries to overcome political and generational barriers.
During a recent concert, he told the audience that some fans wanted him to talk more about politics, but he said that’s not his job.
His occasional political interventions have avoided personal insults and are largely due to his disgust at what he describes as Hungary’s “belligerent atmosphere” between rival political factions. acrimonious.
“Musicians are not required to talk about politics,” he said. “If you don’t have anything to say, that’s okay. But in a free country, you shouldn’t stay silent because you’re worried it will harm your career. We are not in Russia.”
In February, he joined the public outrage over the pardon of a man convicted of covering up pedophile abuse at a daycare. Hungarian President Katalin Novak, a close ally of Mr. Orban, has forced to resign out of anger.
“There were some issues that were beyond the ethical level that I could accept,” he recalls.
Some loyal to Mr. Orban have tried to discredit his intervention by reviving his own scandal and painting him as a sexual abuser. But they quickly abandoned that effort, which only served to solidify public support for the musician.
“Azahriah is one of the few people in Hungary who cannot be destroyed by Fidesz,” said Mr. Sajo, the entertainment editor. “They knew he was too famous to cause trouble.”
Balazs Levai, a film producer who is making a film about the artist, says he struggled to understand Azahiah’s appeal and decided that “he was like a guy from a fairy tale Hungary – a person who came from absolutely nowhere to become a hero for everyone. everybody.”
