I was born in the USSR a few weeks before it was dissolved, so I ended up spending many of my formative years in the post-Soviet Union slums, raised by a single, young mother. Since that corner of the world was suddenly no longer shielded from the outside world of arts and entertainment, my exposure to media mostly consisted of weird Soviet cartoons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sailor Moon. In the mid 90s, before I was really exposed to Hip-Hop, I was obsessed with Michael Jackson when it came to music, but I mostly just wanted to be Spider-Man. I experienced my first dose of Hip-Hop in my pre-teens, having then left my previous environment and travelled the world a little; a friend lent me Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest on CD. My whole world changed the moment I heard Electric Relaxation - I no longer wanted to be a comic book character, or Donatello from the TMNT, I wanted to be Q-Tip, and so I started rapping. These days, I’m learning how to be comfortable with being myself. If in doing so my output somehow ends up helping others along the way, that's dope as fuck.