Ezhel

Ezhel comes from a musical family. His mother was a state singer who sang songs in Turkish, Arabic and Chinese. At the age of 18, then still a reggae singer with the band Afra Tafra, he received a scholarship for the TED Ankara College Foundation Schools. Instead of going to college, in 2006 he started doing street artists, what he called ''AnatolianUrbanCore/Hip-Hop/Reggae-Dub/Trap''. After the breakup of the first band, he founded the band Kökler Filizleniyr with some friends from Ankara. His debut album Muptezel (Turkish for ''worthless''), released in 2017, was very well received. In his lyrics he draws attention to the jet life, the underground culture of his capital, and socially critical subjects such as child labour, poverty and child abuse. His song “Geceler” has been streamed more than 122 million times on Spotify and earned him the title “Freestyle King” by Hip Hop Life. In 2019, The New York Times named him one of the 15 most important contemporary European artists.