Biography:

Alexander Andreevich Tkach ^[1] ( June 2 , 1989 , Bratsk , USSR  – June 17 , 2022 , Moscow , Russia ), better known by his stage names  Sasha Skul and Tagir Madzhulov , is a Russian hip-hop artist, one of the founders of the Buchenwald Flava group . During his musical career, he released five albums as part of ” Buchenwald Flava ” and eleven solo albums.

Born June 2, 1989 in Bratsk ^[2] . During his school years, he became interested in Russian hip-hop and rock, listened to bands such as ” Dots “, ” Slaves of the Lamp ” and ” Red Mold “. In 2004, under the pseudonym Sasha Skul, he became a member of the Koba ChoK group ^[3] . Later, in 2009, together with Dmitry Gusev, he created a new group – Buchenwald Flava, in which he recorded the albums My Friend Hitler (2009) and Clockwork Tomato (2011). The work of the group was distinguished by a deliberate provocative content: the musicians satirically addressed in their songs to Nazism , xenophobia , patriotism andbanditry ^[4] .

Since 2011, he began to engage in solo work, releasing his debut album “Useless Fossil”. In 2013, a new album “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was released. In 2014, after the release of the album “White Trench”, the group “Buchenwald Flava” ceased to exist due to disagreements between the participants ^[5] . In April, he took part in the second season of the show Versus Battle against John Rai. In the same year, a new album, “Wine from hemlock”, was released. In 2015, he recorded the next disc “Kamo Gryadeshi”.

In 2016, the Flame album was released, produced by RipBeat and Dark Faders; the presentation took place on November 12 in St. Petersburg ^[6] [7] . The following year, also together with RipBeat and Dark Faders, three albums were recorded: “Sun City” ^[8] , “Rich Woman” ^[9] and “1989” ^[10] , which became the ideological continuation of the 2016 release.

In 2018, the album “Songs about you” was released, produced by the beatmaker duo Dark Faders ^[11] [12] . The track list of the release also included a humorous cover version of the song Maxim .

In February, messages about the musician’s death appeared on the social network VKontakte ; a rebuttal was later published by Skul himself ^[13] . In May 2019, Sasha Skul announced that he had been hospitalized with suspected cancer ^{[14] [15] [16] [17] [18]} . In support of Skul, his friends organized a five-hour charity concert, which took place on June 30 ^[19] . Initially, information was also circulated that Skul was directly assisted by “his close friend Anna Shulgina ” ^[20] [21] , however, according to him, “the Chuvash lads were engaged in the concert, information from her got into the Yolke social network, and already from her – to the singer Shene, daughter of Valeria ” ^[22] .

Throughout his illness, Sasha School wrote daily notes about his condition on the social network VKontakte, and on November 1, 2019, he released his tenth album Nigredo , in which he documented his battle with cancer ^[23] . On November 7, 2019, Sasha Skul announced the end of treatment on his page on the social network ^[24] .

On February 21, 2020, the first release of Sasha Skul after the illness was released – a joint album with Murda Killa “Navii trails”, inspired by Russian folklore. The guest verses on the record were Horus and Pyrokinesis ^[25] . On July 13 of the same year, Murda Killa died due to an asthma attack caused by the use of alcohol and antidepressants ^[26] .

On April 10, the JAM label, which owns the rights to Skul’s songs, sued the BOOM streaming service for 575 thousand rubles for copyright infringement on the songs of Sasha Skul and composer Leonid Velichkovsky . The label found songs from Skul’s album “Tagir Majulov” in the BOOM media library, while the copyright information was removed, and the artist did not receive any money from listening to the album. The streaming service was unable to verify that it owns the rights to the content ^[27] .

In July, Skul’s second release premiered in 2020. The album “Mor” is a topical rap to dance music, recorded during self-isolation. School himself characterizes the album as follows: “Not a soundtrack to the end of the world, but a call for a new life – a reminder that the world has not died” ^[28] [29] .

On February 16, 2023, a tribute album “death is inevitable” in honor of Murda Killa was released , in which Sasha participated ^[30] .

On February 24, the posthumous album “Easter of the Dead” was released with the participation of Metox , Pasha Tekhnik and Murda Killa ^[31] .

Death

Died June 17, 2022 in Moscow; Information about the death of Sasha Skul was confirmed to the media by his sister Olga and his friend Nikita Khors ^{[32] [33] [34]} .

On June 20, 2022, a funeral farewell was held in Moscow, after which the musician’s body was transported to Bratsk, where his funeral took place on June 22, 2022.

Musical style

Skul’s work is characterized by outrageous and satirically parodic lyrics centered around the themes of nationalism , drug addiction and alcoholism ^{[35] [4] [36]} . Noting the musician’s special approach to creativity, his style is described as “anti-rap” and ” postmodern rap ” ^[13] [8] , turning into a stream of consciousness “far from rap techniques” ^[11] .

Credits: