The 22-year-old rapper is so popular – he recently played three sold-out concerts in Hungary’s largest stadium – that even Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed that A staid advocate of traditional values, not known for being in tune with young people or their culture.
Mr Orban said he was particularly fond of the song “Rampapapam,” a reggae-style anthem that celebrates the joys of cannabis. It’s a surprising choice given the prime minister’s conservative views and raises questions about whether he had actually listened to it, or simply watched a video of the musician playing football, which the leader favourite sport.
But Hungarian superstar Attila Bauko, better known as Azaria, has won so many passionate fans in Hungary that Orban, who has been in power for 14 years, appears to want to share the Rapper energy and stardust.
“Now that they see a lot of people like me, they seem to want to be friendly,” Azaria said in an interview backstage before a concert at Puskas Arena in Budapest last month. The event attracted nearly 50,000 viewers.
Azaria said official support “should be flattering” but “feels strange and uncomfortable” when many of his young fans loathe the ruling Fidesz party.
In October, tickets to Orban’s most recent concert sold out within minutes of going on sale, and Orban’s office posted a photo of the singer and a “Sold Out” sign on a TikTok video to promote the prime minister. of a speech.
The video was later deleted after sparking a wave of ridicule online. Azaria sold 138,800 tickets online, but only a few thousand people showed up to hear Mr Orban talk about his biggest hits – a common complaint against the EU.
Azahriah first came to public attention a decade ago when he started a YouTube channel at the age of 12. He occasionally played guitar but mostly just talked, attracting young followers by telling stories of his troubles at school in Ujpalota, a downmarket neighborhood in Budapest. district, filled with communist-era concrete apartment buildings.
His personal story resonated. His parents were divorced and he was raised primarily by his mother, an officer in the Hungarian army. His father moved to Germany to work as a machinist, following the path of many Hungarians discouraged by prospects at home.
He became a sensation in the entertainment industry after he started calling himself Azahriah (a biblical name that roughly means “God’s help”), and in 2020 he collaborated with already established artist Desh to record his first hit The song “Meadow”. His first album, “I’m Worse”, contained mostly English-language songs.
He later switched to Hungarian and “Hungarian English”, a mixture of the two languages, and occasionally Spanish and Romance.
He quickly rose to the top of the Hungarian charts – Earlier this month, he dominated four of the top five most-listened songs on Spotify in Hungary – so quickly that Hungarian media called on psychologists to explain the phenomenon, calling it “mass psychosis.”
Azahriah’s manager, Gergely Toth, recalled that when he first signed Azahriah three years ago, he was a niche artist performing concerts in front of 1,500 people.
“I’m in the middle of this whole thing and even I find it hard to explain what’s going on,” Mr Toth said. “People cheered for him like they were cheering for the Hungarian national football team.”
However, politics stymied Azaria’s chances of representing her country in the Eurovision Song Contest, the European music industry’s equivalent of the World Cup. Authorities, alarmed by the Eurovision Song Contest’s reputation as Europe’s biggest gay event, terminated Hungary’s participation in the annual competition in 2020.
“It would be great if I could win Eurovision as a straight white man,” Azaria said.
David Sajo, entertainment editor of popular Hungarian online media Telex, said he was not a big fan himself, but praised Azahriah for broadening Hungary’s musical horizons by fusing Afrobeats, Caribbean ska, Latin music and other genres. “It’s very basic and generic in the West, but it’s unique here.”
Mr Sajo said Azahriah’s big break came in 2022, amid a scandal that would have ended the careers of many others. A video has surfaced online showing the artist having sex with a female fan backstage after a concert at the Provincial Pancake Festival.
“Suddenly, his name was in every gossip magazine, every major newspaper and every Internet site day after day,” Mr. Sajo said. “Before that, he was just another Gen Z celebrity. After that, he became a national A-list star.
Azaria said the incident was embarrassing but admitted “it expanded my profile”.
His most ardent fans are young women such as Luca Szeles, 20, from a small town in northern Hungary who is studying to be a kindergarten teacher. She bought tickets to the last three concerts and slept on the sidewalk outside the Puskas Arena to ensure she was at the front of the queue for each concert.
She said her relationship with Azahriah is different from other artists, even Taylor Swift, whom she also likes, because he sings about “real things from my own life” — as he does in The story of growing up in Ujpalota is mentioned in the song.
She said she had been watching his YouTube channel for years, but she was truly hooked in 2021 when he released “Mind1,” a sad song featuring Desh. She recalled going through a hard time at home at the time and related to the lyrics: “Every night you’re waiting to see what tomorrow will bring, but you know everything will be the same no matter what.”
But his fans also include older people, Consider economist Julia Bakos, 50, who recently attended a concert with her 10-year-old son. She said her musical tastes used to lean towards 1980s British band Depeche Mode and communist-era Hungarian bands, but she fell in love with Azahriah because he “had something for everyone” and was constantly changing genres and Switch between languages.
Unlike many stars, she said, “he seemed like a decent guy” trying to cross political and generational barriers.
At 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 avoid personal affronts, stemming mainly from his disgust at the “bellicose atmosphere” between Hungary’s two fiercely opposing political camps.
“Musicians have no obligation to talk about politics,” he said. “If you have nothing to say, that’s okay. But in a free country, staying silent for fear of damaging your career is not okay. We are not in Russia.
In February, he joined public outrage at the pardon of a man convicted of covering up pedophile abuse in a children’s home. Hungarian President Katalin Novak, a close ally of Mr Orban, was forced to resign in anger.
“Some of the issues were far beyond my ethical level,” he recalled.
Some of Orban’s loyal supporters have tried to discredit his intervention by revisiting Orban’s own scandals and painting him as a sexual abuser. But they quickly abandoned the effort, which only strengthened popular support for the musician.
“Azariya is one of the few people in Hungary who cannot be destroyed by Fidesz,” said entertainment editor Mr Saho. “They knew he was too popular to cause trouble.”
Filmmaker Balazs Levai, who is making a film about the artist, said he had always struggled to understand Azaria’s appeal and thought “he was like a Hungarian fairy tale” One of them – a man who came from nothing and became a hero.” everyone. “
