newyorker:

The Civil Archipelago

Ivan Alexeyev, a.k.a. Noize MC, is a hugely famous twenty-six-year-old hip-hop artist in Russia who made much of his reputation rebelling against the entitled class of limo riders. Alexeyev grew up near Smolensk, listening to Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, and Run-DMC. He went to Moscow for college, to study computer science, and he formed his band there, with classmates.

Last year, while he was on tour in the Russian Far East, he heard about an accident near Gagarin Square, in Moscow: a Mercedes bearing a vice-president of one of the major Russian oil companies, Lukoil, smashed into a Citroën, killing two women, including the sister of one of Alexeyev’s friends. The police blamed the driver of the Citroën, but eyewitnesses said that the executive’s car had been driving in the wrong lane, to avoid traffic.

That night, in Vladivostok, Alexeyev couldn’t sleep, and he wrote a howl of outrage, called “Mercedes S666.” The song, and the “South Park”-style video that went with it, was a big hit on the Internet. “Right away, a lot of political parties tried to use it for their aims,” Alexeyev told me. “It feels like you always have to choose one or the other, and I don’t want to choose.”

- In this week’s issue, David Remnick writes about how far the resistance to Vladimir Putin can go: http://nyr.kr/u1TfS2

In May, Human Rights Watch brought Platon to Russia to photograph activists. Above, a photograph of Alexeyex. For a video interview, and a sample of his music: http://nyr.kr/sfQ4h1