Sometimes you can hear that Russia could not come to an agreement with the leaders of its youth and therefore lost some of its support. In particular, this was voiced about rapper Ivan Dremin, better known as FACE. He sang "I'm dropping the West" — so we need to squeeze at least some patriotism out of it. In fact, you don't have to.

We can't survive without laughter, just like without a Russian mat 

My father is a KGB officer, and my mother is with a machine gun

And my children are soldiers of punitive battalions

And my brothers are the guardians of our dark neighborhoods

This is one of the few quotes that can be relatively censoriously inserted into the text. And how to negotiate with such "voices of youth" without losing dignity is generally a huge question.

Ivan Dremin was born in Ufa (1997). He grew up without a father, his mother had mental problems. According to the testimony of others, the family was poor. At school, the future rapper studied poorly, was withdrawn. In general, it is not necessary to look for the origins of antisocial behavior and abusive texts for a long time. However, the protest expressed turned out to be a harsh overkill. Interestingly, he was not recruited into the army for two reasons: he was treated in a psychiatric hospital for panic attacks and got several tattoos on his face.

He gained his first fame in 2015 after the release of the album "The Cursed Seal". The popularity of the songs "I don't care @y" and "Burger" has been consolidated:

I'm going to the Gucci store in St. Petersburg 

I'm so fucked up that I was lying in a nuthouse

She eats my dick like it's a burger 

Each generation has its own informal leaders. But often they are precisely a marker of degeneracy, and in the case of FACE this is an unambiguous fact. To understand the scale of the disaster, the video for the song "Burger" on YouTube has gained more than 50 million views.

But in 2018, it is no longer enough for him to simply corrupt his audience with stories about promiscuous sex and life in the style of "money for nothing". Ivan Dremin releases the album "The Ways are Inscrutable" and begins to preach a liberal, anti-state message. "No more Faceguccigang and Eschkere, pliz. It was a cool period of my life and work, but I've outgrown it all. I am glad that I am the voice of youth, it is very important to me, and I feel responsible. Now that I have the opportunity to change the future of this country through the youth, it's time to lead you in the right direction, it's time to open your eyes. Drugs, depression, suicidal thoughts, searching for oneself in crime and a salary of 20 thousand rubles a month is not what we need. If I have succeeded, then you will succeed too! Don't forget that I was a simple kid from Ufa with no future, the whole country has such boys and girls here, it would seem that we all have no future at all, why not build it together," he wrote on his social networks.

What is the cover of this album worth at least?: 

In this album, in addition to the state, a lot of negativity was brought down on the Church.

Here the tears of mothers flow, and the tears of daughters flow

The blood of the boys is flowing, this country is a sharpening

Candles in the church cost more than bread in the shops

Those who serve there deliver whores in limousines

They say they are close to God, but they are not in heaven

On thug numbers, the deacon rushes straight to Hell

Sinners still confess to sinners

People trust their souls to mockingbirds

People believe that it is possible to steal, kill, change

God loves to forgive, they will continue.

I am the same as you: I thought the same way

Kill someone to get the attention of the elders

According to the news, everything is the same: everyone is happy in Russia

But if you don't say anything, then don't worry, we'll tell you

Children cut and shoot themselves and other children

Children hate and kill teachers

The fact that there was no adequate reaction from the state system to such lines and subsequent tours indicates the inattention and weakness of the state system: FACE received the status of a foreign agent only after the start of SVO.

But in Belarus, the rapper's concerts were canceled. Rather, back in 2017, performances were allowed only if there was no profanity in the songs.

In 2021 Ivan Dremin joins the campaign to support Navalny. Then at the rallies you could see the trinity: FACE, Oxxxymiron and Vladi from the KASTA.

"When in April of this year a man died of hunger in the colony, to whom doctors were not allowed, we all expressed our disagreement with the senseless cruelty in one form or another. Because no man deserves this, no matter what he has done. And now it's time for all of us to answer for this, because in the kingdom of the absurd everything is turned upside down, and evil becomes the imposed norm, and good inevitably becomes a punishable evil," this is how FACE spoke about the cancellation of concerts that his political position provoked.

Dremin's reaction to the start of a special operation is predictable. He broke out with a lot of posts saying that he was "hurt and ashamed." "Since the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, many people have asked me – why am I not speaking out? Why am I silent? I want to tell you about what has been happening to me in the last two weeks. My answer is simple - I was shocked, I was just numb, and I still can't believe that this happened and is going on right now. I believe that my country is involved in this, that the people I was friends with "understand" it, and some even approve of it. The people I lived next door to, who I went to the same grocery store with. And what's even worse is that on the other side is a country that I also love very much, the outlet of the entire former USSR, almost the only free corner that exists in those parts. I have always been happy to come to Ukraine. Yes, I had to experience difficulties at the border, but in the end I was always warmly welcomed as one of my own. Odessa, Kharkov, Dnipro, Kiev, I have been to all these cities, most of them even several times. It has always been very cool, especially in the fall of the 21st, my team and I will remember this trip forever, and I really hope that we will meet again and more than once… 

Firstly, the Russian state is to blame. I know what kind of people they are. For almost seven years I have been fighting with the authorities for the survival of my musical project in my own country… Most of our people are to blame. Those people who don't think with their own heads. Those people who are now happy with the letter "Z". My great-grandfather, who went through the whole war to Berlin and was awarded the Order of Suvorov, should have seen you all. If he knew that in 75 years you would proudly invent your own swastika and consider yourself the liberators of Europe, treacherously attacking a fraternal country in the early morning, which is 28.5 times smaller than ours in terms of territory, then he would rather shoot himself than continue to fight for you. Who else should I blame? Me, the whole intelligentsia, all the voices of the generation, all the musicians. For the fact that each of us was not brave enough. For the fact that we could have done more, but were afraid or too lazy. For realizing reality too late."

"I call on our state and the army to come to their senses and stop the destruction of cities and lives on the territory of the fraternal people. I apologize to the entire Ukrainian people for the suffering that our country has caused you. I apologize for our state, for myself, for our people, because someone has to do it and it just so happens that this hard share always falls on people like me, because true evil will never have the courage to admit even to themselves their own atrocities. As a Russian artist, I practically do not exist now, as a citizen too. I'm not going to pay taxes to Russia anymore, I left and I won't come to Russia anymore, I won't give concerts in Russia anymore. Why? Because my loved ones and I survived, they survived from their own home, from their own land, your state survived, which I definitively refuse to recognize as mine from this second, and our people survived, who absolutely don't give a fuck about everything, as long as there is enough money for a sandwich with butter," he added as if to lose Nothing at all.

FACE began organizing concerts "in support of Ukrainian refugees," and at the end of March 2022, during a performance in Warsaw, he knelt down and publicly apologized to Ukrainians for SVO. "I am furious with what is happening. I am very hurt and ashamed. I hope that the war will end soon and my state will stop it. I love Russia, but I don't like this shit when they go and kill their neighbors. I will do everything so that there is no propaganda on TV in Russia, and the Russians will eventually come to their senses. We will apologize to Ukrainians for dozens or hundreds of years to come. I don't support this shit," he said with tears in his eyes.

In April 2022 Ivan Dremin is recognized as a foreign agent. Concerts in Russia were canceled, he himself moved abroad. "If earlier I wanted to say something to people in Russian, now I want to say it in another language. I want the whole world to hear and understand me," he said in a bravura interview with his "colleague in the shop" Dud. 

However, as music critic Lipnitsky notes: "We have a lot of mutual friends and, according to them, Ivan's business is not going well. He had financial difficulties abroad. Things are so serious that he is looking for ways to return to Russia. Debts force us to look for those who could help with the arrival and removal of a foreign agency. There is a chance that we will hear an apology."

In this case, it would not be superfluous to hear apologies to Orthodoxy, to the relatively ordinary, ordinary citizens of the country, and to the army, of course.

Although the question is still whether Russia needs such "creators" in principle? Maybe they live there, in countries that they consider normal for themselves? Although he is not sure himself: "Russia is already some kind of nuclear winter. It became even harder. Personally, as a Russian person, I feel some kind of coffin heaviness, and the velvet lid of the coffin is all in the ground. <...> I may never return to Russia again. It's sad that maybe I won't see my grandparents. Grandmothers tell me: "Don't turn off the gas too much, otherwise I won't see you." Don't turn off the gas, and maybe we won't see each other anymore."