After leaving Belarus, I stopped listening to the radio, and as a result I drifted away from the musical atmosphere of my home country. So until the recent wave of bans targeting the singer AP$ENT, I hadn’t even heard of him. But once his music started being blocked practically everywhere — reportedly even at the state level in Russia, as if it were somehow corrupting minds — I decided to find out what kind of artist could cause that kind of reaction.
It turns out that in Russia he came under fire because of the song “Can I Go With You,” which he wrote last summer. There’s nothing overtly controversial in the lyrics — at least not if you don’t know the realities of the musician’s own life. The song unexpectedly went viral on TikTok, spawning countless videos with cats asking to come live at your place and other cute edits. Judging by those clips, many of their creators have no idea what the song is actually about. There are whole compilations of such TikTok videos — and it was precisely thanks to that viral spread that everyone suddenly heard about the track.
In reality, though, the musician hid in the lyrics the bitterness of leaving Belarus, where his wife began facing persecution over her posts. It’s actually spelled out in the song — though woven subtly between the lines. And the author doesn’t deny it; on YouTube he even accompanied the video with the words: “Those who know even a little about what’s happening in my life will understand.”
But even on its own, it’s strangely addictive in its simplicity — and once you understand the meaning, it resonates with you even more deeply:
Starting with that track, I went on to listen to several of AP$ENT’s other most popular songs, as well as some that simply caught my eye because of their cover art or titles. And although “Can I Go With You” really appealed to me and made its way into my playlist, I liked another of his songs even more — one written after the 2020 protests in Belarus, when we were all horrified by the authorities’ brutality.
Here there are no hidden meanings. The cover art, the lyrics, and even the fact that the song is in the native Belarusian language — everything is completely transparent. Even the title, “Zhive!” (“Long live!”), in today’s Belarus can get you into serious trouble. I still can’t quite believe that this is the reality.
So, all in all, thanks to the guardians of our “psychological well-being,” I’ve discovered yet another musician whose work I’ll be following from now on. Otherwise, I probably would never have heard of him.
