Dota 2 rapper shadowraze makes a breakthrough in the music scene

Russian Dota 2 musician Yan “shadowraze” Bragin has unexpectedly made it into the Top 10 rappers of 2022 compiled by the lyrics website Genius.com. He ranked 10th with 5.2M views, which is a truly massive number. The site’s authors have called the Russian Dota 2 rapper’s success a “real surprise”.

Esport is increasingly mixing with music and especially with rap that comes from Russia. While shadowraze is making its breakthrough with Genius, there are other rappers involved in esports as well.

shadowraze raps about Dota 2

shadowraze differs from all the other rappers out there in one point: all his lyrics are about the game Dota 2 and everything that has to do with it. He even mentions pro players like former Natus Vincere player and streamer Ilya “ALOHADANCE” Korobkin. His 5 million page views is a lot and shows the potential the rapper has and how well his music resonates with the community and beyond.

Shadowraze’s music is a wild mix of swearing, bragging, Dota terms, and dark humor accompanied by some pretty intense beats. He started gaining popularity in Russian-speaking countries two years ago and broke through in early 2022 with his most-listened song “Astral Step” (now it has 36 million views). In March, Shadowraze made the Top 10 Global Debuts list on Spotify with the track “Showdown”.

More Russian esports musicians

Besides shadowraze, there is another Dota rapper, this time from Ukraine. Rapper Zxcursed is the fastest-growing musician in the Rookie of the Year nomination, where he ranked #1 with 984,000 page views.

In the past, Zxcursed was a Dota 2 streamer and he called himself zxc. But after receiving a lifetime ban from Twitch, he made the switch to music. In 2022, he was even dissed with a song by another rap artist in the Eastern European Dota 2 scene, IAMMIND, who became known as the owner of the Mind Games organization.

Russian rap x esports?

In the coming years, we might see music connecting with esports more and more. Aside from all the organizations collaborating with musicians like Snoop Dogg, we’ll also see smaller musicians collaborating with esports. 

Also, quite a few (mainly Russian) players have already dipped their feet into new waters, experimenting mainly with rap music, such as Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and his brother Alexey. The two siblings have released a rap song in Russian titled “Киберспорт”, which is Russian for “esport”.

Then there’s ex-Natus Vincere Captain Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhaylov, who recently performed his song “What Does Love Cost” live at a concert with NILETTO. While his skills as a rapper are still in their infancy, he may well pave the way for other esports pros to enter the rap scene.

Header: shadowraze