The Voice of Uzbekistan: Shokir on the Evolution of Uzbek Rap, Car Culture, and Being a National Icon

We speak with Tashkent-based hip hop artist Shokir about building a sound between tradition and modern rap, representing Uzbekistan on a global stage, and what it means to become the face of Pepsi in his home country.

From starting to release music on Spotify in 2020 to gaining millions of views online, Shokir has quickly become one of the most recognisable names in the Uzbek hip hop scene. His music blends contemporary hip hop with traditional Uzbek sounds, while his lyrics often reflect life in Tashkent and the social realities around him.

We caught up with him in Tashkent to talk about his path into music, the rap scene in Uzbekistan, and what it's like to become a major brand ambassador in the process.

@millymallymoe

ANOMIE: Hi Shokir! Thanks for speaking with us here in Tashkent. The music scene in Uzbekistan is pretty unique. What was the musical environment like growing up here? 

SHOKIR: In Uzbekistan a lot of musicians who study music at university kind of follow the old way of doing things. They learn by copying what's already been done: copy, paste. Most of the music industry is basically built around wedding music. The biggest stages in Uzbekistan are at weddings, so that's where everyone wants to perform.

The problem is, wedding songs are made for older people, so the younger generation didn’t really have anything to listen to. If you turned on the TV or looked at the charts, all you'd see were these goddamn wedding songs, it was really strange because that's all there was. Then, around maybe twenty years ago, people started experimenting a bit. They realised young people weren't watching music shows or paying attention to local artists anymore because they just weren't interested.

Instead, this generation started discovering music from outside Uzbekistan, artists like 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, Tupac, and loads of pop artists too, they realised there was this whole other world of music. The government saw that and basically said, "We need music like this too." So they funded loads of projects trying to make Uzbek versions of American-style music, just in our own language. There were probably over a hundred of them, but none of them really worked. People just didn't connect with them. 

After another three or four years, a new kind of artist started to appear who mixed styles from all over the world, but doing it in the Tashkent language and with our own culture. I wanted to do the same. I was studying music at university, and I wanted to learn Cubase, Fruity Loops, and Pro Tools (software programs used by musicians and producers to record, edit, and mix music) but nobody I knew could really teach me. So I just sat there clicking buttons and teaching myself. It was hard because back then I didn't have YouTube, there wasn't much information, and everything was in English.

So I opened Facebook and started messaging guys in the US. I didn't know any English, no grammar, nothing. I'd just write, "Yo, my brother, how's it going?" and hope for the best. Somehow I made my first connection with a guy from Atlanta who later came and did a feature with me. We shot a music video together,and he helped me learn English.

After that I just kept going. I'd message more people, ask questions, learn how to make better songs, learn Cubase and all the other software. Little by little, I taught myself everything. I was also working at the university theatre as a sound engineer, and they had all this amazing equipment from the US that I'd never seen before. So I stayed there for about a year and a half, just learning everything I could by doing the job.

After that, I left and started building my own studio. Every year I just kept improving. I tried putting together teams, but there was always some problem. Money, relationships, drama... something would always fall apart. Eventually I decided I would work better on my own.

ANOMIE: Were there particular artists, genres, or sounds that shaped your taste early on? How did people in Uzbekistan react to you bringing in this world type of music?

SHOKIR: When I was growing up, I listened to jazz, reggae, Bob Marley, Damian Marley, Frank Sinatra, all these different artists. Honestly, whenever I tried to explain my ideas to the people I was working with, they didn't really get it because they'd grown up with traditional wedding music. We were coming from completely different musical worlds. Nobody was really trying to create anything new. Everyone was making the same music, and people just accepted it. After about 13 years making hip-hop in Uzbekistan, I realised, "Nah... we need to go back and start again."

For eight years I made music in Russian. Looking back, it was probably a stupid decision. I made more than a thousand tracks, literally over a thousand songs, from two and a half to four minutes long. Out of all of them, only four really took off. Only four songs that people actually started listening to.

ANOMIE: Do you think that's because people wanted Uzbek rap instead?

SHOKIR: Yeah. The problem is that not many people in Uzbekistan actually speak Russian anymore. If you release a song in Uzbek, you've already got an audience of more than a million people in the country. If you release it in Russian, maybe 50,000 people will listen from Uzbekistan. That's a huge difference.

So I thought, "I don't want to spend my whole life like this." By then I could speak English pretty well, even if my writing wasn't great. So I decided to travel. I went to Sri Lanka, Dubai, Bangkok, Kazakhstan, Russia, everywhere. I was trying to find my people, trying to find the right place for me.

I'm Uzbek, but I grew up speaking Russian. My school was Russian, everything around me was Russian. Even my Uzbek had a Russian accent, and my neighbours used to joke about it all the time. They'd say, "You're Uzbek and you can't even speak Uzbek properly." So I decided to fix it. I rented an apartment in the old part of the city for three months. All my neighbours spoke only pure Uzbek, no Russian words mixed in. For those three months I was surrounded by the language every single day.

Honestly, it was one of the biggest upgrades of my life. It wasn't just about learning a language, it felt like finding a part of myself. I realised, "This is where I'm supposed to be." A few months later I was speaking Uzbek confidently. Then I made three songs. Just three. Honestly, they weren't even deep songs. No big message, nothing like that. They just had the Bob Marley vibe, Damian Marley, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, all those influences, but in Uzbek.

I took those three songs on my first tour. We went through twelve cities, and suddenly people started noticing me. They were like, "Yo... who's this guy?" I was giving them something fresh. Hip-hop with influences from the UK and the US, mixed with jazz, reggae, everything together. It's like one big salad of music.

And the people who understood it became fans for life. They'd message me saying, "Who the f*** are you? This is crazy. How do you make music like this?"

ANOMIE: Hip hop scenes around the world often develop their own identity depending on where they come from. How would you describe the Uzbek hip hop scene right now, especially in Tashkent?

SHOKIR: The Uzbek hip-hop scene has changed a lot. Right now it's growing really fast. I can do solo concerts now. Last year I even had a solo show in Moscow. That's a crazy thing for me because when I started, none of this existed. Now I have hit records, charting songs, and people listen all across Uzbekistan. We tour the whole country, every city, and we'll have more than 10,000 people come out. We also have sponsors now who actually invest in music, music videos, even films. That wasn't happening before.

At one point I went into the studio and wrote five songs in just two hours. Those songs became some of my biggest records, songs like Tungi Tashkent and Formula One. They brought that energy back, but this time in the Uzbek language.

That's when I really started understanding the marketing side of the industry too. My distributor, Rizanova, the biggest distributor in Uzbekistan, told me, "Release one song every three months. Build the hype first. Grow your social media, post Reels, Telegram updates, Stories. Then, when people are waiting for it, drop the song." I listened. I trusted the process and did exactly that. It was a smart move. Now I understand that making good music is only half the job, you also have to know how to build the audience around it.

ANOMIE: You’ve also become a major brand ambassador for Pepsi in Uzbekistan, which is a huge platform. How did that collaboration first come about? 

SHOKIR: I kind of became the voice of Uzbekistan by accident. Back when I was still making music in Russian, I only had around 20,000 listeners. I also used to record these deep, emotional voiceovers just for fun.

Then one day a producer from one of the biggest studios called me. He said, "We've got an energy drink commercial. We want your voice." Before I knew it, all the companies wanted my voice because it sounded fresh. Suddenly I'm everywhere. Trains, planes, shopping malls, TV adverts... honestly, five out of every six commercials you hear are probably me doing the voiceover. At this point, pretty much everyone in Uzbekistan recognises my voice.

Then Pepsi got in touch. Around five or six years ago they invited me in because they were looking for ambassadors. We just clicked. Every time I came up with a crazy idea, Pepsi was there saying, "Let's do it." The first year we had around 800 people at the concert. The next year it was 4,000. Then 10,000. This year, in Tashkent, we had 60,000 people. Sixty thousand…You can't really explain what that feels like.

It was basically Tomorrowland in Uzbekistan. I love working with Pepsi, and they love working with me. I'm the face of the brand, and I'm also the voice. I don't really think of myself as being super famous, but I know that every third person in Uzbekistan probably knows who I am.

When you get to that level, other brands start coming after you. They'll say, "Leave Pepsi and we'll pay you ten times more.". But Pepsi has always believed in me, so that relationship means something. There was a time when you could walk around Tashkent and it felt like the whole city was blue because Pepsi was everywhere. It was so big that even people in the government were joking, like, "Guys... maybe calm down a little."

Right now I'm still pushing forward. We've got a Ferrari project coming up, and I want to feature it in one of my music videos. I think a lot about colours and energy. Black is confidence. Red, like Ferrari, is fire. It means I can burn everything up. There's always meaning behind what I do, even if people don't notice it at first.

I also think a lot about the younger generation in Uzbekistan. They've got a lot of confidence, sometimes maybe too much ego. I recently made a song with Sabina Mustaeva, and I asked her to sing the chorus. But a lot of young people here don't like hearing Russian words mixed into Uzbek songs anymore. They want the language to be pure, and that's something I've had to understand as an artist.

ANOMIE: You've talked a lot about confidence, ambition, and staying true to yourself. How do you balance believing in yourself without letting it become ego?

SHOKIR: Ah... that's a really difficult question. A few years ago I learned a new Uzbek word: kibr. It means someone who's completely consumed by ego, someone who thinks they're bigger than everyone else. That's something I never want to become.

In Uzbekistan we have a few artists who are basically the kings of rap, and they all have completely different identities.  Konsta talks about social issues. If something's wrong with the government or with society, he'll put it straight into a song. Massa understands marketing better than almost anyone. He spent a few years in the US, came back, and literally asked people, "What do you want to hear?" People wanted songs about girls, partying, all that stuff... so he gave them exactly that. It made him huge.

Me? My thing is motivation. I'm also known for car songs. Fast cars, movement, ambition, that's my energy. I don't really see myself writing love songs anymore. I've been hurt too much in love, honestly. I've got things in my heart right now that I still can't even write about.

So for now, I don't want to make sad music. I want to make songs that give people energy. Songs that make them want to move. That's why confidence is important, but ego is dangerous. You have to know who you are without thinking you're better than everyone else.

ANOMIE: As your audience grows, do you see yourself as representing Uzbekistan beyond its borders? Is sharing Uzbek culture with the world part of your mission?

SHOKIR: I don't really feel pressure. For me, it's not about carrying the weight of the whole country on my shoulders. My goal is much simpler. I want to make songs that become so popular the whole world ends up listening to the Uzbek language. That's the dream.

My own music has changed over time. My first songs were like bombs, just pure energy. Now they're more like bullets. More precise. My creative process is fast. Years ago I'd come up with a couple of words, imagine the whole thing like a movie, find a beat, and the song would be finished in about three hours. I work with producers who are just as fast as I am. Over the next five years, I want to figure out how to put the Uzbek language on the world map.

Keep up with Shokir and check out his newest track here