"How did you catch the accent right away?" Rapper Basta recognized a musician from Chavusy by his voice and spoke about his childhood in a closed town near Dzyatlava

Vasily Vakulenko and Belarusian performer Vladislav Lapay during the filming of the MC TAXI project. Photo: screenshot from the Instagram account gazgolderlive

A snippet of the conversation from the new episode of the YouTube show MC TAXI was published on Instagram by Gazgolder. The guest of 46-year-old Russian rapper Basta (Vasily Vakulenko) was 29-year-old Belarusian pop and hip-hop artist Vladislav Lapay, who performs under the stage name HOLLYFLAME.

The musician was born in Chavusy and graduated from the Pinsk State Agrarian and Technical College named after A. E. Kleshchov with a degree in construction, after which he moved to Moscow. In 2023, the Yandex Music service named him Artist of the Year in Belarus, and this year the performer gained widespread fame thanks to the track "Tonu" ("Drowning").

In the video, Vakulenko, behind the wheel of his G-Wagen, suddenly interrupts the guest with a question: "You have an accent, are you Belarusian?"

Embarrassed, Lapay confirms this and immediately asks: "How did you clock the accent right away? Oh, that's just dirty!"

Four years in Hezhaly and gym class from Katya IOWA's mom

To the young singer's surprise, Basta explained that he himself had lived in Belarus as a child. According to the rapper, during Soviet times his father was a serviceman, so the family spent four years in Hrodna Region — in the settlement of Hezhaly, Dzyatlava District, where a missile unit was stationed at the time. The artist accurately recalled neighboring settlements from memory, mentioning Lida and Belitsa.

Hearing this, Vladislav Lapay called the host "almost a fellow countryman" and shared that he himself comes from the small town of Chavusy in Mogilev Region, home to just over 10,000 people. To explain what his district center is known for, the musician added: "IOWA is from there, by the way. Her mom taught me gym class."

Biographies of the lead singer of the band IOWA, Ekaterina Ivanchikova, who also grew up in Chavusy, note that her mother Nina Ivanchikova worked as a teacher at a local sports-focused kindergarten, whose teams regularly won district competitions.

At the end of the video, the Russian rapper attempted to clarify the geography and asked whether Mogilev Region is "further south than Hrodna Region." The guest corrected him, explaining that his homeland lies closer to Smolensk, whereas Hrodna Region is Western Belarus, closer to Poland.

"Hezhaly — that's where Gazgolder came from!"

The short dialogue sparked a lively reaction in the comments under the post, which drew hundreds of Belarusians. Some users took note of how the young artist seemed embarrassed by his accent.

"Clocked him by the accent, but why is everyone ashamed of their accent — 'that's dirty' he says," one user wrote.

Another commenter added that residents of Vitsebsk, on the contrary, are immediately recognized in Hrodna by their "heavy Russian accent."

Павялічыць

The geographical confusion in the conversation did not go unnoticed either. Commenters poked fun at Basta placing Mogilev south of Hrodna, and compared the distance between Hezhaly and Chavusy, which sit at opposite ends of the country, to the distance between Pskov and Tyumen.

A separate discussion thread unfolded among natives of Dzyatlava District. Former residents of the military town who attended the same school as Vasily Vakulenko chimed in in the comments.

"Whenever I tell people in Moscow that Vasily went to our school, everyone just replies about Rostov," wrote one commenter.

Others recalled local realities: the secret missile base in the forest, the former "Lastochka" children's sanatorium, the reservoir with a dam, and the disco with "four colored light bulbs," as well as the fact that a correctional penal colony was later opened on the site of the disbanded military unit in Hezhaly.

Several commenters at once suggested that the name of the Belarusian settlement Hezhaly was the actual inspiration behind the name of Basta's music label, Gazgolder.

Residents of Hrodna and Lida showered the rapper with invitations to perform at the Hrodna Ice Palace, the Neman Stadium, or the Lidbeer festival. However, some commenters questioned why Belarus would need an artist who became infamous in Russia for his public support of raising the retirement age and his habit of "flip-flopping."

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