Pro-Putin rapper sets record for unpopularity on Russian YouTube

A Russian rapper who describes himself as Vladimir Putin’s best friend has pulled his latest pro-Kremlin music video from YouTube after it set a new record for online unpopularity.

The track, entitled Moscow, was released by Timati on the eve of Sunday’s city council elections in the Russian capital.

It contained lyrics praising the city’s Kremlin-installed mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, as well as criticising protests that rocked Moscow this summer after opposition candidates were barred from the city council polls.

“I don’t go on protests and I don’t talk shit,” went the lyrics to the song. It also contained a line hailing Moscow as “the city where they don’t hold gay parades”. He also rapped about “wolfing down a burger to the health of Sobyanin”.

The music video, which featured sweeping images of Moscow’s best-known landmarks, recorded the highest number of dislikes – 1.48m – for a single video on Russian YouTube. It also entered the top 30 most disliked music videos worldwide. It had 85,000 “likes”.

Timati denied allegations that he had been paid by the government to record the track. He said he had pulled it from YouTube to stop “the wave of negativity”.

“Today it’s trendy to complain about the government, but I have my own opinion,” he wrote on his Instagram page. “Instead of going to protests, you should work and improve yourselves.”

Timati, whose real name is Timur Yunusov, in 2015 released a song entitled My Best Friend is Vladimir Putin that describes Russia’s president as a “superhero”.

Guf, another rapper who contributed to the now notorious music video, apologised to his fans and said he had not even been aware elections were taking place. Putin’s ruling United Russia party suffered massive losses at Sunday’s city council polls.

Many of Russia’s most famous rappers have lent their support to the newly invigorated opposition movement. Face, one of Russian rap’s biggest stars, performed at an opposition rally in Moscow last month, while Oxxxymiron, an Oxford-University-educated rapper from St Petersburg, has also spoken out in support of Kremlin critics.