2024-08-02 01:54:40
He wanted to be a football player, but injuries thwarted his plans. He studied graphics, but found that he was not good at it anyway. After years of suffering, he broke through from the village pub to the top. Rapper Rohony is now tearing down the counters on streaming platforms. In an interview for Aktuálně.cz, he talks about how he coped with the first wave of “haters” and how he resists the pressure that came with popularity.
“I’m from the village, and not from the street, I have a university degree, I prefer to brew beer anyway.” The verse of one of rapper Rohony’s biggest hits called U Hřiště 380 seems to describe his incredible journey to fame. In his work, he often plays the role of a village brat who “drinks five beers for a conversation” and celebrates the environment of pubs, especially the one belonging to his father in his native Starč.
In reality, however, during the interview, he presents himself in a cultivated, deliberate manner, admits to a number of concerns that accompanied the beginning of his career and current success, and remains polite. On his way out, he takes a picture with the young security guard who guards the entrance to the Brno velodrome. There Rohony performed at the Pop Messe festival last weekend. He’s not the first or last fan he poses with in front of the camera that night.
Twenty-five-year-old Adam Rohony, who used his unusual last name as a stage name and is familiarly called “Roháč” by his fans, started dreaming of a music career about six years ago. Back then, he was studying graphic design at the University of Ostrava, which is probably not the usual breeding ground for famous rappers. He describes his musical background as zero, counting bands like Kabát or Tři sestry. He is pure self-taught in the craft.
But when he was looking for the direction he would take during his studies, he knew that it would not be the field in which he would get a diploma. He studied graphics already in high school, but according to himself, he still didn’t know how to do it, or at least not as well as he imagined. “I could work in some commercial, but not create something that would have added value and I would enjoy,” he reflects.
At school, he therefore got together with his classmate Lukáš Zálešák, with whom he still works today, and together they drew up a plan for rap success. “We only did research for a year, we were looking for a way to deal with it. We took it perhaps unnecessarily responsibly,” he looks back. It is said that he began to take the money that he injected into the then unprofitable business as a standing order for rent or taxes – it simply has to be paid.
But when Rohony was still on the edge of the rap world, even though he moved to Prague for a while to break through, a crisis began to come. That was the end of university life. “The only thing that kept me going was that I was still a student. But I started to think that if it didn’t work out, I would have to go to work somewhere, and that I couldn’t do graphic design, even though I had been doing it all the time,” he says.
After finishing his studies, he therefore decided to go to his father’s pub in his native Starča in the Třebíč region for a few months to gain some time and work on his first album. This environment became the inspiration for several tracks full of beer, village fun and pride in one’s roots. “Dad, he’s a pingl, mother was a pingl, my brother pingl during the holidays and I’m the best pingl,” he raps in the song U Roháče. “And at that moment it hit,” he recalls of the time when he let his birth lump speak to his work.
The attack came like a blow with a shovel
In recent months, Rohony has become one of the most successful Czech rappers. His lyrics are simple, easy to remember and therefore accessible to a wide range of listeners. “When I returned to the village, I realized that I wanted to work with music differently than before. Directly and understandably. I opened up more and that helped me find myself,” he says.
The first album Superfly, released last year, was built around the less than 2,000-strong Starč, which he made famous throughout the country. As well as his internet series The Return of the King, from which the catchphrase “I’m healthy, good time” comes from. It soon became a meme and started circulating on Instagram or TikTok. It is likely that some fans were exposed to his music through a viral video.
The Return of the King tells the story of former youth soccer player Adam Rohony trying to get back on the field. It revolves around his birth house, which was left empty after his parents’ divorce and where Rohony now lives, and the nearby soccer field. After all, the title of the song U Hřiště 380 is his address. He says he does not regret publishing it. “It doesn’t matter, because the barracks are in the series anyway. Conceptually, it suited me there,” he says.
Rohony’s composition U Hřiště 380 has over seven million plays on Spotify alone. | Video: Horns
However, at the time of the launch of the series, in which Rohony returns to football form with a cigarette in his mouth and a bottle of rum within reach, the musician was not nearly as well known. “Then it broke out so much that I was afraid for a while if it wasn’t too much,” he admits. In the end, however, there were no major incidents. At most, someone will pass under the windows of the house with the window closed and play his songs out loud. “But luckily no one knocks on me,” he says gratefully.
Today, according to him, the series is losing its charm. He originally wanted to make it into a feature film, but he is slowly abandoning the plan. “Because I’m more famous, it’s not about the boy from the village anymore and it stops being that. We’ll have to slowly end it and maybe invent something new that will be fun for us,” he outlines. He doesn’t even play football much in his spare time. “I don’t breathe it,” laughs the rapper, who likes to light a cigarette even at a club concert.
Unlike the sports career, the music career is going in the right direction. So far, Rohony’s biggest success has been the football anthem he commissioned for Sparta. It is his favorite team in the Czech league. The song Summer was played by more than 300,000 people on the Spotify platform in the first day alone, which was a record. Today it has over six million views.
But the football song also became the first source of “hate” for Rohony, which he had missed since the release of the album, to the point where he was nervous about the praise itself. “It was like a blow with a shovel,” he admits. Dissatisfied reactions came mainly from fans of other clubs who don’t like that their favorite rapper signed up for Sparta.
“Yesterday I gave a concert in Ostrava and I was afraid to play Letná there. In the end I even played it twice and cans were flying at me,” he says about the city, where cheering for the Baník team is almost a religion. “I explained to them that I like Ostrava, that I studied there, not to spoil it for me,” he adds. Even the Brno Pop Messe audience was not enthusiastic about the football hit. “I expected it bigger,” Rohony responded to Letná’s cold reception. “You are here in Brno,” some answered him.
The anthem for football Sparta was created by Rohony with collaborator Manen. Photo: AC Sparta Prague | Video: Horns
However, Rohony has an increasingly close relationship with Sparta. He became friends with his favorite player Ladislav Krejčí, who also played in the European football team and is now leaving for Spain. The rapper even celebrated this year’s title win right in the cabin with the Leten team. The players then enthusiastically invited him to a holiday together the next day. “I was already ready to go. I told Lád about it. He told me not to be angry, but that I don’t belong there. I think it’s fair,” he explains what he likes about his friend, with whom he became close through his music, weighs.
During the Brno concert, it is obvious how Rohony is enjoying the success. During the performance, he smiles widely and often just lets the audience sing. But he admits in the interview that fame has a flip side. He feels a lot of pressure for his next work to be similarly successful. “It weighs heavily on me. It’s harder for me to write and I’m nervous,” admits the musician, who still creates mainly at home in Starč.
Now he feels that the next album he is working on will decide if he really belongs on the rap scene. “I want to show that I’m not just some nice singer-songwriter, that I can work with the text and I like working with it,” he wishes. “So far, the process is not what I would have imagined. We see the producer every weekend, we’re already fed up and we can’t find enough quiet time for it. But I care a lot about it,” he concludes.
Video: Delving into the topic of war does me no good. I no longer have Russian symbols in my music, says Annet X (February 25, 2023)
“I won’t run away from my Russian roots and I don’t want to run away from them,” said rapper Annet X in the Spotlight show last year. | Video: Aktuálně.cz, Jakub Zuzánek