F E N K S T A
"470, POVEZANOST KAO KULA"
Design by Alex Cherry
HOW IT ALL STARTED
Beatmaking and songwriting started some time in high school with a program called Music Maker 2004. Romel, my best friend, showed me the software and I made a few beats on it. In senior year of high school, a classmate gave me FL Studio, 'cause he was using it to for his beats, and I started writing my first bars around that time.
The next year, Romel and I formed KUGA (Kraljevi UnderGroundA) and I've been doing almost all of the beats for us. We wrote "Ulicama Gradskim", which became some sort of anthem for the city of Umag. I moved to the USA in 2012 to study Music Recording Technology to get an actual music education and learn the craft on a professional level. After I graduated, I moved back to Umag and ended up in Zagreb, where I live now.
I've participated in a beat contest on a forum called "Beatality" in 2010 that was judged by big names in the Croatian Hip Hop scene. I took the W on that one, with maximum points available, but didn't participate in anything similar up until 2015. That's when the Facebook group "Art of Sampling" caught my eye, which was holding weekly beatmaking contests with samples chosen by the winners of the previous round. I was active on there while it lasted, managed to win twice, but the group has since died down. Since 2020 I have also been participating in annual Beat Battles at the Reunited Hip Hop Festival in Zagreb and I have won in 2023 and 2024, but also got 2nd place in my first two years.
I've also been on a few music related shows. In 2010 I went to Supertalent with beatboxing, in 2019 I participated in Rap Camp, which is similar to Rhythm + Flow, the same year I tried out for The Voice, but didn't make it to the Blind Auditions, I submitted a song for Dora 2024, but wasn't picked. Then in 2024 I signed up for Superstar, which I withdrew from, because I managed to get to the semi-final of Supertalent, this time as a rapper. While this was going on, I sent a song for Dora 2025 and ended up getting in after two acts have withdrawn or have been disqualified.
Other than that, the love for music and audio manipulation is strong and ever-present. If you are feeling what I create, then let's get creative together.
NEWS
What's happening in the world of Fenksta
WE DID IT !!!!!
07.01.2025.
Happy new year - to me, 'cause I just got a call from HRT and Natalie Balmix got disqualified, which means I'm in. I am actually a part of Eurovision history right now. It's so surreal, but it's probably gonna feel natural as hell hahahaha. Anyways, they're asking a shit-ton of things now in preparation for the show, and the song is going to be live on Thursday on HRT Radio at 14:00h.
Me being me, of course, I uploaded a new freestyle/remix/verse and didn't post about it here hahahaha. I did the verse on Instagram already when it was relevant, but there's two bars I really really liked, so I wanted to record it for real. Here's my open verse for the T-Pain (Remix) by Pete & Bas.
THINGS KEEP HAPPENING
19.12.2024.
I should probably update this as it happens, but at least I'm not months late haha. So the semi-final of Supertalent finally happened. I was invited by fellow semi-finalists Talent House to hang out, grab some pizza, and watch the show together. As I arrived, almost all of the kids ran up to me to hug me. It was the cutest thing ever. As for the performance, this was a combination of my verses from "Illest Choppers 4" and "Undaground Choppers 6", and the bridge from "False Alarm (Remix)", all on a still unreleased beat that I might turn into an actual song (basically not for sale). During the rehearsal and the shoot, which was more than a month ago, the kids from Talent House were chanting the bridge after my performance, which makes you feel even prouder as an artists. After the audition episode, my phone blew up and I got over 100 new followers, but this pales in comparison to what happened now. Not even 5 minutes after it aired, more than 600 people pressed the follow button, and by now it's almost 1.000 new people. Being in the final would've probably increased that even more, but the initial plan has come to fruition.
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OVERDUE UPDATES (I'M SORRRY)
08.12.2024.
So many things have happened that I forgot to put here, so let's just dive into it chronologically. After Yokai dropped "Moderna", the next thing that happened was Supertalent. I knew since June that I made the semi-final and that it's gonna be shot in November. Since the episode is airing next week, I can't tell you yet if I made the final or not, so go and watch it on NOVA TV. However, the audition episode was insane. I was on my way to a friend's house to watch it there, but they put me in first, so I missed it live. Holy shit was my phone blowing up with messages and new followers. I even got an e-mail from my dentist congratulating me hahaha. More things after the video.
Five days later, we have a new song released, and because I'm forgetful about this website, it sadly won't get its own segment. Yet again, it's a collaboration where I have done the beat, and it's by my friend Šiki, who is like 80% deaf from birth. Nevertheless, we created this banger called "Intelektualna Lirika". Again, more info to later on.
Things started slowly falling into place. I was impatiently waiting for HRT to publish the list for Dora and nobody knew when they would release it. I checked forums and refreshed HRT's website so often, it's all I did for days. While waiting for that, other things are happening and I decided to go to a charity concert, organized by Khan, where there were some of the biggest names in Croatian Hip Hop, such as Target (Tram 11), GIR, Khan himself & Doktor Oga (who you will remember because he made the music videos for "Ogledalo" and my "Godzilla" cover), Zembo Latifa, Rap Ribéry, some smaller names but still ultra-relevant like Dante and Kile, and I was also excited to see Šiki perform with the song mentioned above. What I didn't expect is him calling me out right before the song and putting the spotlight on me, so that people know who made the fucking banger of a beat. I also didn't expect Đuro (who works are Red Records with Macola, who recorded both "Ogledalo" and the new ESC song) to invite me to perform as well, but since I wasn't tied to a job anymore, I managed to show up earlier, got to witness my own beat live, and performed two songs.
Literally the next morning, I woke up to so many notifications, I just knew the Dora list had been published and I was part of it. The very second name were EoT, with whom I did a song with last year called "Dugi Prsti Sudbine", and some other names were expected, but then my excitement went down from 110% to 95% because holy shit, you guys, I fucking made the list as a reserve. This is it, I am officially part of Eurovision history. And because of all the fuckery that happened last year with Pure, people are hyper-focused on the reserves. Not an even an hour after I woke up, I already got called by Index.hr for an interview and they did a poll on their website to see who people want to see on Eurovision. The clear favorites to win Dora are obviously Nipplepeople, but guess where they placed me ? I'm in 7th place out of 28, from 221 submissions. This is unbelievable. This is incredible. Now because I haven't been punctual, you guys don't even know what the song is. The song is called "Extra", but HRT misspelled it as "Ekstra", which we'll fix once more media people talk to me.
In the meantime, I didn't want this hype and media magnifying glass to fade away, so the smartest thing to do was to put out more content. While I wanted to originally post this in March/April with an actual performance video, certain logistics have prevented me from that, so I figured 'fuck it, let's do a lyric video now'. I downloaded some stock footage that is fitting for the song topic, managed to find a font I like and did the whole thing BY MYSELF within 6-7 hours. Shoutout to Connor Price, LuccaDL and 100Graham, 'cause the original song is straight up flames.
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"MODERNA"
28.10.2024.
The title does suggest a new song, which is true, but it's not my song - it's a new song with a Fenksta beat. My good friend Yokai has released his first full project called "Korijeni" (available on all streaming platforms), which is leaning heavily into the West Coast Old School sound. The last track of the EP is called "Moderna", which not only moves away from the mentioned sound, as the title of the song says, but also features Džoni MC, a friend of Yokai, and the fastest tongue in the Balkans - MIC MC. While the beat was originally intended for somebody else, I am glad it found its way to somebody capable of killing it. As always, you can listen to the song below. Peace ✌️
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FUTURE PROJECTS
08.12.2024.
This year has proven to be the most active and succesful yet. Here's what's cooking in the kitchen:
- ESC EP
- Eurovision 2024 Medley (cover)
- "Lucifer (Remix)"
- surprise cover song
- unnamed relationship song