Capital Bra: Record-breaking rapper celebrates his 30th birthday

To describe the career of Berlin rapper Capital Bra (30) as spectacular would be an understatement. In his career, which has only lasted eight years, the musician with the notorious Gucci baseball cap has sold almost twelve million records, landed 20 number one hits in Germany and secured a total of 30 gold and 15 platinum awards.

Capital Bra, who was born Vladislav Balovatsky in Siberia on November 23, 1994, grew up in Ukraine and moved to Berlin with his mother at the age of seven, began his musical career in a very classic way with the well-known rap battle format “Rap am Wednesday”, where he was promptly named Newcomer of the Year in 2014.

With his first album “Kuku Bra” he immediately made it to number 32 in the German album charts in 2016, and the successor “Makarov Complex” reached number two in the German and number one in the Austrian charts in 2017. However, he celebrated his final breakthrough in 2018 with the release of the album “Berlin Lives”, on the cover of which the shooting star poses on the roof of a souped-up Mercedes limousine in front of the Brandenburg Gate. The album stayed in the charts for 55 weeks and gave the gangster rapper four number one hits in quick succession with “5 Songs in One Night”, “Berlin Lives”, “Neymar” and “One Night Stand”.

On the first big wave of success, Capital Bra surprisingly left his previous label “Team Kuku” and switched to “Ersguterjunge” (EGJ), the label of his colleague Bushido (46), only to turn away from it in outrage around six months later. Bushido dared to call in the police at the height of his feud with Berlin’s notorious Abou Chaker clan, after threats were made not only against him, but also against his wife and children.

“I’m no longer with EGJ because my label boss works with the police – works intensively with the police,” the rapper announced in a now-deleted video statement on Instagram. And continued: “He got police protection. Okay, you could still understand somewhere, his children were in danger. Now he’s shitting on people. People are going to jail. And I’m not for that kind of thing.”

Capital Bra, who made no secret of his petty criminal past in Berlin’s problem district of Hohenschönhausen from the start and was himself in contact with various clans, simply founded his own label “Bra Musik” at the beginning of 2019.

The enterprising rap entertainer also launched his own iced tea and a frozen pizza series called “Gangstarella” with great success under the name “Bra Tee”. As “bigFM” reported, the rap superstar managed to sell 80 million units of the iced tea alone within the first two years after its market launch. The majority of his customers were obviously recruited from his loyal fan base, which Capital Bra lovingly refers to as “Bratans” or “Bratinas” (roughly “brothers” or “sisters”) on Instagram.

When the high-flyer made it to number one in the German single charts for the twelfth time in March 2019 with his song “Cherry Lady” (a cover of the Modern Talking classic), breaking the Beatles’ five-decade record, he left an incredulous murmur through the media landscape.

In countless articles, music journalists have felt compelled to explain to their readers that this record has nothing to do with Capital Bra’s brilliant compositions, but rather is due to the fact that the market share of music streaming is now far higher than that of CD sales. Since, according to one report, around 80 percent of streaming users fall into a young age group between 14 and 29, this results in a blatant distortion in the charts.

After the release of his seventh solo album “CB7” in September 2019, which propelled him to the top of the German album charts for the last time, the Berlin rap record holder’s previously bright star slowly began to decline. In November 2019, Capital Bra called in the police after there were several blackmail attempts by clan members who apparently relied on previous agreements that guaranteed them a share of the musician’s income.

Given this cooperation with the previously demonized authorities, his reputation in the gangsta rap scene suddenly plummeted. In 2022, the threat situation had increased to such an extent that Capital Bra quickly canceled his planned arena tour and went to Thailand with his wife and children for a while. After his return, unknown people carried out an arson attack on his wife’s luxury limousine in April 2024.

With all these headlines, Capital Bra now seems to have alienated a large part of its previously unmanageable fan base. None of his other albums were able to reach number one in the charts; his singles currently only reach the top 100 of the charts with a bang.

The disgraced rap star had to cope with another low point in mid-September 2024 when the Potsdam tax office confiscated various items from his house in order to collect outstanding tax debts. At an auction, several of his gold records and music awards, which Capital Bra had collected in his record-breaking career to date, went under the hammer.