PK (born on 3 July 1989 as Joosep Vau) is an Estonian musician and the founder of the "Parema Elu Nimel" movement, which advocates the right to spiritual freedom without prejudice regardless of personal status or interests. In addition to a 20-year career as a rapper and a singer, he is also a DJ and the founder of the rave series "Serious Frog Business".
PK started his career in music as a battlerapper. In 2004, he released his first single "Tõrje", which featured an instrumental from s'Poom who was a known solo rapper in Estonia at the time and since then has become the frontman of the old-school hip hop group 5LOOPS.
In 2005–2007, PK took part in the annual freestyle rap MC Battle, with several encounters with Põhjamaade Hirm, who was widely regarded as Estonia's best battle MC in the 2000s. In 2006, at the age of 16, PK took part in an invite only battle hosted by Õllesummer[1] which saw the nation's 16 best freestylers go head-to-head. He finished fourth.
Health
On 27 June 2007, PK suffered a stroke at his home in Tallinn which was nearly fatal. He lost every physical function including the ability to speak and spent a week in the intensive care unit in critical condition under close observation before being moved to the general patients ward. From there he was assigned to additional two months in a rehabilitation centre in Keila, Estonia before being released to go home in the fall of 2007. Since then, newspapers and magazines including Õhtuleht,[2]Puutepunkt[3] and Kodutohter[4] have published articles about the events that took place in 2007, resulting in the awareness of youth strokes in Estonia going up noticeably.[citation needed] On 15 March 2013, nearly six years after his accident, PK said in an interview with ETV that he had "gotten over the incident".[5]
SIGNATURE
In 2008, PK started to release solo projects again as well as forming a rap/pop group SIGNATURE with James Heckert. They released several English mixtapes over the course of their active years. In 2011, the group discontinued and PK turned back to Estonian music. The foreign scene had a big influence on his craft and he was one of the first people to start making new-school hip hop in Estonia in the early 2010s.
After SIGNATURE, PK did not make music for the next couple of years. In 2013, he started writing again.
First Estonian albums, Parema elu nimel
In December 2013, he released PK7F—an independent mixtape of seven songs. At the end of 2014, he released a video for his spiritual anthem "Palverännak"[6] and an acoustic studio video for the same song.
On 27 June 2015, PK released his first studio album Labürint. It was voted the eighth-best hip hop release in Estonia 2015.[7] PK was voted as the 15th-best rapper in 2016 and the video for "Parema elu nimel" as the 11th-best video. The songs success grew into a motto, an idea and a party series which was held during a period of one year in Suhkrumoll, a bar in the Old Town of Tallinn. "Parema elu nimel" parties were about being united and blocking out all human prejudice. The party usually featured new-school and trap music and hosted a different performer each time. Suhkrumoll was closed and sold in 2018.
Ideed and Masterhead records
On 9 July 2018, Masterhead Records made an announcement that PK would be joining their ranks. Five days later PK released his EP "Ideed" on Spotify and Apple Music.
Hiatus from performing
After a show celebrating his 15 years in music and performing at Tallinn Music Week in 2019, PK stated that he would not be performing any more shows for an indefinite period of time. The hiatus was broken in December of the same year, as he gave the only performance of his new album "Amfiibinimene" at the Red Emperor Bar in the Old Town of Tallinn.
4AM and Dress Sexy at My Funeral
In the beginning of 2020, PK released "4AM", his first EP which could be described more as alternative emo rap and less conventional hip hop. Few months later, he revealed that he had been working on a bi-lingual album and leaked information that it would hardly feature any rapping at all. PKs sixth project in five years was called "Dress Sexy at My Funeral" and was released on 22 June 2022. The video single "i think the asphalt hates me" was released on 7 June and got a positive reaction from both Estonians and foreigners. He released the video for "more" a few months later. The video was a compilation of the summer of 2020 with additional staged clips.
The three-album year
PK released Wet Dreams & 911 Calls at the start of 2021. The EP had strong influences of euro-trance in several songs accompanied by the artists more usual alternative rap sound. The project featured six songs with PK calling it a "story of 3 genres", where each genre had two songs to represent itself. The surrealartwork was created by an Estonian artist and designer Marju Lember. Lember had also created designs several times for singles that PK released during 2020. "Wet Dreams & 911 Calls" was voted the 14th-best hip hop album in Estonia in 2021.[8]
On 14 February 2021, PK uploaded a video for his own version of the Blink-182 song "Man Overboard" on his Instagram page. The video featured scenes of him recording the song with comicalcutscenes. A month later, on 5 March 2021, he released another cover. This time an a capella version of "Make-up Makes Me Pretty", originally performed by 93FEETOFSMOKE, a vocalist and producer from Richmond, Virginia. In July, PK released a piano version of Machine Gun Kelly's song "Play This When I'm Gone" with piano played by YouTuber Sachin Sen.
He released an Estonian song "eemal/ära" on 29 June 2021, which featured vocals from Sume Made—a young acoustic music, lo-fi and alternative hip hop artist.
On 30 August 2021, PK released a seven-song project called "brother from another struggle", he said on social media that it was "a representation of not the struggles that the world makes us face, but what our own mind does". The song "RSVP" featured vocals from an Estonia-born but Los Angeles raised pop artist SVNDRA.
International recognition
On 16 February 2022, PK posted a teaser for his new video single "after eight" on Instagram revealing that it was directed by Kenneth Rüütli—a well-known videographer and musician in Estonia, who is also a member of the rap-rock group Põhja-Tallinn. Rüütli has directed numerous videos in the local scene for artists including Suur Papa, Artjom Savitski, Merlyn Uusküla, Wild Disease and others. The video was released on 22 February 2022, marking the beginning of PK's "new chapter". In the first weeks of the release, it got media coverage and radio play in Estonia, Brazil, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom and US, making it the most successful international single PK had released. Several alternativemusic blogs, websites and podcasts outside of Estonia including Eat This Rock, noir rock band Edgar Allen Poets and Music Mondays covered the release of "after eight".
The acoustic version of the song was released on 14 March 2022, and featured Sume Made on the guitar.
On 15 April, less than two months after his last video, PK released "white pants". A nostalgic-sounding pop-punk song produced by Canadian rock musician Jackson Southorn, also known as Jakkyboi.
Andy Myers (DJ Kenneth A), an American EDM producer from Maryland, made a synthwave version of "white pants" which was released on 26 May 2022. Myers has won a remix competition held by Talenthouse and got the chance to remix the hitsong "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen.
On July 1, PK released the single "superstore", which had the melodic new-school hip hop elements from his earlier years. It was inspired by the hit single "Broccoli" and the Netflix comedy series Superstore. It was released at the same date on all the major streaming platforms as the official video for it on YouTube. It was a one-take video filmed in downtown Tallinn. "superstore" was the first single from PK which was put together in three different countries—it was produced by an American producer Harry Allan and mastered in Germany by Dominik Holond at Protonaut Studios. The lyric video for "superstore" was released on 24 July and featured pictures from PKs childhood alongside meme style fill ins.
On October 2, PK announced on his Instagram that he will be releasing a cover version of a song by British rock band Placebo but did not state the song title. He followed the post up on October 8, which revealed the song would be "Protect Me from What I Want" from their 2003 album Sleeping With Ghosts.
His single "freefall" was released on October 14, 2022. It featured the vocalist of Estonias best-known metalcore band Horror Dance Squad—Karl Mesipuu. It was the first record PK made in that genre and the song got callbacks to Linkin Park and Chester Bennington on social media.
In December, PK announced the first single of the next year with "eileen" set for January 7, 2023 release.
On December 12, he released "viimane jõuluöö", a cover version of the song by legendary Estonian punk band Vennaskond. PK has stated in interviews multiple times that Vennaskond is his favorite band and their music helped him through the events of 2007. In a 2022 interview with Nataliez World he said "..and of course my all-time favorite—romantic punk band called Vennaskond" when asked about his favorite local bands in Estonia.
The return of the "Parema Elu Nimel" party
On September 16, 2022, PK's party series made its return in a revamped form. Instead of the trap theme of its previous years, the event had a strong pop-punk influence featuring bands Noodle Charity and pizzafacial. The party also served as a five-year anniversary of the same named songs release.
Rexius / the desolation era
In January 2023, PK signed with Swedish music company Rexius Records. On April 24, he announced on his social media that the first single working together with Rexius would be released on June 2 along with a video. "Remedy" was released with a hectic, glitchy video that PK himself called "one of the coolest ones we made" in an interview with MuusikaPlaneet.[9][citation needed] In August 2023, PK teased a new album on his official Instagram account, posting "just read online that my new album is dropping this fall. cool". On September 5, he revealed that his first album with Rexius Records would be released on October 13 of 2023. He posted the tracklist for the album on his official Instagram account on September 21, which included three vocalists from Estonias metalcore scene – Sixten, Anne Arrak and Karl Mesipuu. He followed it up with another post joking about how audio engineering company Leveler Audio made his "sounding like nothing" songs "insane".
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