Ukrainian rapper Alyona Alyona has won the German Anchor Award as the best emerging artist of the year.
The ceremony took place on Sept. 21 as part of the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, Germany.
“We have decided upon an artist with whom we all lost our shit to, the minute they started to perform,” one of the jury members said at the ceremony, according to the award’s Facebook post.
“Thank you to everyone who was around, to those who believed, as well as to my dad, mom and the team. We did it,” Alyona Alyona wrote on Facebook on Sept. 22.
The Anchor Award has been presented annually since 2016 to acknowledge up-and-coming musical talents.
Alyona Alyona competed for the prize with four more artists selected by the award’s board of professionals.
This year, apart from Ukrainian rapper, the list featured U.K. indie-rock band Drahla; Norwegian pop-singer Moyka; indie, R&B and soul band Feng Suave from the Netherlands and Chinese indie-rock band The Hormones.
All of the nominees performed twice for the festival’s audience and the jury.
“The female hip-hop sensation Alyona Alyona blew away the audience with her Ukrainian rap,” reads a Facebook post by Anchor published after the rapper’s performance.
Before her musical career, the 28-year-old rapper, whose real name is Alyona Savranenko, worked as a nursery school teacher.
In 2018, she had her breakthrough after the release of the music video for her hit “Rybky” (Fish). Her debut album “Pushka” (Gun) was a success in Ukraine, praised for its confident flow and authentic lyrics.
The rapper’s acclaim soon crossed the border. In 2019, Alyona Alyona was featured on the New York Times’ list of Europe’s 15 “most important acts, musically and socially, right now.”
The Ukrainian rapper is currently on an international tour. Her upcoming shows will be held in the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, Germany, Estonia, Finland and France.
