The police were looking for me in every country.
I was wanted by police and at the same time,
I became a star.
I'll buy a gun and a black track suit.
I don't look for inspiration from nobody.
This shit comes from cocaine, from alcohol.
F**k FBI and CBŚ. (Polish investigative bureau)
F**k pigs.
Those f**king pigs will never find me.
I'm the wildest person,
not only in the rap business,
but also in show business.
He is always doing what people can't do or are afraid to do.
There's something inside me screaming,
"Grab the f**king needle
and put it in my f**king eye ball, right now."
Who wants to die? Who wants to die?
Welcome to f**king Poland, bro.
I'm in Poland now,
I have come here to see an absolute rap superstar.
He goes by the name of Popek,
to me he seems like an absolute mad man,
but I'm curious to find out a bit about him,
and what makes him such a big character
and a personality in Poland.
What's going on?
Who are you?
Oh my god.
Chuckie, is that you?
Where are you, Chuckie?
Be careful with that.
Oh my god.
What's going on?
Nice to meet you, man.
It's good to meet you.
Man came out with the big strap.
Oh my God.
That's Popek.
This is diamond plaque for Albanian Gang
Diamond for single, diamond for single, diamond, diamond.
This one diamond for Sweet 17th,
I released some of my biggest hits
from 17 years.
Rah, you got them all over the place.
Polish rap really emerged in the 90s
when godfather of the scene,
Liroy a.k.a. PM COOL LEE blew up,
but most MCs were mixing rap with rock music.
It wasn't until the turn of the century
that seminal gangsta rap crew
Firma emerged out of Kraków
with unvarnished stories
from the street.
They had Bosski Roman,
Kali, who recently made a big comeback
and this mad man... Popek.
Popek, has made music consistently since then
and in recent years has become a genuine superstar in Poland.
Making big tracks with international MCs like
The Game from the US
and Big Narstie from the UK.
I'm not an artist, I'm a butcher.
I play hard until it bleeds.
And I treat life like my own w***e.
Arguably he's even more famous for his
wild personality than his music.
He's done everything from choosing
to cut up his face,
to tattooing his eyeballs,
to launching an MMA career.
If gangsta rap is about being an outlaw
this guy pushes it further than anyone.
Popek.
I just want to take a little bit of time to understand you
and find out a bit about your upbringing and your life.
Where did you grow up?
Where I grew up... It was Legnica.
It was a very, very dark place on this planet.
And when I was 16 I ran away from Poland to Germany.
-OK. -I was in Germany for three years,
and 'bam' to Amsterdam.
-Bam to Amsterdam. -Yeah.
So you moved about?
-Yeah, yeah, -So you moved about a little bit?
and in Amsterdam, two times I was in a coma.
-You was in a coma? -Yeah, two times.
What, tell me about the first time.
The first time was six months, I was sleeping for six months.
Serious?
I took nine [tabs of] LSD in my mouth.
10 and 11, I put here [in my eyes],
and I was in a coma for six months,
and after six months, I couldn't walk and speak
for three or four weeks.
And when I left the hospital, I said,
"I'm never gonna do this s**t no more."
You know what happened in the next two hours?
You did the same thing again?
The same thing.
I was asleep for eight months.
Eight months?
Yeah.
Absolute mad man.
Like, what was your first introduction to like, rap music?
Tupac, Tupac Shakur.
My music started because of Tupac Shakur.
And when he died I said,
"Motherf**ker, you can do the same in your language."
And I started doing Polish rap with my band Firma.
All of them pickpockets.
We were pickpockets and after that
somehow by magic, the five of us just meet together,
and create a new hip-hop group from the street.
Where did you do the eye?
Let's talk about that a little bit.
-So you tattooed your eye? -Yes.
Was you not scared?
It was more weird than painful.
For example it's like,
your brother f**ks your sister, in front of you
and you just do like this, you know.
That's the only way I can explain. It's so f**ked up.
I got through it. I lost like 35 percent of my vision.
That's the price for my eye tattoo.
And then did you do this? The scar?
How far afterwards did you do that?
This one, no pain killers, no nothing.
Why did you do it?
I don't know, but something inside me screamed,
"Do it, motherf**ker, cut your face right now."
I feel like two different personalities.
One wants to go left, and one wants to go right.
Is it true that some of that skin
went in a burger and somebody ate it?
OK. Whose idea was that?
Mine, he owed a lot of money to my friend,
which he didn't give him back.
So I said,
"Let's f**king make a face burger."
I called this the face burger.
Popek, you're something else man.
Well, do you know what bro.
I'm looking forward to just seeing what the next couple of days hold.
I know I'm rolling around with you.
That's gonna be--
That's gonna be madness.
Let's do it. My guy.
Popek suggested he drive me to the studio
to hear what he's working on,
but after hearing these stories.
I'm not entirely sure I should be getting in the car with this guy.
Raasclaat.
My ears are popping.
F**king hell.
And this is the studio.
Do you have a certain style that you are going for
musically right now?
Right now I go for everything, from jazz to dubstep.
From hip hop to R&B.
I don't give a f**k what type of music it is, I just do it.
Talk to me about the wildest studio session that you've had.
I'm telling you, in my garage we didn't sleep for five, six days.
Non-stop f**king music, music, music.
In two years, I make like...
something like seven or eight hundred songs.
Does the mood that you're in at the time,
reflect the song that you make at that time as well?
Or can you just hear a beat and just be like...
I can hear a beat right now and I know what I have to do.
Alcohol and cocaine.
Writing down the lyrics is the format for me.
These poor guys, they came to buy drugs
and they didn't know nobody.
And I used them for a video, I said, "Dance with me brothers!"
This is a real life story that actually happened.
I wouldn't be lying to you. I give you my word.
Wait, wait, wait, I need clarity.
Those guys that came to that video shoot there.
Yeah.
They just came to check you to buy drugs and that was it.
Five minutes before.
I said, "Listen, before I'm gonna sell you something can you just,
just dance with me in my video?"
And they said yes,
so listen the guy on the left here, with the hat he go crazy
but the tall guy the bald one
he didn't know what the f**k was going on. Play it.
You're trash and I don't feel anything towards you.
Go away.
- I don't know him and he don't know me,
he just came to buy drugs.
On the other hand you have this personal track of Popek's
who is talking about his life.
The struggles about my own mistakes in my life.
This is like a very sad tune this one.
I'm on Lenska Street, I'm 13, sitting with my dad.
He was drunk on vodka, that's how he used to pity himself.
He picks up pliers and pulls two of his teeth out.
That's how my dad taught me, how this world can be bad.
That album, the name
Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde so obviously--
I told you I had two different personalities.
Yeah, I know.
They tell me to cut my face and stuff,
that's not me, that's somebody inside.
Have you ever sat down with anyone and like...
had long deep conversations
about some of the things that happened in your life?
No, every time this s**t is coming.
I turn it into a joke.
I don't want to go too deep,
because I'm going to get--
maybe I'm going to understand,
and I'm gonna get scared for real.
What really are you scared of though?
I don't want to see the dark side of my past.
And my personality,
I stopped being myself from 11 to 16, I think.
I lost myself somehow,
and I find myself in two different versions.
Did you have a good relationship with your parents?
My father was my business partner.
We stole wallets together.
My mother she couldn't handle it,
she ran away with the other guy.
Is you and your dad still--
are you and him still?
No, my father's dead.
They killed him in a hotel room in Kraków.
In a hotel room?
How did you feel that affected you?
I couldn't even go to the graveyard.
I just recorded one song and they played the song that day.
Somebody killed him in a hotel room.
They had stolen something, some treasure.
And they didn't want to split with him and they just choked him.
Now is the best part of my life, because I've got family.
I don't want to lose it.
So I really got the Jekyll and Hyde experience from Popek yesterday.
He's definitely a complex individual
with so much going on in his life.
MMA is one of his big passions right now.
His varied selection of hobbies also
also ranges from ballroom dancing...
to heavy artillery.
Wow, rahtid.
Top Boy style, yeah.
"Where's Dushane?"
It's better than f**king sex.
You can do this or bang, bang, bang.
But back to the day job.
Popek has two shows tonight and against my better judgement
it looks like I'm getting back in the car with him.
Oh my God.
F**king hell bro.
How long is it going to take us to get to where we are going?
The GPS show me four hours thirty five minutes,
but I think we going to make it in three.
I never had a driving license in my life,
I don't have a driving license,
because I was a pickpocket
and after that I was stealing cars.
What the f**k I don't need a driving license
when I'm stealing cars.
Have you got your driving license now?
No.
Oh my God I can't believe it.
You lot put me in a car for four or five hours with this don,
driving 280 miles an hour
down country roads,
and cliffs,
and he ain't got a driving license.
Are you kidding me?
-So are we here, yeah? -Yes.
Oh yes.
I'm not even going to lie to you.
That is exhausting being in a car
where it's like a roller coaster ride for four hours...
is absolutely outrageous.
We spent a quarter of our journey on the wrong side of the road.
Well, I'm just happy that we made it out alive.
I'm not getting in this car again.
Oh my word.
Mad.
Nah, nah, what is this thing now?
It's made them little marks on the road look so minuscule
and I'll tell you one thing, I'm not getting in it.
I'm not getting in it.
Who wants to die? Who wants to die?
Come on!
Oh s**t.
Oh s**t, oh s**t.
Come on motherf**kers.
Chuckie, do you want to drive my car or this car?
Oh, f**king hell.
I didn't think it would get any worse.
I'm done.
I'm done. I'm done, bro. I'm done.
It's time for sound check
and being on solid ground is a welcome relief.
Hello, Chuckie.
I don't even know what the rest of the night got in store for us,
but all I know is he's definitely on the liquor yeah.
Maybe a little substance here and there,
but he's definitely talking about after parties.
I think it's gonna be a long night
for the mandem to be honest with you.
So people started to pour into the venue.
The crowd was mad young, mad excited,
and for a rap show...
it was whiter than
a snow storm in the North Pole.
He dropped some hard shit.
But the crowd really started going nuts
when he played his more recent
EDM stuff and I started noticing a few of his main catchphrases.
I like to drink.
I like to f**k.
Give me some money.
I give you drugs.
This didn't really feel like a rap show anymore,
but watching Popek work a crowd is quite an experience.
Fam, it's absolute chaos bruv.
Naturally, true he is a superstar and that
every single person here wants to take a picture.
And then it just gets a little bit rowdy.
But yeah, we're going to head to the next venue now,
because he's got another booking.
There he is already, s**t, f**k.
We've driven another 200 miles yeah,
We've basically driven another 200 miles to another booking.
He's already in there I think, getting turnt up and lit to bits
I don't know what...
Popek I'm going to expect when we get in there
but yeah, that's the other shoobs.
So we're gonna go in and see wagwan.
He's cooked, that beef is ready.
The beef is cooking.
So the rumours of Popek being the wildest guy in rap were no lies.
He's lived an extreme life. I saw another side to him though.
And clearly his life experiences,
especially losing his dad in such tragic circumstances
gave rise to that voice in his head
that leads him to do these destructive things.
He's not really doing gangster rap anymore as his life is different now,
but he's used his scary image to forge a new kind of career.
Somehow from such a dark past,
he's kind of a mainstream celebrity out here
and he just wants to live his best life.
Just promise me, you won't try any of this at home.
Gangsta Rap. Gangsta Rap.
Don't try to play somebody else just
be yourself from beginning to the end.
In my left hand I've got flowers,
and in the right hand I have a kalashnikov, that's me.