Mot Essentials

Adept at dropping slick flows and singing sweet soulful verses, Matthew Melnikov, aka Mot, has brought Russian rap into the 21st century. After emerging in the mid-'00s as a freestyle rapper, he began to hone his talents with an eye towards a more commercial sound, pairing polished rhymes over jazz-infused beats and echoing the conscious rap of U.S. artists like Common. He's taken this even further in his recent work, with sultry, slow jams soaked in heartbreak that hint at the R&B crossover of Drake. It's sent him in an undoubtedly more poppy direction, but hasn't seen him lose his edge.