Sercan İpekçioğlu (born 1 July 1991), better known by his stage name Ezhel (Turkish: [ezɛl]), is a Turkish rapper and singer whose music blends trap, hip hop and reggae. His song "AYA" has been streamed more than 80 million times on Spotify. He has been given the title "Freestyle King" by Hip Hop Life in Turkey.[3]

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Turkish. (October 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 438 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Turkish Wikipedia article at [[:tr:Ezhel]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|tr|Ezhel}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Ezhel
Ezhel in 2018
Born	Sercan İpekçioğlu (1991-07-01) 1 July 1991 (age 31)[1] Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey[2]
Other names	CJ Ais Ezhel Ice
Occupation	Rapper singer songwriter
Years active	2008–present
Musical career
Genres	Hip hop reggae trap
Instrument(s)	Vocals
Labels	VooDoo KOAL
Musical artist

Life and career

Ezhel came from a musical family. His mother was an Anatolian folk dancer and his uncle was a musician and sound and light engineer.[4] He received a scholarship to TED school, and began listening to American rappers like Eminem, 50 Cent and Tupac Shakur.[5]

At 18, he began performing with a reggae band called Afra Tafra. After this group split, he formed his own reggae band, Kökler Filizleniyor, along with some of his friends from Ankara.[6] He performed under the name Ais Ezhel until 2017.[7]

Ezhel can also play the bağlama and guitar, and sings reggae with the band Kökler Filizleniyor. His debut album Müptezhel came out in 2017.[8]

Ezhel was arrested on 24 May 2018 and sent to pretrial detention accused of "inciting drug use" in his songs.[9][10] On 19 June, Ezhel was acquitted within 9 minutes of the opening of his first trial hearing. Ezhel's lawyer, Fuat Ekin, stated that, "We got an acquittal. We can say that justice has been done," according to the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA).[11][12]

In May 2019, The New York Times named Ezhel among the European pop acts that everyone should know.[13]

Discography

Studio albums

• Müptezhel (2017)
• Lights Out (ft. Ufo361) (2019)
• Made in Turkey (ft. Murda) (2020)

Singles

Awards

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (September 2020)

References

External links

• Ezhel discography at Discogs