The annual rap festival, Rap Muzic 2000, will culminate Dec. 20 with a 60-minute performance by the 17-year old MTV-Russia star, Kirill Tolmatsky, alias DeTsl. The show, which is expected to draw thousands of rap fans, will also include performances by Vlad Valov – alias Sheff, bands Bad Balance and Legal Busine$$ and 10 lesser-known Russian bands.

The recent boom in hip-hop culture has made this year’s event will be Russia’s biggest. Thanks to the support of music company Rise-LIS it will be held in the Olympiisky Sports Complex.

The procedure for selecting the finalists has been radically overhauled. During the past year, rappers from throughout the country have been sending their demo cassettes to the offices of MediaStar and Hip-Hop Info. The 32 songs eventually chosen were selected out of 468 submitted. Those chosen were featured on the Rap-Proryv album released a month ago. The top ten were selected by listeners invited to vote when they bought the album, and the final winner will be announced at the concert.

Vlad Valov said that "there will be a huge board installed on the stage where all festival participants at the festival will leave bits of graffiti." He was quite serious, saying that after the festival "the board will be cut up and sold in fragments for big money in France."