The 27 year old Turkish immigrant, whose real name is Yilmaz Karaman, moved to Paris in 2003 and took a job in a kebab house where he would sing as he served. “It all started with my interactions with customers, asking them whether they wanted tomatoes, mayonnaise,” he explained. “The questions took on their own rhythm and very quickly it became a rap.”

It turned out some of his kebab-hungry clientele worked in a recording studio and they decided to help him reach a wider audience.

The video for the hit song, posted on Daily Motion a sharing site, was shot by a friend in “Chez Diyar”, the purple and yellow kebab house where he works, which Lil’Maaz describes in the song as “the kingdom of grease.” In the video, Lil’Maaz is dancing and rapping in the restaurant, meat roasting on the spit in the background.

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Omer Zulfu Livaneli was born in Ilgin, Turkey in 1946. After being held under military detention for three months during the coup of March 12 th, 1971, he had to leave Turkey and move to Sweden. After Stockholm, he lived in Paris and Athens, and he returned to Turkey in 1984.

Livaneli’s latest novel “Leyla’s House” was published in Turkey in May 2006; as of today it’s in its 45th edition and a number one best-seller.

His third novel “Bliss”, published in 2002, also a number one best-seller, made 44 editions, became almost a cult work and is recently adapted to cinema in Turkey. In 2005, “Bliss” was published in Greece and Sweden, and in 2006, it was published in France by Gallimard, in the United States by St.Martin’s Press and in Italy by Gremese. Immediately after its publication in the latter, Bliss was awarded by Barnes & Noble, the biggest bookstore chain in the world, with the annually given “Discover Great New Authors” award due to its “superior literary value”. Bliss will soon be published in Norway by Gylendal and in Netherlands by Prometheus/ Bert Bakker. His second novel “One Cat One Man One Death”, his first novel “The Eunuch of Constantinople” and a collection of his stories titled “A Child in Purgatory” have also been published abroad.

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Bassturk – emblazoned over the “u” is a small crescent with a star instead of two dots – is a duo consisting of two German Turks Volkan Melendiz and Tamer Uygunsözlü. “Oriental pop rap” is what the two call their music style.

Their first single “Yana Yana,” which in German means “side by side,” gives a foretaste: Tamer in Turkish, Melendiz raps in German, and their music sounds like a combination of Turkish pop with R’n'B elements.

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