In 1998, the group Legalize Busine$$ would be formed by the members Legalize, N'Pans, and DJ Tonik, with their producer being the notable Master Sheff (or Vlad Valov). The group's creation was prompted by Valov, who saw that the rappers could become great talents if they produced work that would produce success. In an interview about how the group came to be formed, Legalize noted that the group's main ethos was commercial success, thus where the name of the group came from (as opposed to illegal business like narcotic smuggling and dealing). In 1999, after signing their first deal with Mediastar, the group began recording songs which would inevitably go onto their first album in 2000. The song which brought the group the most popularity, and would allow them to go on tour, and do several appearances at rap festivals in the fall of 1999.
In 2000, they would produce a video for the track "Melody of the Soul," and this would further substantiate their fame inside of Russia at the time. On the back of this mounting success, the group would release their one and only album as a group, "Rhymomafia", a composite album of 17 tracks recorded from 1999 to 2000. Thematically, their album was fairly standard for the time, touching upon love and its troubles, along with the difficulties of life, and personal experiences. However, the album didn't do as well as it needed to, and in 2001 the group would disband officially. In 2020, twenty years after its release, the album was made digitally available for streaming and download, a testament to the project that was Legalize Busine$$ and their memory. However, the album will always be remembered as a seminal moment in Russian Hip-Hop history, and was regarded in 2009 as one of the most important albums in Russian Hip-Hop, while in 2018 the album was lauded for its sociocultural commentary on surviving life's many hardships. As Dmitry Shevchenko wrote,
At the very beginning of the 2000s, Legal Bizne$$...gave a recipe for survival in difficult social conditions. The rappers encouraged their listeners to seek salvation within themselves. They talked about the fact that, despite all the chaos and injustice that reigned around every inhabitant of the then Russia, you need to have a ray of hope in your own heart. [Rap.ru, 2018]
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