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During a Texas city council meeting on Tuesday, comedian Alex Stein performed a rap about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Stein’s rap included references to putting a “bullet in Putin’s brain” and being a “Zelenskyy stan.”
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He later told Insider his performance was “100% satire” and was meant to get people thinking about the war in Ukraine.
A comedian went viral this week for performing a rap opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during a city council meeting in Texas.
Alex Stein — who introduced himself as “Primetime 99 Alex Stein” — rapped in front of nine people for nearly four minutes during the Tuesday meeting in Plano, Texas.
“Go insane, for Ukraine, a bullet in Putin’s brain!” Stein rapped, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He also paid tribute to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “Zelenskyy! Is a VIP! Ukraine and I go insane.”
“I am a Zelenskyy stan! I love you, Volodymyr Zelenskyy!” he added.
Stein also began to dance and gyrate around a minute into his performance.
“One more time, I’m 99, you know I grind and shine. Gas prices way too high, Vladimir Putin, needs to die!” he continued.
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Rapping to a stony-face audience did not appear to deter Stein, who grew more worked up as the song went on — at one point removing his jacket and screaming into the microphone.
The council members’ reactions at Tuesday’s meeting were later featured in a video uploaded to YouTube by Stein, titled “Going Insane for Ukraine.”
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As his time at the podium came to a close, Stein said, “we need to take out Vladimir Putin like Lindsey Graham said.” He was referring to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s call for a “Brutus in Russia” to carry out a Julius Caesar-style assassination of Putin.
The clip of Stein’s rap quickly went viral, with one tweet of his performance receiving more than 27,000 retweets and over 46,000 likes within 10 hours.
Stein’s performance on Tuesday was not the first stunt he has pulled at a city council meeting. His Instagram page appears to feature dozens of appearances at such meetings — in places like Houston, Dallas, and New York — during which he performs raps or comedic bits.
Stein wants to use satire to spotlight Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
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Speaking to Insider late on Wednesday, Stein said his performance the day before was “100% satire” and aimed at “blurring the lines of reality because people won’t know if it’s real or fake.”
“I don’t really want to kill Putin. I’m a vegetarian. But I think we have to have some diplomacy. And you got guys like Lindsey Graham that are on the right, going on national TV, Fox News, talking about killing world powerful leaders,” he said.
“That’s not right. That’s not diplomatic. That’s the opposite of that,” Stein added. “So I was just trying to expose [Graham] for that because that’s ridiculous. That’s not how we should talk about each other. That was shameful.”
Born and raised in Dallas, Stein works as a car dealer when not doing comedy. He told Insider that he first started attending city council meetings in March 2020.
He said he initially spoke seriously at the meetings about issues like COVID-19 but felt that politicians were giving him tepid responses akin to non-playable characters in video games.
“And then the goofier I got, the more I got them to react. So that’s really what’s effective is you have to get an emotional response. That’s how you kind of trigger somebody,” Stein told Insider.
Stein said he wanted to spotlight what’s happening in Ukraine by doing something ridiculous so that people would get on Google and find out more about Russia’s invasion.
He has plans to do more bits on Ukraine and is open to giving a second rap performance on the topic at a council meeting that features a better microphone.
“I’m just getting started. Is this just the tip? This is just the start of a long journey of making people laugh,” he said.
Read the original article on Insider
