Ezhel

Ezhel — Biography

Born Ömer Sercan İpekçioğlu on 1 July 1991 in the Çankaya district of Ankara, Ezhel was raised mainly by his mother, a retired folk dancer, after his journalist father left early on. He won a scholarship to a private high school but dropped out of school at fifteen to pursue music, drawing on American rap acts as well as Bob Marley and Rastafarian philosophy. He first recorded as CJ and then Ais Ezhel, co-founded a production collective, and drew attention with the song Sekiz as part of the Yeşil Oda collective.

His 2017 debut studio album Müptezhel brought him to a mass audience, and he was named Turkey's most-streamed artist in Spotify's year-end data for several years running; one of his songs has been streamed more than eighty million times, and he was given the title Freestyle King. In May 2018 he was detained over claims that his lyrics promoted drug use, and was acquitted the same month after a campaign of support from fellow musicians and civil-society groups. He has lived largely in Berlin ever since because of ongoing legal cases against him, and his public statements on Kurdish identity and Turkey's cultural diversity have periodically stirred controversy. In 2026 he was acquitted again at the first hearing of a fresh indictment and released a new single.