Alyona Alyona shows us what Grand Theft Auto in Eastern Europe would be like

Ukrainian rapper Alyona Alyona has reinvented herself as the digital hero of badass video game franchise Grand Theft Auto for her latest single, “Wild Dances” (“Dykye Tantsy”). Shunning the streets of downtown San Andreas for an Eastern Bloc cityscape, the rapper’s Vice City avatar recklessly swings a yellow, Soviet-era Zhiguli car across slick grey roads, framed by her own retro video game stats.

Alyona later stops at the entrance to a tower block, before busting moves together with stray cats and kiosk-sellers decked out in caps and ripped jeans. “I fly again, like a tornado, to this bit/ I am a hit, I am an unbending rhyme monolith,” run the opening lyrics in Ukrainian.

A former kindergarten teacher, 28-year-old Alyona Alyona rose to fame in 2018 with the clip for her song “Fish” (“Rybky”), mixing animation with shots of her drinking cocktails and riding jet skis. Her latest video is also burning up the Ukrainian internet, with more than 50,000 YouTube views in less than a day.