NUR-SULTAN – Kazakhstan’s Imanbek Zeikenov won the Best Remixed Recording award at the 63rd Grammy Awards which aired March 14, the first winner in the history of Kazakhstan.
Imanbek Zeikenov at Effective Records office. Photo credit: Zeikenov’s Instagram page
Imanbek Zeikenov, known as Imanbek, won the award for his remix of Saint Jhn’s 2016 song “Roses.” He competed with RAC, Morgan Page, Louie Vega and Haywyre in the Best Remixed Recording category.
He was nominated for the award in November 2020.
Zeikenov became famous in the summer of 2019 after releasing his remix for Saint Jhn’s 2016 song “Roses.” He posted his remix on Russian social media, which went incredibly viral within a short period of time, first in TikTok and then hitting some of the biggest international charts, becoming No. 1 in the United Kingdom.
“Thanks to my mom, my dad, my team and the Effective Record label, my manager Kirill. Thanks, Grammy,” said Zeikenov, receiving his award virtually.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also sent his congratulations to Zeikenov, said President’s Spokesperson Berik Uali.
“Thanks to his talent and determination, Imanbek has won one of the major awards in global show business. His work has demonstrated that gifted young people from Kazakhstan can reach great heights. On behalf of the President, I congratulate Imanbek on this bright victory and wish him new creative success,” wrote Uali on Facebook.
For a 20-year-old Kazakh talent from the town of Aksu in northern Kazakhstan, rising to fame was never in his plans. In his interview with The New York Times in July 2020, Imanbek explained he could never imagine he would become internationally famous.
Before hitting the charts and signing with Russia’s Effective Records label, Zeikenov worked in a railway station and studied railway engineering. Experimenting with electronic music was merely his hobby, and he learned from online tutorials.
Never could he imagined that his hobby would bring him a Grammy award, sharing a stage, virtually, with the world’s biggest stars, such as Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish, among others.
Since his release of “Roses,” Imanbek has worked with David Guetta, Afrojack, Don Diablo, Zara Larsson and Rita Ora, among other headliners, raising his profile internationally.
His remix is now on Spotify’s most streamed songs list and has more than one billion streams on the platform.
“The best thing for a musician is to get a Grammy, we made it!” Imanbek wrote in his Instagram post following the win.
Winning the Grammy and collaborating with world-renowned artists, Imanbek has definitely proven that he is not a “one-hit-wonder,” as he told The New York Times in a July interview.
Below is the video of Zeikenov receiving this award virtually.
