The first major article about Hadar Farjun was published towards the middle of March 2020. Farjon, then 29 and an X Factor alumnus, talked about her song "Everything Comes Back," which dealt with sexual harassment, as well as "When is it my turn," her debut single and a general question that addressed the cosmos.
At the time, she was newly married to creator and music producer Gil Wayne, lived with him in Tel Aviv and was preparing to conquer the world with an album that would be called "Case-by-Case". A week later, an entire world found itself soaked within the walls of houses for months. Life, and a global pandemic it turns out, is what happens when you make other plans. But Farjun didn't take the new situation that had been forced too hard. At least at that point.
"It really didn't feel like a delay," she says today, three years later. "I actually had a good time. It just came at my time to prepare everything. I started making my first album, writing texts and melodies on my own. I didn't have producers yet. I was looking for my voice. I wasn't mature enough to put out songs. I was still searching, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted to do. The coronavirus started a few months after we got married. We lived in a stunning apartment in the center of Tel Aviv, but had to leave because the landlady decided to raise our rent. So we moved to Herzliya. And then we got divorced."
Did you break up because you spent a lot of time together at home and got to know each other better?
"There were plenty of reasons. In total we were married for ten months. But it wasn't too fast, it was at the right time. Then I moved to my parents in Shoham, and it was a very hard blow for me."
Going back to your parents' home at the age of 30 is a kappa.
"That's right. I felt like I was just in the worst possible situation. There's Corona, there's no work, I've gotten divorced and I'm at my parents' house. But it was precisely this bottom that gave me strength. She made me feel that I would prove to everyone and to myself that from the lowest place I would reach as high as possible. I mean it was so funny already, where I was, that I felt like it was some kind of movie."
Slippery slope
That album, as the intro suggests, was never released. Farjon still has a long way to go before she discovers herself as a kicking rapper, Instagram star and TikTok sensation, signed to songs like "Jump Me" and "Addicted." Hits that probably your nephews, the first to recognize impending success (just ask Stefan Leger or Noa Kirl), are familiar with.
But before that, she had to slide a little further down the slippery slope into which almost everyone who begins the process of self-discovery and maturation slides. Call it redemption through the gutters or a Cinderella story. But to the question "when is my turn?" she asked at the time, the same universe answered unequivocally: "There is still time."
"Okay, I have a funny story," she says at one point in an interview. "Before COVID-19, I made a living from events. Management, production, facilitation. And in Corona there were no incidents. I thought about what I could do that would make a lot of money and be free to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I published a post in Shoham's group, in which I offered my services as a babysitter and all sorts of things, and one of the items was cleaning. Already in Tel Aviv I was busy cleaning a bit.
"In short, for two years I cleaned houses to pay for the album. That means I've gotten divorced, I live with my parents, I clean houses and I don't know my direction in music. I have nothing to hold on to. Nothing stable or clear. It's very sobering, because suddenly you have nothing. I felt like in a Disney story like this, of someone who was the bottom. That's the story I told myself in my head. From this bottom I will grow."
Need to transmit strong femininity. Farjon, Photo: Arik Sultan
Did anyone recognize you?
"Yes, here and there. But I was more recognized as someone from Shoham. I once cleaned the house of the parents of someone who was in my class with me. It's embarrassing, but I was so purposeful that I didn't care. This was just when all the podcasts were popping up. For hours on end, I would listen to podcasts about empowerment and the way other musicians did. That's exactly what I needed at the time, hearing all these things for hours while I was cleaning and figuring out what I needed to do. That's what gave me the strength, these podcasts."
There is comfort in them, yes. Especially during difficult times.
"You feel with them that you are not alone. And I was very lonely. I didn't come from a family of artists. They have nothing to do with business, they are middle-class employees, academics. No connections, no money. Not like Noa Kirl's parents, who will now invest in you.
"I'm very different in my environment. There is no one who understands me and can identify with me. On the contrary, they were just trying to show me their way and what I should do. In short, they didn't understand. And it's very hard to keep sticking to your dream when everyone around you is taking you down. And it's not just family, it's also my friends. It's a place of grades and competition and being normative."
Another way. Noa Kirel, Photo: AP
No famous singers or actors who came out of Shoham?
"There's Ella Lee (Lahav) and there's Arik Berman. But they were also very different in the landscape and didn't fit in with the experience of this place."
A twist in this plot is yet to come, but before that - like any case of reinvention, in order to truly understand it you need to know the origin story. Farjon, as mentioned, grew up in Shoham. She is the middle daughter of Shmulik, infrastructure manager at Bezeq, and Lily, who works in special education. Her older sister Shani is a senior high-tech professional. The younger sister, Shaked, is a lawyer at one of the most well-known law firms in Israel.
"I once cleaned someone's house. It's embarrassing, but I was purposeful, and I didn't care. For hours, I listened to podcasts about the way other musicians did. That's what I needed to hear while I was cleaning, to figure out what I needed to do."
After high school studies in the theater track, service as a bureau clerk in the Kirya (in Ehud Barak's office) and service as a company clerk in the paratroopers, Hadar made the first obvious move for those wishing to perform on stages and began working as an entertainment team in a hotel in Eilat. Then she took a liking to the X Factor cast members, who took her to the show's third season in 2017.
Unlike the vast majority of participants in the talent discovery genre throughout the ages (a genre that this summer marks two full decades since it landed in Israel as well), before the show, Farjon didn't really have musical ambitions. "I came to The X Factor without really being a singer or wanting to be," she admits. "My dream was to be an actress. I studied theater, dance and education at the Kibbutzim Seminar, did a degree. At that time, I went to a lot of auditions, tried to get into all kinds of agencies.
"Then I saw the X Factor advertisement, which said they were looking for crazy performers who knew how to burn the stage. At the time, I was doing Spokane Ward in Poetry Slam. I decided to go to the audition and perform a parody rap song I had written ('Don't go out with a surfer', according to him). I had never performed before, nothing. I thought it would open doors for me in the acting world, after a lot of failures and when I saw that it didn't work. I wasn't a girl, I was already 26. So I went there with the goal of advancing in the acting world. I didn't expect, hope, or even think I'd have a music career. And suddenly, after so many rejections, it was the first time I got a yes."
She didn't appear on the show for a long time, but participated in it enough to make people remember.
A parody of a rap song. Farjon on The X Factor, Photo: PR Network
Were you disappointed when you were eliminated before the competition really started?
"So every time I went through a phase of the program, it was delusional for me. I kept asking how it was possible that I had even passed, so when I was ousted I didn't feel bad. It was a very good experience for me: the audience loved me, the judges loved me too, and I progressed in stages. And there I realized that if God gave me this talent, why not go with it? I've always loved writing and creating, and I finally had a place where I could express myself verbally.
"If you compare it to other people, those who really came there to succeed in music, then yes, there are a lot of singers who are knocked down by impeachment and they can't get out of it. It just lifted me. After I left the show, I was even approached by music companies and asked me to send them my material, and I had nothing. I had no idea what to do, I didn't know what my voice was and who I was in music. So I started writing and working on it, and building the musical entity that is me. What's my voice? What is my style? I never imagined myself as a singer who actually sang. So I aimed for rap, because I didn't think I could really sing."
"Once I was supposed to go clean some house. I got a screenshot from the landlady, showing that I entered a Galgalatz evening playlist with 'zero'. I ran to my mother's bed and said, 'Mom, I'm on the Galgalatz playlist!' After an hour I went to clean that woman's house."
Gil Wayne (or DJ Onley, as he is known to many), then already a producer and creator who signed songs such as "Don't Ask" which he sang with her sons Barbie and "Party in Haifa" performed by the Ultras, Itay Levy and Elon Matana, met at the party. She went over to compliment him on his song "Until the Desert," which she sang herself on The X Factor. The two bonded and then became a couple.
A year later, when he hosted her at his concert at the cow pub in Kfar Shavei Zion, she proposed to him by kneeling and he agreed.
"It was a music school for me." Gil Wayne, Photo: Remy Diablo
"I don't think I'll get married again," she says. "I will never do such a grandiose event again. I feel like it's a bit of a waste. Instead of investing this money in things that a young couple needs, they go and pour it on an event, which is a shame. I think that only when you want to have a child, I think it's worth doing. If you don't plan at that moment to bring one, the wedding is inconsequential. It's some kind of social ritual, born because they told women that 'one day you'll be a bride and dress like a princess and everything will be like fairy tales.'"
"Stupidity not being on TikTok"
The feminist worldview and the need to project strong femininity are also what motivated her to launch her career again. The relationship with Wayne did well, but so did the breakup. "The connection was a music school for me. His studio was at home, we lived together and I watched this whole thing happen behind the scenes. He produced the songs 'Zero' and 'Everything Comes Back' for me, but I never came to him and asked him to 'write me a song', even though he's one of the most talented writers in the country. It was very important to me that it came from me, in my own words. And I really didn't want them to think I succeeded because of him. I wanted to do everything my way. Regardless of him."
Then, at the height of her parents' home-return crisis, she wrote new songs. As she imagined, and it's an almost cliché lesson in motivation and perseverance, she got a signal. First sign of success. "One day I was supposed to go in the morning to clean some house. Suddenly, I received a message from the landlady, of a screenshot showing that I had entered an evening Galgalatz playlist with 'zero'. At that moment, I started crying like a little girl. I ran to my mother's bed and said, 'Mom, I'm on the Galgalatz playlist!' I was so excited, and after an hour I went to clean that woman's house. That's how I celebrated entering the playlist."
"I feel like women still have a way to go to make them feel strong enough. It takes boldness. It's not that they're told 'captivity,' it's that they themselves don't dare. Most women I meet are afraid to enter this world. I wish that would happen. I want to inspire women."
The debut album was eventually titled "Alpha", and what sales did not do, TikTok did, after it began uploading tracks that received a huge number of views. "It literally exploded," she recalls. "Before that, I brought things up there in a small way. I didn't understand how this thing worked, I didn't exactly connect to it. But I went and taught myself and realized it was just stupid not to be there. Any artist or business owner who wants to reach people and doesn't have the connections or money to invest in paid promotion must be on TikTok. It's just free advertising that can reach millions of people. It's crazy, and more than that, radio and the media are now providing a platform for what's successful on TikTok.
"At the end of the day, TikTok is a force because it brings results on the ground. After I realized this, I started naming it in my head. I have videos that have literally reached a million views. And there were plenty of haters, full of hitters, it was a bit extreme. Literally amounts of people cursing. On the other hand, there were a lot of people flying at me. This song was very successful compared to the things I had. I was staying at concerts and people just knew the lyrics. He was really successful in the hip-hop scene as well."
It's not a given that you cracked this platform at the age of 32.
"I'm very young in my soul, and also in my appearance. I'm also starting with 20-year-olds. It seems to me that as an adult you can understand how people think, and that's how to create your videos. It has a lot of rules. I analyzed videos and tried to understand how it works, what makes people there pass them on. How this algorithm works. Voila, it works. Not every video reaches a million views, but it does reach people. And I do everything in this thing. I write the script, go out into the field to shoot, edit it myself. I even do sound and subtitles."
Next came "Super--Horseman-Ballistic-Alpha-Lady-Boss" (on the weight of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from the classic Mary Poppins), which also succeeded and entered the playlist of MTV Israel.
In it, she sings about herself: "Chiller, winner, not just some fisherman. Let's learn a few words from the commander, Dean. Does it all here, including you, multitasker. Killery, dynamite, they want more of the teaser." On "Jump Me," another song she wrote and recorded, she says: "Love attitude? What have you never seen a woman before? What does that do to you, control? Stand up front to get a kick? What's a surprise? Pick up your jaw from the floor. Your girlfriend also wants to. You want to, too."
In her Latin "Let It Not End," she sings: "I'm spending all day thinking about you, and I feel like just being on you all the time." After all she's been through, Farjon isn't afraid to be a female voice in a rap scene that has always been considered masculine. Nor is it hard to understand why it provokes outrage among many, who do not yet know how to eat it.
The first verse of "Bossa to the Face" says: "How he makes me butterflies all over my body, and if it's all talk then fly. But what eyes, you Wally, and the things he does to me. Knock him in the face." A somewhat forceful message.
"I feel like all my songs are about putting the strong, kicking woman at the center. And this song specifically really expresses female sexuality, and the fact that if a woman wants someone, it's most legitimate for her to come and start with him, and she will say what she wants. There is no doubt that when such a strong woman comes along and says the words, 'Either you jump or you jump on me,' it evokes some kind of emotion of 'How dare you?'
"That self-confidence is something that people envy, and when people are jealous, something comes out of them. But this song really caught on, people loved it, and even today a lot of rappers invite me to stay with it at their shows. Not long ago, I was the opening act of Peled in Hangar 11. There was also a show called 'Connection Live,' featuring the most beloved rappers in the scene, and I was the only woman there."
Is assertive femininity something important for you to demonstrate?
"I guess so. It is said that a person shouts what he lacks. I feel like legitimizing it."
"There's no doubt that when such a strong woman comes along and says the words, 'Either jump or jump on me,' it triggers some kind of emotion of, 'How dare you?' That self-confidence is something that people envy, and when people are jealous, something comes out of them."
Even today there are not too many women in Israeli hip-hop. You cite Tuna and Ravid Plotnik as inspiration.
"I'm always asked that. Listen, I went through a lot of processes that actually led me to the fact that I'm not only a rapper, but also completely a singer. Rap is another thing that goes into my music. I don't define myself as just a rapper, but I feel that in general there are a lot more male singers in the music world. And not just in music. Being at the front of the stage requires a lot of courage, a lot of mental strength."
On the other hand, the biggest star in your country right now is Noa Kirl.
"Rappers are usually people who have to do everything on their own. Let's just say it's not easy for a woman. I feel like women still have a way to go to make them feel strong enough. I went against everything, everything around me. I went into the unknown, and you have to be a little psychic to do that. It takes a lot of daring. It's not like they're told 'sit down.' It's that they themselves don't dare. Most women I meet are afraid to enter this world. I wish that would happen. I feel like inspiring women. It will take more time, but we are heading in a good direction."
Now she's somewhere else. She returned to the center after exile at her parents' home in a city known for its 80 squares. She already lives in the center again, has been in a relationship with a non-musician for several months and continues to do most of her work alone. A one-woman guerrilla army. All this while working full-time as a producer of welfare events for employees at a well-known media company.
"It's also something cool, that I got to learn about company events. I know how much money artists are paid, I know how the process of choosing a singer works, and it made me understand things. For example, when we are trying to decide at a meeting which artist to bring to the performance. Suddenly I realized that most of the artists they bring in are men, because they think there aren't many women who make uplifting music that is good for events and suitable for everyone."
Do you think your family has already figured out music? You're no longer a black sheep.
"Until it reaches the funds, it won't be enough. You have to bring the money, the material. And God willing, it will happen."
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