Jugo Ürdens

Jugo Ürdens is a rapper and producer from Vienna who raps in German. He was born Aleksandar Simonovski in 1996 in Skopje, North Macedonia, to a Macedonian father and a Serbian mother, and he holds North Macedonian citizenship; that is why he is on Muzika-Balkan. He came to Vienna at the age of seven, grew up in Ottakring, the city's 16th district, near the Manner factory, and lives in Vienna.

His stage name is an anagram of Udo Jürgens, and it holds "Jugo", short for Jugoslawe, a Yugoslav. Many of his songs are ironic looks at his life as a migrant in Austria, and unlike much of German rap he leaves out violence, weapons and money, because they were never part of his life. He went to a grammar school in the 1st district and then to the Vienna University of Economics, which he left to make music full time. Until 2009 he played football for SC Helfort 15 Young Stars.

His first self-produced EP, Ajde, carried the single "DiesDas" and the song "Österreicher", about how much better he would be treated as an Austrian citizen. In 2018 he played the Donauinselfest, Waves Vienna and the FM4 Frequency Festival, and his debut album YUGO came out on Futuresfuture, the label of the Upper Austrian rapper Gerard, followed by a tour with the German rapper RIN. He was nominated for the FM4 Award at the Amadeus Austrian Music Awards in 2018 and reached its final in 2019.

For a while he called himself YUGO: under that name came "Babylon" and the Babylon EP in 2020 and the album Das Album, das schon 2020 erscheinen sollte in 2022. By 2024 he was Jugo Ürdens again, and released "Alle meine Freunde" and the album Hund that year. In September 2024 he played the rapper Ted Candy in the Vienna Tatort episode Deine Mutter and advised on its making. The DUMM EP followed in 2025 and the album Für Mich in 2026. The playlist gathers the music videos from his own channel.