We know Sanela Halilović, “Sassja,” as the lady of the Bosnian rap scene, with a recognizable voice and attitude. In her private life, she is first of all a mother, then a graduate with a master’s in pharmacy, and a workaholic. She is someone who has a lot of energy and is constantly looking for positivity around her. Sassja was born and grew up in Tuzla – a city known for its interculturality. She says that she did not think much about how Tuzla had influenced her, about its uniqueness, until she started traveling. “I love Tuzla, but above all I believe in it. There are good and bad people everywhere, but there is simply a sense in Tuzla that your name does not matter at all. If the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina were not as it is, Tuzla would not be written about as unusual. I didn’t think much about Tuzla in that way, until I started traveling and touring other cities in BiH,” Sassja tells us. She tells me that interculturality is not imposed on you nor something you learn, it is simply how people live in Tuzla. She gladly points out that she celebrates all the holidays with her family and friends: “My friend had a new girlfriend and we all asked him who she was. Instead, he answered: She celebrates everything. Just like a true Tuzla girl.” The city known for its urban culture and numerous bands inevitably influenced Sassja musically too. “Maybe that’s why it affected me. I think that Edo Maajka once said that it is unbelievable that such a small town has so many rappers, break-dancers, song writers… Maybe now it is a little diluted, because we all found our way somewhere else, but at some point it really was so. Everybody is doing something and they are really good at it,” says Sassja. She says that her mother is to thank for the beginnings of her music career. It was her mother who bought her a synthesizer on which she started learning notes and playing songs. Growing up, she says, it was not easy to get to new music as everyone just listened to what their parents listened to. “At the time, I couldn’t know if Dino Merlin stole the song from Michael Jackson or vice versa. Who took it from whom? Those were the times! I was little, I didn’t know what was going on there. An older neighbor, Melika, used to play Michael Jackson for us. It was the highest quality music. I listened to everything: rap, rock, metal, whatever I could get my hands on. Nobody had to tell me who Bob Marley was,” recalls Sassja. In the absence of music and material for creating new sounds, Sanela would record and compose music by using bits and pieces of Michael Jackson’s songs. She was in elementary school when she started creating new beats and sounds for herself. “My playtime included playing synthesizer, singing, writing. At that time, I still didn’t know about rap. I also wrote poetry. Once at school we had homework to write a poem about our mothers, which I did, and I quite liked it, and then I started writing poems about everything,” she recalls. Her other great love is graffiti, which she became familiar with for the first time in elementary school. After seeing a friend draw something on the table, Sanela, being a curious child, immediately started drawing graffiti in her notebook. Walking through the city, she began to notice graffiti on buildings, but she did not like it. Only years later would she understand why. Later in high school, I would meet a guy who drew graffiti, and only then would I find out that it is illegal, and that is why they are so ugly – they are always in a hurry, so no one sees them drawing on buildings. Later I started to draw them, but in legal places,” she says. Regarding Sanela’s personal development, she highlights two things that shaped her and directed her on the right path while growing up: Telex, the Tuzla Youth Center, and positive role models like local artists, Defence and Edo Maajka. Without them, she says, she could have very easily ended up “on the streets.” “We started gathering there and my mother took me to English classes there too. They even had computers. Then I saw that some bands had rehearsals there, so I learned to play the guitar at Telex. At the same time, I went to the Youth Theater, where we acted in the play I will wait for you. Later, the Tuzla Youth Theater opened. Although I almost ended up on the street, the theater directed my creativity to the right track. I knew what I needed to do and what I needed to not do to be one of the socially engaged young people. I hung out in Telex, played, sang. But I always knew where the limits were, so I would be given the opportunity to be in that play I really wanted to be in,” says Sassja.