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" Along with its ongoing economic crisis, Europe has also been experiencing a demographic predicament, with birth rates declining so precipitously that some countries are on the verge of actual decreases in their total population. The governments of some of these countries have tried to solve their population problems by opening themselves up to increased immigration. But the Putin administration in Russia is not your typical government, and they&amp;#039;re attempting more of a hands-on solution. Befitting the no-nonsense character of a man who, when confronted with a flock of cranes that refuses to migrate properly, will dress up like a crane and use a powered hang glider to show them the proper route (or who, when confronted by pesky presidential term limits, will simply install a temporary figurehead in the position for as long as it takes to rewrite the proper laws), Putin&amp;#039;s approach to Russia&amp;#039;s sagging birth rates is to just make Russians have more kids. To that end, he&amp;#039;s hired famous makers of babymaking music Boyz II Men to come to Moscow and perform a concert that will presumably inspire Muscovites to take direct action toward the problem, i.e., knock boots until the break of dawn. Or maybe not. So far the only evidence that the Boyz II Men concert is part of a Putinian scheme to get Russians pregnant is the intro to an interview with the group (now a trio since Michael McCary retired in 2003 due to complications from scoliosis) in theMoscow Times, and it&amp;#039;s possible that some level of intended jokiness got lost in translation. Regardless, even if it isn&amp;#039;t factually true, there is something in the combination of cold, hard pragmatism and surreal loopiness (not to mention media appeal) to the idea of combating population decline by staging a concert by a renowned slow-jam R&amp;amp;amp;B group that&amp;#039;s pure Putin, the kind of way-way-outside-of-the-box thinking that so many of us have grown to grudgingly admire despite the blatantly heinous shit he does on a regular basis. -- Miles Raymer is a music writer based in New York City who has contributed to the Chicago Reader, Vice, Pitchfork, and others. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a18637/putin-boyz-ii-men-russia-15044108/>