As if we didn’t know already, Lady Gaga’s latest album testifies to the fact that she is a certified “Killah.” On “Mayhem,” Gaga returns listeners to the era of “The Fame” and “Born This Way,” bearing her soul with risk-taking pop hits and reminding us of why we fell in love with her in the first place.
But Lady Gaga didn’t make the album on her own. Nearly all the tracks give writing credits to her fiancé Michael Polansky, and producers Andrew Watt and Cirkut. Watt and Cirkut also produced many of the songs as well. But a few other names also continually pop up on the track listing. Mike Lévy is credited as a writer on “Garden of Eden,” “Perfect Celebrity,” “Killah” and “Blade of Grass.” Additionally, French DJ Gesaffelstein is listed as a producer on “Garden of Eden,” “Killah” and “Blade of Grass,” and is even featured on “Killah.” As it turns out, Mike Lévy and Gesaffelstein are one and the same — and yes, he’s Jewish.
Let’s meet Gesaffelstein, aka Mike Lévy.
Mike Lévy was born on June 24, 1985 in Lyon, France to Jewish parents from North Africa. When he was 16 years old, he discovered his older sister’s techno CDs and fell in love with the genre. “I had the luck of having a DJ as a neighbor, big record collector who owned synths, and with whom I was able to initiate myself to the creation of sounds, by teaching myself how the machines worked and to interest myself in production,” he told Vogue Hommes International in 2013. “One thing leading to another, without a particular aim, I continued making music.”
He released his first EP in 2008 under the name Gesaffelstein, a combination of the German word “Gesamtkunstwerk,” or “total work of art” and Einstein, in honor of the German-Jewish physicist. He continued releasing EPs in the following years, with the Washington Post describing his sound as “menacingly heavy tech house that’s entirely free of pop influence, catering more to a dark, underground dance hall than to an arena of kids in neon tank tops.” He quickly found success and in 2012 French magazine Les InRocks hailed him as the “new prince of French Techno.” Around the same time, his song “Viol” caught the attention of Kanye West — before Ye propagated antisemitic conspiracy theories and self-identified as a Nazi — who reached out to Gesaffelstein to collaborate. In 2013, he would co-produce “Black Skinhead” and “Send It Up” on Kanye West’s sixth album “Yeezus” and in 2021, he would also rack up producing credits on West’s 10th album “Donda.”
Since then, he’s gone on to work with The Weeknd, A$AP Rocky, Haim, Lil Nas X, Charli XCX and, most recently, Lady Gaga. He’s also continued to release his own music, with studio albums “Aleph” (2013), “Hyperion” (2019) and “Gamma” (2024).
Though Gesaffelstein is a fairly private figure and hasn’t shared how he identifies, there are a few clues that he finds meaning in his Jewish ancestry. The name of his first album is “Aleph,” like the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The year before, he posted on his Facebook page after performing in Tel Aviv, writing, “I was really proud to be there.” Canadian DJ A-Trak, who has both Ashkenazi and Sephardi ancestry, referred to himself and Gesaffelstein as “Sephardic boys” and “Techno altjews” on Instagram.
So next time you’re jamming out to “Mayhem” and dare I say, the best track on the album, “Killah,” just remember that Jewish maestro Gesaffelstein is one of the people you have to thank.
