Documentary “Hip-Hop – Made in Germany” with Denyo, Celo & Abdi

WHe knows how difficult it is now to persuade hip-hop artists to do interviews, how many rejections come after an acceptance, how often there are conditions attached to it and how rarely rappers feel like giving contemporary historical classifications, this four-part series from NDR Simply give credits to the documentary series co-produced by SWR. On Instagram, artists do their own casting, and no one impertinently asks about sexism in the industry or assessments of the competition. So why get involved in anything that isn't 100 percent under your control?

“Hiphop – Made in Germany” tells four decades of hip-hop history. German rappers who you are not used to on public television also appear here. You didn't get them all: of course. Shirin David is missing and Haiyti and Samy Deluxe and Bushido and arrest warrant and Trettmann, to name just a few. Nevertheless: This meeting of old and new stars of the scene is like a school reunion awaited with rumbling in the stomach.

You have to fight your way through episode one a bit, which is about the 1980s and Advanced Chemistry founder Toni-L drives through Heidelberg in an old Mercedes in his checkered signature beret, inviting and uninviting people to talk to and the hip-hop archive of the city while the old songs are playing on the radio. And everyone involved nods and proves how grown up hip-hop has become. It's probably due to the somewhat wooden concept: one city per episode that shaped hip-hop (or that of hip-hop), which also includes Heidelberg, and a car, two representatives from the scene appear, shout old radio reports remember the major social events of the decade in question. What our stars can sometimes do more and often less with.

But of course, if you want to talk about German hip-hop traditions, you have to start at the beginning, with the origins in Mark Twain Village, where the Americans lived who brought “Straight Outta Compton” to Heidelberg and whose military music sounded like funk , in contrast to the German, which was bourgeois brass music. The first breakdance battles took place at the German-American folk festival and with them the beginnings of graffiti and rap.

And about DJing, the fourth pillar of hip-hop alongside breakdancing, graffiti and rap. Enter Cora E., at the sight of whom people justifiably breathe deeply, not just from those in the car who think Cora deserves to be chauffeured. But also from Lady Bitch Ray and the others who actually sit in the “stages” and provide contemporary historical classifications. Eko Fresh. King Boris. Hip-hop journalists, DJs, political fans. Joe Chialo is there, Gregor Gysi and Danyal Bayaz, who also happens to be Finance Minister of Baden-Württemberg. Few gangster types, but at least Celo & Abdi lead through Frankfurt without a driver's license in episode four.

Surprise how many women were found: Ebow, Liz, Kitty Kat, Eunique, Antifuchs. And how much recognition they get. In the Hamburg episode, Denyo asks Eunique what it was like to be a woman in the scene. In Berlin, Kitty Kat tells quite touchingly about her experience with the label Aggro Berlin, which she, the only woman under contract, didn't want to show off for a long time because she supposedly didn't correspond to common expectations of female rappers. In Hamburg, they say today, hip-hop made an effort to tell people that it was about “mind fame,” not gangster stories. There was a moral compass. And then the shock when the new millennium suddenly started with harsher tones. Denyo: “They all acted like we were pop rappers.”

This brings hip-hop to the dispute over commercialization and sovereignty of interpretation that was already apparent in the eighties when “the nice Swabians came”. The audience loved Fanta Vier, the rap scene wasn't completely convinced, and still isn't to this day. Smudo defends: We weren't marginalized.

So everything is full of ambivalence. Between criticism of those who sold records and the widespread belief today that financial success makes the artist. Between the realization that young people in sad suburbs identified with the genre and the disrespect for it. The fact that in the series people generally speak of each other with respect is due to a code of honor that is rarely so clear otherwise. And the wise selection of artists.

All four episodes can be seen in the ARD media library.