Fury in Germany as Rap Duo With Anti-Jewish Lyrics Gets Award
BERLIN — In Germany’s hugely popular hip-hop music scene, one of the biggest albums of the past year was from
two trash-talking rappers who rhymed about their prowess in bed and in the weight room and about violently dominating their opponents.
The album has racked up sales, but has also attracted a different sort of attention. In one song, the pair boast about how their bodies are “more defined than Auschwitz prisoners.” In another, they vow to “make another Holocaust, show up with a Molotov.”
Widespread condemnation turned into an uproar in the last week since the rappers, Farid Bang and Kollegah, won the Echo award for best hip-hop album at Germany’s equivalent of the Grammys on April 12.
The country’s recording industry association had criticized the lyrics but defended its choice in the name of artistic freedom. Nominations are based on popularity and rankings on music charts, not artistic quality — a process the association has pledged to re-examine after the outcry.
The objectionable lyrics in t
he winning album, titled “Young, Brutal, Good Looking 3,” do not explicitly deny the mass slaughter of some six million Jews by the Nazis, nor do they specifically incite hatred of Jews,
But Jakob Baier, a researcher at the
Hans Böckler Foundation focusing on anti-Semitism in German rap music, called the lyrics “despicable” and said they scorned the victims of Auschwitz. He noted that some of Kollegah’s other songs and music videos promoted conspiracy theories and the message that “the world is in control of evil, and the evil is marked as Jewish.”
In the music video for his track “Apocalypse,” a banker in a London office tower is shown controlling the evil forces in the world, and wearing a Star of David ring. After a final showdown between good and evil, Kollegah — a 33-year-old convert to Islam whose real name is Felix Blume — raps, “Muslims, Christians and Buddhists lived together in peace,” pointedly not mentioning Jews.
Allegations of anti-Semitism have dogged German hip-hop for years and were even the subject of a recent documentary, “The Dark Side of German Rap.”
One song by the rapper Haftbefehl mentions a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family, and the video for another features images of Orthodox Jews carrying suitcases of money and diamonds over the lyrics “money, money rich.”
Many lyrics are also homophobic and degrading to women — issues in rap music that transcend Germany’s borders. In one song, the rapper
Shindy says that his openness to having sex — described in an obscene way — with Jewish women is proof he is not an anti-Semite.
“At a time when hate against Jews is increasing around the world and a flood of anti-Jewish sentiment can be seen online, especially among young people,” said Monika Schwarz-Friesel, a professor of linguistics at Berlin’s Technical University, “to declare anti-Semitic and fantastical, conspiratorial song texts as ‘artistic freedom,’ and award them prizes is viewed by researchers of anti-Semitism as particularly irresponsible.”
But for all of the uproar over the words, Viola Funk, a journalist in Berlin who covers hip-hop, said she believed a larger point was being missed.
“German rap is a scapegoat, because youth culture is always a scapegoat,” Ms. Funk, who directed “The Dark Side of German Rap,” said. “As if it didn’t have anything to do with society at large.”
