Born in Munich, Fatoni has released WUNDERBARE WELT, an autobiographical record that surveys various decades of German rap. A conversation about the connection between past and present.
The songs of WUNDERBARE WELT also have an effect through their interaction. But is the artistic claim of such a “real album” still up-to-date when social media keeps shortening the music?
FATONI: I come from a generation that grew up completely with album music – and fortunately there are still artists who work like that. In the end, that’s the music I find most impressive myself. So of course I set myself the task of bringing my own records into this form.
Isn’t the song-focused way of publishing the present unfamiliar to you?
For example, I finished this house song “Feeling” in 2021, which was already part of the process of the new record, but I thought to myself: “Come on, just bang it out like a Gen-Z rapper would do.” That worked well, I see the attraction there too. But still I think it’s important that there are still people left who want to make “real records”. And be it for a slightly older target group.
A line from the title track reads, “Why am I in my late thirties / and my job is German rap?” How does aging in hip-hop make you feel? In contrast to rock, the genre is very youthful.
It’s definitely a tightrope act – but I think I’ll manage it … even if some twenty-year-olds might see it differently, that’s in the nature of things. Still, I’m convinced that this genre can age well. I also look at generations above me, where I can see that they can do it credibly – like Max Herre or Deichkind. And are adults at the same time. There’s something inspiring about it, like you don’t just have to quit at some point or, even worse, become a singer/songwriter. (laughs)
How interested are you in new trends in rap? You obviously left out facial tattoos, but Auto-Tune can be heard on “Pete” and “I Surf” sounds very contemporary – far from old school.
I feel the same way about “I surf”, although I certainly wouldn’t claim to have my finger on the pulse of the times. I don’t follow everything and it also turns very quickly. For me, BHZ has always been the image of young rappers…but it’s been five years or so and a 19-year-old today probably thinks it’s old school. I myself listen to a lot of things outside of rap anyway – and that’s how I can take other influences with me into my music.
I feel like when even someone like Kollegah uses Auto-Tune on a track, I don’t buy that.
I haven’t followed Kollegah for a long time. But it also coincides with my feeling when I listen to certain big German hip-hop playlists … well, that I think you can’t be serious. That’s where a very market-oriented approach to music meets – it may be legitimate, but that’s not what I want to do.
One theme comes up in three songs and seems very charged – how much does it still haunt you, school?
I also noticed that there is a motif from the record. The school has always run through my work – only recently it had become less, but since this album has an autobiographical focus, it flashes again clearly. I made peace with it, but also suffered from it for a long time. I saw myself as a loser, I thought I can’t be that smart because I don’t have a high school diploma. When I was then taken to drama school, that gave me confirmation. For me it was something like: “Look here, I can do something!” Even though I had already managed a lot in German hip-hop at the time, the recognition of such an educated middle-class institution obviously meant a lot to me back then, elitist shit, I know . In my everyday life, at least, the topic no longer plays a role – and if it does, I make fun of it: I don’t have a high school diploma, but I’m still perhaps the most famous student rapper in Germany.
It is currently heading towards the comeback of the nineties. One of your pieces is called “My young self”, another “Mid 90s” – how nostalgic or not do you look at this decade?
Sure, that’s my youth, that was the most intensive time, but I see a lot of things critically now. We thought back then that we were so mega woke in the hip-hop community – even if the word didn’t exist yet – we perceived ourselves as super tolerant. It’s only become clear in recent years that I wouldn’t sign that anymore. Because within this self-image we were rather very exclusionary, there was toxic masculinity – the term was not known either. That’s what I talk about in the play “My young self”: that derogatory words like “gay” and “Spast” were taken for granted anyway, but that the discrimination wasn’t just limited to language. Without us being gangsters in the slightest, it was very hard, you didn’t want to and weren’t allowed to show any weakness.
You don’t spare yourself in this review, it’s not nostalgia.
In the end, the zeitgeist is always stronger than you are. And it’s easy to look at products from the 1990s from today’s perspective and say that none of that works at all. I didn’t want to make it that easy for myself, so I looked at myself during this epoch.
With your young self you go to court badly, in the song it gets a slap in the face at the end.
(laughs) Yes, you would have deserved that kind of respect more often – it’s okay to understand that for yourself.
This text first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 05/2023. Order here.