This slightly edited report from the archive appeared in ROLLING STONE in 1999.
Sabrina Setlur, the daughter of Indian parents, made her debut in 1995 under the wing of the Rödelheim Hartreim project as sweet sister S with evil rhymes. Then she emancipated herself from the false smell of the street and succeeded as a diva of the S-Class.
The average Frankfurter has a special relationship with his hometown: He considers himself a sophisticated citizen in a metropolis of global importance: the airport, the skyline of the high-rise buildings, the stock exchange, the banks – all of this leads him to the fallacy that “Mainhattan” is it little sister of New York. But this big city attitude to life only applies during office hours. Frankfurt remains Bankfurt – and therefore suffers from a cultural inferiority complex after work, which is poorly concealed by outrageously expensive opera productions.
The old rule usually still applies in the discos: If you wear sneakers, stay outside! Unlike in Hamburg or Berlin, modern subcultures were never really able to establish themselves in Frankfurt. Anyone who thinks, feels and acts differently than the service industry that sets the standards here is pushed to the margins, to the sidelines of the speakeasies and the off-off clubs. The way from there back to the center is difficult, because American conditions prevail in Frankfurt, and if you dream of a cozy indie breeding ground, you should probably go to Stuttgart.
But if you want it hard enough, dreams can come true even on the Main. The magnificently renovated community center on Rödelheim’s Fuchstanzstrasse bears witness to this. A flag with the logo of the company that resides here flutters confidently and a little ostentatiously in front of the entrance portal: 3p – “Pelham Power Productions”. 13 permanent employees work here, and the boss also lives here: Germany’s most feared rapper Moses Pelham. As an artist, the host has taken a bit of a back seat at the moment. However, as managing director of 3p and as producer of the mega-seller Xavier Naidoo, there is more than enough for him to do.
He has just completed another particularly promising work: “From the perspective and with the shepherds of…”, the new album by Sabrina Setlur. Things had been quiet about the Rödelheim rapper and (according to “Bild”) “the most erotic woman in Germany” last year, but with her new and best album to date, that will change very quickly. To understand what she and her record company are about, you have to go back a few years and drive a few kilometers further northwest towards Taunus. Then you end up in Schwalbach, a small town with a village town center, some industry and a few high-rise buildings.
It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in the spring of 1994 when Thomas Hofmann is tearing through the narrow streets of Schwalbach in his Alfa Spider. His school friend Sabrina Setlur sits next to the Rödelheim professor’s son. The daughter of Indian parents turned 20 a few months ago, she has finished high school, and now she is tormenting herself with the classic question: What will become of me? Stewardess perhaps, “because you get around so much”. A lawyer would be okay too, after all, she is a big fan of the TV series “LA Law”.
For Sabrina Setlur, rap is shouting with garbage cans on fire
However, to be on the safe side, she enrolled as a business student. But today Sabrina doesn’t want to think about the future. The sun prickles warmly on her skin, the wind tugs at her hair and Dr Dre’s “Nothing but a ‘G’ Thang” comes from the car radio. Actually, Sabrina doesn’t particularly like rap – whether with or without “gangster”. “I always think about shouting and burning garbage cans,” she says. But she loves soft, springy funk, the soul of Whitney Houston and the pop of Madonna. Her father once caught her fidgeting in front of the bathroom mirror, playing pop star, with a can of deodorant in her hand.
As she thinks back to the somewhat embarrassing episode, Setlur quietly begins to rap: “Ain’t nuthing but a G-thang, baby. “So just chill, until the next episode.” “Heeey, do that again!” Thomas is thrilled. And Thomas is not just any wealthy kid from the Frankfurt suburbs – together with his role model and partner, Moses Pelham, who grew up less well-off, he represents the recently founded Rödelheim Hartreim project. Together with Martin Haas and Robert Sattler, the two have been working on their debut album for a while. It’s supposed to be called “Direkt aus Rödelheim”, like “Straight Outa Compton”, and it’s an attempt to translate gangster rap and G-Funk into German, or better yet, into Hessian.
Of course, Sabrina Setlur has no idea about such details. But she is still proud when Thomas asks if she would like to rap a verse on the programmatic piece “If it’s not hard (it’s not the project)”. Of course she wants to. So much for the mythology of the early days. “Direkt aus Rödelheim” hits the middle-class scene of “German chanting” like a redneck bomb filled with hand cheese. Moses Pelham and his junior partner take on everyone: Fanta 4, Advanced Chemistry, Stefan Raab and of course the politically correct media. They establish a language that hasn’t existed in German hip hop before: a stylized Frankfurt ghetto slang that’s teeming with chabos and cunt lickers.
They even threaten the Frankfurt rapper Germ with the Goebbels line “Do you want total war?” Anyone who was tolerant enough to survive this was finally shocked with the Böhse-Unkelz shirts that Moses likes to wear. Because just like the former skin band, Moses P feels like he’s fighting alone against the rest of the world. Not without reason: like many early hip-hop kids, he was tricked and cheated by record companies more than once. Added to this is the class-conscious pride of the upright proletarian who finally wants to show the whole world that the game works on his terms. For Sabrina Setlur, in the harsh male world of the production company 3p, there was initially only the place of a little sister S, the female counterpart to the Rödelheim Hartreim project. This is also underlined by her outfit on the cover of the debut album “S is ready” – bomber jacket, hoodie, combat boots.
Even back then, her preference for fine designer clothing from Versace and Donna Karan was hard to ignore, but even today Sabrina regularly emphasizes that she actually prefers to wear sweatshirts and shorts. Yes, of course – Sister S gives her first interviews in places with a lot of Rödelheim local color – such as a fishing lodge on the banks of the Nidda river. It soon becomes clear that she can rap like an Uzi – fast, angry and accurate – but she has problems with the context of her music: “I can’t say that I’m a badass hip-hop boss,” says them willingly and willingly. That’s why Sister S is usually accompanied during interviews by Thomas Hofmann, who protects her from questions that are too stupidly bold, but can also comment on or correct naive answers.
No smell of the street
“After all, the artist is not the whore of the media,” says Pelham, explaining 3p’s press policy, which still works the same way today. “Sabrina has now outgrown it, but at Xavier there is still a minder.” Unfortunately, Sister S is definitely not the real Sabrina Setlur, but an artificial product – an attempt to fill the market gap of “female rap act” in this country too. Despite all her bitchiness, Sister S simply doesn’t want to give off the smell of the street. But this problem solved itself when, a year later, Moses converted the production company 3p into the record company 3p and switched from MCA to Epic/Sony.
However, the Rödelheim Hartreim project and Sister S are still bound to MCA by contracts. The self-discovery of Setlur, who now wants to work under her own name, comes at just the right time. “I no longer wanted to be the sweet little sister of the Rödelheim boys,” she said at the time into every microphone that was held in front of her. “I co-wrote the lyrics, but it still wasn’t my thing. Especially after “Yes, of course,” I was annoyed by this blatant chatter from people: “Well, how are you and your two men?” Moses and Thomas had only compared their Sabrina to cream cake and wished they could drink her bath water. And you can’t exactly call a sister who raps lines like this “sweet”: “I’ll tear you apart, bite you apart, swallow you down and digest you, shit you out again, I am the woman, you are the mouse.”
With the 1997 album “The New S-Class”, Sabrina is much closer to herself. Her lyrics are more personal, more serious – sometimes a bit too pathetic – and not always house trained, but they are her very own lyrics. Moses and Thomas have now realized that a business student cannot easily become Queen Latifah. The album sold 300,000 copies and earned her the Echo award as “Best National Artist 1997”. In keeping with the S-Class image, the Setlur now presents itself as the self-confident luxury woman, a little Foxy Brown, a little Janet Jackson, a few splashes of Missy Elliott’s hearty directness. In doing so, however, she perfectly embodies this special Frankfurt social Darwinism: You may think I’m a vulgar bitch, but I’ve fought my way up because I’m good and know what I want, and that’s why I’m now making twice as much money her!
However, what is striking about this record, as well as most other 3p productions, is its polarization: the world seems to consist only of good or evil, of love or hate, of friends or enemies. But this pathos, sometimes dripping with self-pity, is also an artistic stylistic device, especially for Moses: “It’s clear that both Thomas and Sabrina learned to rap from me – that’s my school,” says the strong bald man, not without pride. And: “Many things could probably have been settled much more diplomatically if things had been handled more professionally and not personally. On the other hand, I believe that my art thrives on the fact that I take things personally and not diplomatically.”
The thoughtless comments about his arch-enemy Stefan Raab last year weren’t exactly conducive to art: the solo album “Shared Suffering” sold significantly less than expected. Sabrina’s rhymes are also hard and direct, but there are almost no personal attacks on the new record: “I want to stay out of it. I don’t really care whether someone comes from Hamburg or Stuttgart. The boys there are just as indifferent to me as the girls.”
Sabrina Setlur also worked in the office
What matters to La Setlur is her family: “Since I have been living in Rödelheim, we have seen each other very rarely, mostly only on Sundays – for lunch.” But these meetings are very important to her, just as important as her other “family”: Until about a year ago, she wasn’t just under contract with 3p as an artist – she also worked in the office there: “I started doing it at some point because of necessity was on the man and because I had fun with it. I did phone work, made coffee and dealt with fan mail. I even worked as Moses’ assistant for a while, but that was pure horror.”
Why? “The guy is a workaholic and drives you crazy.” While she nervously looks forward to the release of her third album, the person who got her into rapping remains calm: Thomas H. swapped the microphone with the desk, “from the bad uncle of German hip-hop to head of marketing and label manager of 3p. That’s just how Frankfurt is, even the toughest guys succumb to the eroticism of cash flow.