Kollegah, some keep saying, shouldn’t have written all his lyrics himself. The allegation and also the spin that he copied punchlines from so-called freetypers – i.e. from people who share their own rap lyrics in writing without necessarily wanting to convert them to music – in rap forums are older. In April 2022, the YouTuber Alicia Joe dedicated a video to the topic that caused a wave of attention. What is new is that one of these freetypers answered detailed questions about his work for Kollegah and his handling of foreign material in an interview lasting several hours and shared the assessment that this affected between 30 and 50 percent of the Düsseldorfer’s lines.
On March 18, Marvin California, German rap content creator and big Kollegah fan, published an interview with Robbie Banks. Banks is one of those freetypers who also processed his past with Kollegah in a diss last year.
The interview and the allegations
In a largely bygone era of German hip-hop, around 2008, Kollegah got in touch with him via the MZEE forum. One young rap fan, the other an established rapper with his own forum background. A scene leader who had worked his way from the internet into the industry.
According to the statement, Kollegah wrote him a compliment for his texts and asked him whether he could use some of the Osnabrück native’s lines. From the initial use of existing material, a permanent ghostwriting job developed over the years. From today’s point of view rather harmless, at that time absolutely frowned upon. And if it hadn’t always been important for Kollegah to emphasize that he writes all of his texts himself, at most a few lines were written together with others or possibly taken over by others (according to the chronology), the potential for image damage would also be certain not so great. But the story is a bit bigger. Also because the situation is at least verifiable.
On the Genius website, some freetypers have therefore recently started To document duplications between forum posts and lines of text on Kollegah albums. So far (as of March 23, 2023) about 490 text passages have been collected. A slightly skeptical amount of correspondence between the thoughts of one, albeit talented, individual and the creative energy of dozens.
In the interview, Banks further reveals that the self-proclaimed boss also approached a number of other forum users. In addition to explicit ghostwriting by them and the creative exchange in groups and possibly also personally, which at least implies consent to the use of one’s own material by someone else, he has at least focused on his penultimate album ZUHÄLTERTAPE, VOL. 5 also served on public contributions. Banks understands that as these were some of his own, posted through alternate accounts. He also never saw any money for his contributions – but was given the complete Kollegah discography (from around the year 2014) on CD.
A whole lot of lines
What leads to the real dilemma is the extent of this discography (past and present) from battle rounds and singles to the pimp and hoodtape series to ten solo albums and the JUNG BRUTAL GOOD AWESOME records with Farid Bang. How is one person supposed to cope with that? And in a way that, in addition to the new dimensions of the “alpha” idea in the last five years – including think-it-yourself phrases, overpriced masculinity coaching and fascist-like aesthetics – can continue to convince people with the old image?
Exactly: not alone. In order to maintain the myth of Felix – wrong middle name Antoine – Blume, Kollegah obviously needed help. And on a scale that, according to Robbie Banks, could make up almost half of the ouevre that made such a fascination out of the exaggerated mafia gangster pimp image. Nevertheless, Robbie Banks emphasizes that Kollegah is an extremely good copywriter. The documented duplications often do not meet word for word, but in ideas and rhymes.
FREE SPIRIT, the 38-year-old’s current album, was released in August 2022. It has 25 tracks and a running time of one and a half hours. In 2021 came the fifth ZHÄLTERTAPE – 37 tracks, two and a half hours long. Kollegah has not commented on the allegations. However, last Sunday (March 26) he published a video on TikTok in which he quickly wrote down any words into a text for a recurring challenge.
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