It’s almost 15 years since Peter Fox alias Pierre Baigorry single-handedly turned the German music landscape upside down on STADTAFFE, only to disappear just as quickly into oblivion – the main band Seeed then came first again. Peter Fox is back with “Zukunft Pink” (and not only received praise but also accusations of cultural appropriation), festival gigs are already planned for 2023 – reason enough to listen to the Berliner’s best songs again. A new record has not yet been officially announced.
Fox himself described his only solo album STADTAFFE as “film music for dancing” and brought in the Babelsberg Film Orchestra. It was recorded almost by accident: he actually wanted to produce a record for CeeLo Green, who had just done a feature for Seeed in the single “Aufstehn!”. The problem: Suddenly Gnarls Barkley, Green’s project with Danger Mouse, went through the roof with “Crazy”. Green canceled and Peter Fox spontaneously made a solo record out of it.
Seeed was founded in 1998, the reggae formation around the singers Peter Fox, Dellé and Boundzound grew to eleven musicians. So far, Seeed have released five albums on which they mix the Jamaican dancehall sound with German hip hop. Above all, the three-part singing and the wind section of saxophone and trombone quickly made for recognition. Boundzound, under his real name Demba Nabé, died in 2018, a cause of death was not made public.
Here are five of Peter Fox and Seeed’s best songs:
PETER FOX – “Black to Blue”
Peter Fox walks across Berlin to beats and shimmering strings after a night of dancing. The city he sees is anything but beautiful: “Climb over the booze corpses that rot on my way/I see the rats eating their fill in the shadow of the kebab shops”. But it was precisely the unvarnished honesty that made “Schwarz zu Blau” a secret anthem of the capital: “Guten Morgen Berlin/You can be so ugly” – which Berliner would not agree if the conciliatory conclusion reads: “And me know if I want to or not/That I need you to breathe”. No wonder that Peter Fox won the Bundesvision Song Contest 2009 with the song.
SEEED – “Big B”
“Schwarz zu Blau” isn’t the only Berlin anthem by and with Peter Fox, because as early as 2001 Seeed sang about their “Dickes B” on their debut album NEW DUBBY CONQUERORS: “Mama Berlin Backsteine und Benzin/We love your scent when we’re around the houses move”. In the video, Seeed runs through all the landmarks between Alexanderplatz, the television tower and the Brandenburg Gate before feature guest Black Kappa appears and lets the song finally take off.
PETER FOX – “House by the Lake”
The alternative to the Berlin anthems. A relaxed rhythm, breathy background singers, summer is here, the metropolis is far away: “And at the end of the street there is a house by the lake/orange tree leaves are on the way”. The sky is blue, the whole family comes to the “Haus am See” and summer is one big party. You don’t even need a “Landlust” subscription to escape from the city, this song is enough.
SEEED – “thing”
On the third single from the third album NEXT! tell Seeed about an attempted infidelity that fails because of their own drunkenness, because they had drunk too much courage. Weird, but catchy from the first second. “Ooh you pretty thing, I’m hiding my wedding ring”.
PETER FOX – “The Second Sight”
Finally, one could name a few more songs, for example the moody first single “Alles Neu”, in which Peter Fox unashamedly declared himself a “wrecking ball for the German scene”. Great cinema is above all the paranoid “The Second Sight”. The film musicians start playing dissonantly, and suddenly you can no longer trust yourself: “A beast lives in your house/You lock it up, it breaks out”.