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There was almost no sign of life for four years, now he reports Bonn rapper SSIO With an album announcement, its comeback single “Alles or nothing” and a almost ten-minute video clip. And the internet, well, that is upside down. On Monday after the release weekend, the music video has already collected 1.5 million clicks, there are numerous reactions, enthusiastic comments, forend discussions and digital declarations of love for fans, rappers and of course the industry. It can be said very clearly that SSIO did it, which has not been in the classic German rap cosmos for a very long time-SSIO has just triggered a veritable hype.
It is no coincidence that this succeeds. And the time for his comeback could not be more suitable either. In the past four years, the scene has changed radically, German hip-hop has no longer been a subcultural youth movement, but has long since emerged in the mainstream pop. The most successful artists of the present are still classified and marketed as a German rap, but musically open up a very broad mass musically, which has little to do with the classic target audience. From Apache 207 to Shirin David from Ski Aggu to Ikkimel, a generation of artists who have been shaped by German rap, but no longer want to understand it in its subcultural form, but have (for them) have stored too tight corset and transformed it into a radio and hitting format.
The remaining artists, which still achieve a significant number of listeners, rarely work through interesting, cultural personality, rather via Spotifiy playlist hits (rare exceptions such as Pashanim and a few underground hopes such as Lacazette confirm the rule). The consequence: The load-bearing columns of a subculture dissolve, festivals are no longer flooded by distinctive like-minded people, but from the arbitrariness of a generation of Yolo, fashion as a codified identification code no longer plays a role and established German rap media have long since disappeared. The former pillars that have worn the genre have long been torn down. Deutschrap is not dead, but he is pop.
SSIO and the Golden era of Deutschrap
SSIO, on the other hand, is still old school. He is through and through hip -hop. He stands for the golden era of German -speaking rap music and is probably the one artist, which in the end everyone can agree. The old, the new and the true schoolers, the hipsters, the feuilleton and the schoolyard. Ssio serves them all. His sound is based on modernized 90s G-Funk head nicker beats, his aesthetics is shaped by old VHS Konzomedies, but at the same time modernized with a tarantino touch, fast cut and zeitgeist bonds so much that he has established a retro futurism that nobody can really escape.
Not to mention that Ssio is a gifted rapper. This overall impression was also unable to cloud this last release “The New Album” (2021), which with its modern trap appearance has gone to many old fans. But that is hidden. With “everything or nothing”, SSIO will be back where he stopped with “0.9” (2016) and “Messios” (2019).
Ssio does not take himself seriously or the scene, he oversubscribed without being embarrassing, he overrules his faecal jokes so much that they work again in the seriousness gained and have an authentic core. The fact that Ssio does not just present an entertaining blockbuster with the video for his comeback single, but also his discoverer and former label boss, the recently deceased rapper Xatar, bourgeois Giwar Hajabi, tribute, who probably had his last public appearance in front of the camera in his video is only the punch line.
Separation of the two not as a beef, but as a cinematic happening
In their common scene, they show in perfection how the “everything or nothing” idea works, not only formulated the Xatar, but also lived, namely to make the philosophy, not infrequently in the sense of word for supposed back and fate strikes. So Xatar and Ssio take up the rumors that have become independent around Xatar’s cocaine addiction and its insolvency and use them as a storyline with which SSIO finally justifies his move to a major label, which of course is carried in the video by all major label clichés that can only be imagined or even imagined.
Accordingly, the actual separation of the two was not staged as a beef, but as a cinematic happening, an almost postmodern way of dealing with reality, which shows that the paths that have not already been extinguished lead to maximum sympathy. The new, old SSIO is accordingly exactly the fresh cell cure that Deutschrap urgently needed. With his album announced for October, he should not only reach his next commercial highlight, but also set the course for the future of the scene and its pop cultural importance as a youth culture. True to the motto: everything or nothing.