There are questions to which there is no clear answer. The question of authenticity in hip hop is one of them. From the first contact with hip-hop culture, she accompanies every rap fan and every rapper, is the driving force behind art, public and private discourse, fan and artist existence, is provocative and scene-political. For example, the white, female, Australian rapper Iggy Azalea made it clear on her debut album in 2014 in the first line of her hit “Fancy”: I am her most real. Even the Washington Post felt compelled to ask whether this was really the case or whether Azalea’s claim of authenticity left room for interpretation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgk3LfM0ziU
Realness is not determined solely by sales figures, but by recognition. The rapper Pöbel MC must therefore be real, after all he has managed to earn recognition AND celebrate unexpected success with his album BILDUNGSBÜRGERPROLLS entering the top 10 of the German charts. Suddenly you knew the rapper, who had been moving around in the Berlin underground for years with the Ubstruct crew around MC Bomber, Shake One, Pavel and others. Rap media began to take an interest in him, the video hits reached six figures, the concert venues got bigger, the tour got longer.
The story of an artist who seemed to come out of nowhere wouldn’t be half as interesting if only he did a better job than many who came before him. Pöbel MC makes them different and, with its rise within the local scene, reveals what is ailing it.
Mob MC: The finger in the wound without a senior teacher gesture
With his new double EP “Backpfeife auf Endlessschleife”, released on February 11, 2022, Pöbel MC is consolidating his niche status by taking the path he has started to the extreme. In “Dignity in Numbers”, for example, he criticizes the fact that artists not only measure themselves, but above all the value of their art in terms of streaming numbers, followers and likes. And therefore design them according to the algorithms of the market.
“German rap, like Donald Trump, stands for self-criticism,” says the biting “Boys Cry” – a track that deals with the understanding of masculinity in the local scene and its fans. Elsewhere, earlier, Pöbel MC already recalled: “Whoever tolerates injustice also helps to preserve it” (“Alman Brothers”).
However, anyone who thinks that mob MC is one of those tick rappers who are freed from fun and have the attitude of a senior teacher is mistaken. Ideally, he may have overlaps with representatives of this German rap subgenre, which deals with left-wing topics such as anti-fascism and anti-racism. But on the one hand, mob MC never appears to be lecturing. On the other hand, the spectrum of his themes is broader, and the selection is often even ambivalent to one another. For example, when he puts the criticism of the concept of wage labor, of fascism or misogyny next to songs like “Saufen, Kloppen, Rammeln” or “Polydipsie” without appearing ridiculous.
Pöbel MC: Ambiguous content and technical ability
It is obvious that Pöbel MC, who once described himself as “punk at heart”, differs in content from mainstream rappers. However, he is also a real alternative to left-wing rap acts and the youth heroes of the “Everything was better in the past” faction, because he can do what hardly any of them can do like he does: mob MC can rap.
He doesn’t do without the thick pants typical of the scene: “The mob comes and dismantles your crsamp / show me your rap boy band / show me your king and he’ll be hanged.” (“Mob Mane”).
Where the political message of those who had it used to be less attractive than it already is for the broad masses due to a lack of technical skills, mob MC neither hears his left-wing political decree, which he doesn’t wear on his forehead anyway, nor his Labelheimat Audiolith or his band past. Instead, skills, vocabulary and an instrumental trap base reflect that the artist is closer to the zeitgeist of rap than anyone who wishes they were back when it’s said that everything was better before.
Because for the Beginner, Dendemann or the circle of friends there is not much more that speaks today than the youthful memories of those who had witnessed the heyday of those acts. Comeback albums with GZUZ or Trettmann features don’t change that.
Pöbel MC: Authentic station wagon, natural success
Already on BILDUNGSBÜRGERPROLLS, Pöbel MC brought together what supposedly doesn’t belong together. With his new double EP “Backpfeifen auf Endlessschleife” the artist is consolidating his niche status by taking the path he has started to the extreme. He shows that a rejection of the platitudes that prevail in mainstream rap does not have to go hand in hand with the wish for an allegedly better past, which was neither about status symbols nor about streaming numbers, but which nobody can really wish for back from a musical and technical point of view.
The authenticity of Mob MC’s character is not broken down into what exactly the artist brings together as opposites. But in the fact that he does it at all. And there is only one drive: himself. With this, yes, real authenticity, the question of the mere existence of mob MCs realness is obsolete. The same applies to whether his path leads further up.