Panda on the Road

Cro—the German rapper who performs in a cartoon panda mask—has this song called "Einmal um die Welt" (Once Around the World) that’s essentially inescapable if you spend any time in Berlin. There’s something almost deliberately disarming about his whole deal: the mask, the easygoing melodic hooks, the way he makes rap feel like something you’d hum while doing the dishes. The song has that aimless-romantic quality of being young and wanting to go everywhere and stay nowhere. I can’t decide if it’s naïve or just honest. Probably both.