The Songs That Made Me
Blink 182 were my only friends from fifteen to eighteen. Tom DeLonge, Travis Barker, Mark Hoppus—they lived in my Discman and I didn’t need much else. We rode bikes, played too many video games, got dumped repeatedly, hung in internet cafes, bought fake Fubu hoodies by accident. Their albums don’t lose anything even now. But Take Off Your Pants and Jackets is the one—it has this bright season feeling, first real love, decent people around me, actual normal teenage life. Something like American Pie, which I wanted so badly. With Anthem Part Two
I’m still there, the whole vivid thing playing out in my head.
Kool Savas destroyed everything before him in thirty seconds. I wasn’t even listening to Creutzfeld & Jakob, but Savas came through Fehdehandschuh
and flipped my entire understanding of German rap. No rhyme schemes, no rules—just force. Changed something permanent. We thought he was twelve meters tall with bazookas for hands. That track led me down the Berlin rabbit hole, Royal Bunker tapes, eventually thinking I might try rapping myself.
Sido’s Maske in senior year 2004—we ran it on constant loop over the parking lot speakers. Loud, simple, marked. Steig ein!
scared us but we couldn’t look away. It was like getting in a haunted house made of a ghetto we didn’t know and had no interest in living in. We’d pump it through my Golf 3, felt cool even though we were nowhere near it, the guys Sido would’ve slapped around. Didn’t matter. He was in Berlin.
2005 came and I lost eighty kilos in four months on a crosstrainer. MySpace was happening and I could finally post pictures without becoming a target. Tim dug up Bad Boys
by Wham! for me—this half-homoerotc 80s nothing—and it fit perfectly. That song is still tied to the first time I felt light, stopped being an anchor to myself. Suddenly there were girlfriends, solid people around me, actual compliments. Life felt okay and this dumb track was playing in the background making it feel perfect.
The summer after graduation was destroyed early. Got involved in spring, got dumped on Ibiza where my ex was with two Austrian guys simultaneously. Real way to come back. My friends dragged me to Holland—Bergen aan Zee—and we rented a house. There was Karl, tall and blond with a lisp; Mark, enormous in every direction, stoned enough every day to build a personality from it; Oliver, small and twitchy, always talking about sex he wasn’t having. And me, fat with bleached blonde hair and a heart that wouldn’t heal. I’d disappear into my room with Moses Pelham and Ben Harper and Jack Johnson, crying into my pillow until they dragged me down for Bomberman on Super Nintendo. The Police’s Greatest Hits on vinyl the entire time. Sting singing about being stranded and the world got smaller and better every listen. Still my song for when someone decides you’re not worth exclusivity.
Summer 2008 was all French electro. Everything around Ed Banger Records, my girlfriend Jill and I took it all in—vacations, my first day at vocational school, playing Metal Gear Solid 4, everything had Justice running underneath. Genesis
opens Cross and opened a door into something crucial. They made everything louder and I’ve been screaming at them ever since.
Eminem was actually terrifying when he started. The violence in his lyrics before it went stale, before it became just a trick—it actually worked back then. Could drive whole flocks of angry parents in front of concert halls. Dre really seemed to have just released a madman onto MTV to see what would happen. He built something out of skill and actual emotional devastation, the way songs like Kim
and Stan
and The Way I Am
would hit you like you’d been in a car accident. Perfect precision. Just Don’t Give A Fuck
though—the beat alone is enough to make you want to punch your own teeth out. Everything else is just him finishing it.
May 2011, Psaiko Dino’s apartment in Stuttgart. He’s raving about this new rapper Chimperator just signed, guy named Cro, Carlo something, really talented, draws and sings and does fashion. Says Easy
is insane, just dropped it. I’m on his couch nodding and smiling while the beat runs and when it ends I tell him: Nice one. Not a hit though.
One year later we’re on a sold-out tour. Cro put out the video in December and somehow became the biggest thing that happened in German rap. McDonald’s got Crockstahzumjot burgers. My account filled from t-shirt sales. Kids in the audience asking for my babies. I realized I’d be the worst A&R on earth.
Donald Glover’s the closest thing I have to a real idol. Nobody did so much with one body of work, moved through so many things but never actually landed anywhere. Too talented in every direction, kept holding himself back. When I was completely drained in 2013 and 2014—burned through hype, creatively stuck, drowning—his work was the nearest thing to what I was feeling. Because The Internet
is still the most important rap album of the decade despite all the artsy bullshit. Glover proved that weird people like me could actually make something real. 3005
came on after a terrible breakup and dead friendships and I knew it was going to get better. It did.
April 2015, LA for the first time. E3, Greenscreen show, something I’d dreamed about as a kid who never left Europe. Rental car, Fairfax Avenue, turned on the radio and Ayo
came on—Chris Brown and Tyga, which is dumb, which is embarrassing, but it fit so perfectly I almost threw up. Palms, sun, Hollywood sign in the distance and this stupid song hitting exactly right. Jamie XX would’ve been less embarrassing but less honest. The truth is the song works so I went with it.