The Battle Vest and the Tracksuit

Romano appeared without much warning around 2015 and immediately did something that should have been stupid: he put a metal battle vest—the kind covered in band patches that hardcore kids call a Kutte—over a tracksuit and rapped about metal. Not metal-rap fusion in the nu-metal sense, no distorted guitars or drop-tuned breakdowns. Just Romano, in braids and a bomber jacket, standing in front of a Plattenbau—one of those hulking prefab housing blocks that define East German cityscapes—delivering lines like Schöner Tag, Walkman auf, dunkler Sound, Underground (beautiful day, Walkman on, dark sound, underground) to the camera with the flat affect of someone reading from a grocery list.

The deadpan is the whole thing. The humor lives entirely in the gap between content and affect: he’s rapping about underground sounds and metal culture while looking mildly bored, vaguely surreal, dressed in the opposing visual languages of two subcultures that have historically wanted nothing to do with each other. But heavy metal and hip-hop share more cultural DNA than either scene usually admits—both working-class at root, both tribal, both defined by elaborate codes and a contempt for mainstream co-option. The battle vest and the tracksuit aren’t opposites. They’re estranged cousins. Romano just put them in the same room.

I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a joke or a serious artistic proposition. By the time I stopped asking that question I’d watched the video four times. That’s usually the answer.