The Neukölln Brat Goes Solo

SXTN were Berlin’s most reliably raw thing for a few years—Juju and Nura making hip-hop that sounded exactly like the city they came from: loud, dirty, funny, zero concern for tomorrow. Songs about parties that ran too long, döner at 4am, the specific aggression of being young and female in a genre that would rather you stayed home. Bongzimmer, Fotzen im Club, Von Party zu Party—titles that announced themselves like a door kicked open.

Now they’ve split, or taken a break, or whatever the official version is this week, and Juju—born Judith Wessendorf, Neukölln if you need the postcode—is going first with her solo album Bling Bling. The lead track is called Intro, which is either deliberately modest or a knowing joke. She’s said the album won’t be categorized as "female rap in German." It’ll just be described as something that destroyed everything. That’s the right attitude. She’s always had the mouth for it.

The gold records in her apartment by now include the full SXTN catalog plus Melodien with Capital Bra, which hit number one. Half a million Instagram followers. The infrastructure for a solo career is already there, and Intro sounds like she knows it. The question is whether she can hold both halves of the room by herself—SXTN worked because the friction between two outsized personalities produced something neither could generate alone. Solo, Juju has to generate all of it.

Intro suggests she’s willing to try. I want her to make it work.