"Red mal deutsch, Hundesohn, ich halt nicht viel vom Spitten": Cultural pressures and the language...

Sonderdruck aus / Offprint from ZAA 58.3 (2010): Special Issue “Linguistics l Studies“ and Cultura

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Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik A Quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture

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Inhalt

Editorial ........................................................................................................................ V Artikel CHRISTIAN MAIR AND BARBARA KORTE Introduction .......................................................................................................... 195 AXEL BOHMANN “Red mal deutsch, Hundesohn, ich halt nicht viel vom Spitten”: Cultural Pressures and the Language of German Hip Hop ................................. 203 BEATRIX BUSSE Analysing Embedded Discourse Presentation: Bridging Disciplines ............................................................................................... 229 SUSANNE MÜHLEISEN Postcolonial Translation: Encounters across Languages, Cultures, and Disciplines ...................................... 257 FRANK POLZENHAGEN AND HANS-GEORG WOLF Investigating Culture from a Linguistic Perspective: An Exemplification with Hong Kong English ..................................................... 281 Buchbesprechungen Thomas Biermeier. Word-Formation in New Englishes: A Corpus-based Analysis. (Aleš Klégr – Pavlína Šaldová) .................................. 305 Claus Gnutzmann and Frauke Intemann, eds. The Globalisation of English and the English Language Classroom. Claus Gnutzmann, ed. English in Academia. Catalyst or Barrier? (Sandra Mollin) .......................................................................................................... 307 Andreas Sedlatschek. Contemporary Indian English: Variation and Change. (Joybrato Mukherjee) ......................................................... 312 Die Autoren dieses Heftes ...................................................................................... 317

ZAA 58.3 (2010): 203-228 ©

AXEL BOHMANN

“Red mal deutsch, Hundesohn, ich halt nicht viel vom Spitten”: Cultural Pressures and the Language of

German Hip Hop

Abstract: This article presents the results of a study analyzing the discourse of two German rap formations with regard to questions of cultural and linguistic creolization.1 It investigates the ways in which German rappers position themselves vis-à-vis American hip hop culture and some of its most salient concepts. In this process, which is far from being a smooth act of creative localization of the global, (African American Vernacular) English becomes a source of prestige as well as a site for contestation. The different indexicalities connected to it can account for a variety of uses of English in German rap. The resulting discourses at times develop forms that contradict as-sumptions about the enabling nature of cultural hybridization and localization.

1. Introduction

Over the last few years, hip hop has received wide attention first in Cultural Studies and increasingly also in linguistics. The general question I am pursuing here is not an entirely new one. Broadly speaking, it ties in with investigations of cultural hybridization, ‘creolization’, and localization of globally available semiotic re-sources. However, the perspective I will present in the following sheds light on some important aspects of German hip hop culture that have received little atten-tion so far and may help to develop a more critical understanding of processes of cultural transfer.

The title of my article serves well to exemplify my line of investigation. It is a quote from Kay One, a German rapper of Philippine extraction, and is taken from the data of my study. The use of “Hundesohn” (literally ‘son of a dog’) as a term of address leaves little doubt that we are looking at a typical dissing sequence.2 This is not in any way unusual in hip hop discourse. What I am more interested in is the role Kay One assigns to the two languages represented in the quote, i.e. German (“Red mal deutsch”) and English (“Spitten”, a hip hop slang term for the act of rapping). It seems that Kay One is rejecting the use of the latter outright and firmly establishing German as the only acceptable code in which to produce

————— 1 It is based on my unpublished MA thesis (Bohmann 2010). The examples I give here represent a

subset of those discussed in the larger project. As such they might appear fairly eclectic, but I have made an effort to keep the discussion as representative of my total findings as possible.

2 “Dissing” is a hip hop term for the act of verbally degrading an opponent, often in a quite ag-gressive manner.

Axel Bohmann 204

locally appropriate hip hop music. Are we, then, witnessing an instance of near-perfect localization of a globalized cultural phenomenon? Have German rappers found their own voice, one that is truly German and, while speaking through the medium of hip hop, genuinely stems from these MCs’ specific localities? As I will argue, such a neat and simple answer hardly does justice to the processes at work, both culturally and linguistically.

The line that immediately follows the one quoted in my title relies heavily on English items without any apparent ironic distance: “das ist Gangsta wie Carlito’s Way”. Hip hop is a cultural form of intense contestation where authenticity and ownership need to be continuously asserted in discourse and performance. Am-biguity, hidden meanings and “double talk” (Richardson 2006, 1) are wide-spread features of rap discourse. This should make us wary of taking rappers’ statements at face value too easily. But if we cannot rely on participants’ assertions, how do we get beneath the surface levels of their discourse to uncover its cultural meanings?

2. Cultural Appropriation and the Orders of Indexicality

Arguing for a necessity to “take hip-hop seriously on its own terms” (2007, 85), Alastair Pennycook foregrounds the active elements of local participation and the performative aspects of social and cultural reality. This necessitates an in-depth, qualitative approach to the linguistic study of local rap music (Pennycook 2003). Moreover, Pennycook’s focus on “transculturation” points to the dynamics of cul-tural transfer that are also central to my study. However, rather than taking the creative, localizing, liberating effects of transcultural hip hop for granted and assum-ing a high degree of independence from the American model (Pennycook 2007, 88), I think we should try not to let a priori assumptions skew our interpretation of the data. There is no evident reason why transcultural hip hop cannot also have reactionary, problematic, and oppressive tendencies. Nor should individual practitioners’ assertions of their independence from American hip hop norms (Pennycook 2007, 104) lead us to a ready assumption of this as a general feature of local cultural scenes.

To dismiss the dominance of U.S. norms, Pennycook introduces several “circuits of flow” that “render the United States a peripheral rather than a major influence on hip-hop adaptations” (2007, 91), e.g. the Pacific circuit or that of the French-speaking world. The German scene, however, is largely isolated from these, as a quick content overview of German hip hop magazines reveals. The majority of coverage is dedicated to American artists, formations and trends. Consequently, dismissing U.S. influence would be a misreading of the cultural context for the present study. Instead, we ought to pay very close attention to the meanings this influence is given and the potential pressures it exerts on various actors. To speak with James Lull (1995), rather than engaging in unreflected celebrations of “creolized” cultural forms, “we must look closely at what audiences really do” (172) and ask “on whose terms and for what purposes […] cultural hybrids develop” (157-8). When people in Germany associate themselves with hip hop, they make

Cultural Pressures and the Language of German Hip Hop 205

investments in a culture with a distinct (real or perceived) history and distinct (real or perceived) rules. Any appropriation of this culture takes place in relation-ship to its rules, even where they are eventually changed or adapted, sometimes necessitating high discursive efforts to affirm one’s position. Such a struggle is all the more likely in the German context that is, socio-culturally and linguisti-cally, quite far removed from that of the original birthplace of hip hop.

However, Pennycook’s radically anti-essentialist claim that it is “pointless in many ways to look at languages as separable entities” (2007, 114), while tenable as a philosophical assumption, does not turn out to be a good analytical tool. There are good reasons why speakers, including hip hop performers operating in multi-lingual settings, conventionally think of languages in separable terms like ‘English’ or ‘German’. These have to do with historical trajectories and power relations between institutions that control linguistic norms. Ignoring these can lead to a too isolated perspective on individual instances of discourse that fails to recognize all of its political dimensions. Especially when looking at cultural forms like hip hop, we should take the wider contexts of the various cultures and institutions into account that are at play in processes of transfer.

For a more fully developed theoretical base for this enterprise, I rely on Jan Blommaert’s (2005) framework for the critical analysis of discourse, which is able to account for the uniqueness and creativity of the individual discursive event while not losing sight of the larger, systemic power relations that put constraints on the production (and significantly: reception) of discourse.3 Like Pennycook, Blommaert conceives of communication as an essentially social activity whose meaning is largely dependent on local contexts. But he importantly stresses that this is far from leaving individuals with infinite possibilities of creatively articu-lating themselves. Meaning is never produced by one person alone, but is a process that reflects power relations between various “centring institutions” (75). The way institutional power comes to bear on language and communication is via in-dexicality. In addition to a linguistic sign’s referential meaning, Blommaert asserts, the message that gets across is largely dependent on indexical meanings. These are meaning potentials that become activated in certain contexts in a non-random way. To describe the systems that govern these processes, Blommaert introduces the term “orders of indexicality […], systemically reproduced, stratified meaning, often called ‘norms’ or ‘rules’ of language” (73). They possess normative qualities, dictating the meanings towards which others are supposed to orientate in order to appear in a good light, and they exist on various levels of social organization ranging from micro to macro. This framework can help us theorize what happens when discourses are taken over in contexts that are quite dissimilar from their original contexts of production. The idea is that the discourse of hip hop has become disconnected from its original, U.S. inner city orders of indexicality and is taken up in new contexts with new orders of indexicality. Different interpretations and understandings are likely to occur.

————— 3 Compare also Blommaert (2010), which includes a critical evaluation of Pennycook (2007).

Axel Bohmann 206

Due to the prestige of American hip hop in the German version of the subculture, the former is itself likely to act as a centring institution. Consequently, we have a rather complicated picture of a discourse we can expect to be interpreted to some extent differently than intended in its original environment, and at the same time this interpretation (different but perceived to be the original) imposes norms and constraints on the discursive practice of German hip hop activists. From this we can expect some amount of confusion, uncertainty, and discursive struggle. Blommaert distinguishes between inhabitable and ascribed identities. The former are actively selectable by individuals whereas the latter represent categories imposed on them by others (205). This distinction promises to provide a more differentiated perspective on hip hop in Germany than questions of simple ‘imitation’ versus ‘local independence’. Applied to the subculture, we can say that ‘hiphoppa’ is an identity German rappers (try to) inhabit. On the other hand, there are certain ascribed identities like ‘German’, ‘white’, ‘middle class’ that possibly conflict with this attempted self-fashioning. Success in inhabiting a hip hop identity then largely depends on the ability to make others grant this self-fashioning. This enables us to apply a performative model like the one Pennycook proposes, but without automatically presupposing vast individual freedom and creativity. Instead, the discursive practice of German MCs itself will work as the measuring rod for their success in creating a hip hop identity for themselves.

After these theoretical considerations, I will pursue the following questions: To what extent are German rappers constrained in their self-fashioning as ‘hip-hoppas’ by their different socio-cultural background from American hip hop and consequent different orders of indexicality? How is their understanding of hip hop discourse different from that of Americans due to their different situation? What are (some of) the discursive strategies to solve potential tensions? What role does language, especially (AAV) English, play in this?

3. Data and Methodology

My analysis will concentrate on the musical output of two German rap formations, Blumentopf and Bushido. Both play a significant role in German rap, having es-tablished themselves over extended periods of time and multiple album releases. This gives us some indication of their relevance and potential representativeness for the larger cultural sphere of German hip hop. It also means that their lyrics comprise a large enough corpus to cover various aspects of their identity work and to avoid the danger of too impressionistic analysis. Furthermore, if we want to capture the range of stylistic variation within German rap, Blumentopf and Bushido come very close to representing two opposite poles on a scale. This is, of course, a gross oversimplification, but for the purposes of this study it will serve as a preliminary point of orientation. Note that I do not claim to cover German rap in its entirety, but I am aiming at illustrating divergent approaches within it. Thirdly, Blumentopf and Bushido originate not only from different geographic locations within Germany, but also from distinct phases of German rap,


Bushido having risen to success approximately six years after Blumentopf and thus representing not only a different style, but also a different generation. This allows for (limited) apparent-time4 conclusions about the development of the German scene. Such conclusions, in turn, can be used to address the theory of native rap’s linear emancipation from its African American model. Finally, Bushido especially has been the object of intense criticism from various sides over recent years, largely due to his explicit, often misogynist and homophobic lyrics and his alleged neo-nazi tendencies. This extended public attention makes studying his lyrical content relevant beyond the specific purposes of this study, and while I do not wish to take sides in the moral debates over Bushido (and the question of censorship) here, my findings might add to a more qualified discussion.

Blumentopf are a rap crew from suburban Munich, consisting of four MCs (Roger, Holundermann, Heinemann, Schu) and one DJ (Sepalot), all of them of German origin. They released their first album Kein Zufall in 1997, followed by four more LPs in 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2006. Their latest album, Wir, was released on 4 July 2010, when my study was already concluded. As far as marketing and commercial success is concerned, Blumentopf can be loosely identified as “over-ground” (Scholz 2003, 154). They are signed to an independent hip hop label and have a wide fan base throughout Germany, although their single releases never featured in the billboard charts save the 2006 release “Horst”. Despite this lack of big commercial success the band is widely recognized as one of the most in-fluential groups in the German scene. They have twice been awarded the title of ‘best live act’ by the country’s biggest hip hop magazine Juice. They were also contracted by the Goethe-Institut (the German cultural institute) to do a tour through the Middle East in 2005. One year later Blumentopf were the official studio band of the TV channel showing the soccer world championship in Germany, a role which they have retained during the Euro 2008 and the world championship in 2010. As can be inferred from this information, Blumentopf are a ‘socially ac-ceptable’ group. Their explicit references to their middle class background have earned them the pejorative label ‘Studentenrap’ (student rap) by some other artists (see Verlan and Loh 2006, 21). Their lyrics mainly concentrate on storytelling, irony and a diverse variety of topics. Originally they relied heavily on the practice of sampling (see Rose 1994; Mikos 2003) for their music, but they have recently picked up influences of live instrumentation and synthesized elements as well.

Bushido is a solo rapper of German-Tunisian background, hailing from Berlin. He gained recognition on a national level in the course of the shift from Hamburg to Berlin as the center of attention in German hip hop. In 2003 this resulted in his first album released through an independent record label, Vom Bordstein bis zur Skyline (‘From the curb to the skyline’). After signing to Universal records, Bushido released five more albums plus various collaboration projects over a period of four years. Five of his albums have received gold status in Germany, one even platinum, and all 23 of his singles made the national top 100 charts. He has also ————— 4 Apparent-time studies interpret data from different age groups of one community collected

at a single point in time as indicative of the community’s general development in real time.

Axel Bohmann 208

founded his own label, ersguterjunge, as a subsidiary of Universal records. In ad-dition to an MTV Europe music award for the category ‘best German act’ Bushido has received a number of national awards and prizes. Apart from the music in-dustry, Bushido – or Sonny Black, as he sometimes refers to himself – has ventured into other market sectors with his own line of clothing and a top-selling biography that has recently been made into a movie. With song titles such as “Gang Bang,” “Eine Kugel reicht” (‘One bullet is all it takes’), and “Gangsta”, Bushido’s style can be classified as a German version of gangsta rap. In August 2005, the MC had to spend two weeks in detention in a prison in Linz (Austria) after physically assaulting a young man who had slit the tires of his car. He is the rapper that has stirred up by far the most controversy in the German media due to his violent language and the often homophobic and sexist contents of his songs. His instrumen-tation, produced by himself and associates, relies heavily on digital synthesizers.

My data comprise the sum of the two formations’ album titles. While my main focus is on the discourse of Blumentopf and Bushido themselves, I will occasionally also consider feature parts by other MCs on their material, the assumption being that because these are published on the formations’ albums they complement their subcultural discourse and do not run counter to it. The Blumentopf subset of my data consists of 107 individual tracks from five albums, spanning the time frame of 9 years from 1997 to 2006. That for Bushido is slightly larger, containing 136 cuts from seven albums. These, however, were released over a shorter period of time between 2003 and 2008. I have transcribed all songs on the basis of standard orthography, trying to reflect non-standard forms as closely as possible while at the same time keeping the transcripts intuitively legible. For phonetically marked items of special interest, I have added phonetic transcription in brackets.

My analysis of Blumentopf’s and Bushido’s discourse progresses along three broad thematic lines, all of which represent areas of contextual differences where misunderstandings, discursive struggles, but also creative re-workings are likely to occur. These thematic areas are typical hip hop discursive practices, ideas of ‘the ghetto’, and questions of race and ethnicity. I will introduce each more fully at the beginning of the respective sub-section. For the analysis of my data, I have employed a qualitative approach, identifying instances where the above concepts are addressed, adopted, adapted, or subverted. I have taken some time to ponder each individual case, but also to step back and look at the big picture that emerges from the discourse of the bands on the whole.

4. Hip Hop Discursive Forms

A number of scholars (Smitherman 2000; Alim 2006; Richardson 2006) have pointed out the specific elements of discourse in African American rap. These are modeled as unique forms with a distinct rooting in the wider context of Black Language (BL, Alim 2006, 7-15) and African American Vernacular Discourse (AAVD, Richard-son 2006, 1), which in turn reflects the historic conditions of Blacks in America as well as older African discursive traditions. To summarize the argument in brief,


the oppressed and deprived position of African slaves and their descendants in America has resulted in a discourse known as “double talk” (Richardson 2006, 1), a way of adopting white language in order to escape sanctions while undermining and reconstructing its meaning. Thus, while there is a surface-level resemblance with standard (American) English language use, AAVD is often fundamentally different in its functions. While such discursive practices are not necessarily incommensu-rate with the German context, there is substantial evidence for misunderstandings that result from this transfer (Lüdtke 2007, 268, 275, 290; Alim 2006, 80).

One typical form of American rap discourse is the structure of call and re-sponse, or “antiphony” in Paul Gilroy’s terms (1993, 79). Consider the beginning of the first song on Blumentopf’s first Album Kein Zufall:5

[Holundermann:] Ich will morgens in den Spiegel schauen ohne zu erschrecken Ein’ Fernsehsender, den ich anschau’n kann ohne zu zappen

I want to look in the mirror in the morning without getting scared of myself a TV station I can watch rather than just flipping through

[Roger:] Was zum Essen in meinem Kühlschrank

some food in my fridge [Roger and Schu:] worauf ich grade Lust hab

that I feel like eating [Schu:] Ein frisches Paar Socken im Schrank

a fresh pair of socks in my closet [Roger:] Wenn ich geduscht hab

after taking a shower [Schu:] Ich will genug Gras und wenn nicht, dann dass du noch nen Zug hast

I want enough weed and if not that, then for you to have a puff left [Roger and Schu:] Für mich

for me (“Man kann nicht immer alles haben,” Kein Zufall)

The individual rappers take turns in rapid succession, rarely exceeding two lines rapped by one person at a time. Sometimes they overlap and double each other. This creates a dialogic dynamic quite typical of hip hop’s call and response patterns. The rest of the song, and indeed much of the whole album, continue in this fashion. Bushido, on tracks where he features guest MCs, uses much the same structure, as the following example demonstrates <guest rapper Baba Saad in angle brackets>:

<Du Transvestit> jetzt weißt du was Action ist <Ich bin jetzt da, der Typ, der auf die Backspin pisst> Die letzte Bitch <wurde von uns zwei gepumpt> Guck deine Mama, sie hält Händchen mit dreizehn Jungs.

————— 5 I provide translations for examples whose meaning and/or importance does not become clear

from the text.

Axel Bohmann 210

you transvestite, now you know what action means I am here now, the guy who pisses on the Backspin magazine the last bitch got banged by the two of us look, your mama holds hands with thirteen guys

(“Wenn wir kommen,” Electro Ghetto)

Clearly, both formations make use of typical call and response patterns in their lyrics. If we focus on the content of the above passages, however, it becomes clear that they do so in very different ways – in accordance with the different commu-nicative roles they construct for themselves and their listeners. A central function of call and response is to construct a common base between crowd and performer, partially blurring the boundaries between the two. In the two passages above, the addressee – the “du” of the lyrics – is constructed in very different ways. Blumen-topf’s “dass du noch nen Zug hast für mich” evokes the act of sharing a joint, a very private activity, thus including the addressee in the MCs’ social world. The rappers frequently use strategies that create immediacy between themselves and their listeners. With this, Blumentopf relinquish a position as independent artists and instead foreground the listerners’ response as measuring rod of their per-formance:

Wenn ihr dabei seid, dann gibt’s ’n Highlight if you are with us there will be a highlight

(“Fensterplatz,” Großes Kino)

Denn wenn wir euch das Gefühl, das wir beim Rappen hatten vermitteln, werden aus Käufern Künstler und aus Opfern Täter

Because if we get across the feeling we have when rapping to you then consumers turn into artists and victims into culprits/agents

(“Fensterplatz,” Großes Kino)

In the passage from Bushido and Baba Saad, on the other hand, the addressee be-comes the target of both rappers’ dissing. While dissing sequences can also be found in Blumentopf’s lyrics, there are hardly any instances in Bushido’s discourse at all that could be read as attempts to include the listener. Quite tellingly, when he mentions his fans, it is usually in the third person:

Junge, sie schreien, hey, ich bin der Endgegner Und sie schreien, hey hey, denn mich kennt jeder.

Man they‘re screaming, hey, I am the nemesis und they‘re screaming, hey, hey, because everybody knows me

(“Endgegner,” Staatsfeind Nr. 1)

Furthermore, statements abound in which Bushido actively, and quite aggressively, distances himself from the hip hop community.

Du rufst community. Fick deine Mutter. You shout community. Fuck your mother.

(“Pitbull,” King of Kingz)

Mein Rap legt sich über die Szene wie ein schwarzes Tuch. My rap covers the scene like a black pall.

(“Bushido,” Vom Bordstein bis zur Skyline)


Jetzt wird Deutschrap gefickt German rap is getting fucked.

(“Wir regieren Deutschland,” Staatsfeind Nr. 1)

Du willst community? Keep it real, du Missgeburt. You want community? Keep it real, you freak.

(“King of Kingz,” King of Kingz)

The last example is particularly interesting since it does not only directly attack the German hip hop community, but also its discursive practices. The maxim of “keeping it real” has evolved into one of the classic catchphrases of hip hop, in Germany possibly even more than in the US. By replying to a call for community with this phrase and an adjacent insult, Bushido is ridiculing the phrase itself and by extension the whole community it epitomizes. The following line from “Stadt der Engel” presents a very similar case:

Du willst Beef? Keep it real. You want beef? Keep it real.

(“Stadt der Engel,” 7)

The propositional contents of the two sentences are not in any way related. Still, they are presented as a coherent pair of question and answer. One has to look beyond the abstract propositions and consider the indexical potential of the phrases to make sense of what Bushido is doing here. The question introduces the concept of ‘beef’ (a hip hop expression for trouble or a feud with someone). This is ex-pressed via the (AAV) English lexeme and it seems to trigger a switch into rap English in the reply. But instead of actually engaging with the content of the question, Bushido employs the formulaic phrase “keep it real”. If we consider the wider context of the dissing sequence in which this is framed and the above example where the same phrase is used to debase an opponent it is safe to inter-pret this along the same lines. The indexicalities that are activated here are, then, connotations of insincerity and ridiculousness that, by extension, reflect back on the “beef” that had previously been brought up. In these examples, Bushido dis-tances himself from concepts and formulations that are common currency of hip hop culture. The fact that everything that is criticized here is represented by English vocabulary and Bushido’s insult in the first example, on the other hand, is in German has some significance.

Interestingly, some very similar dissing instances can be found in Blumen-topf’s lyrics, e.g. on the track “Schönen Gruß” (Eins A):

Ihr sagt, ihr haltet es real? Ihr haltet nicht mal den Takt You say you’re keeping it real? You’re not even keeping the rhythm

Except for the key term “real” the phrase has been relexified into German, resulting in the awkward collocation of ‘halten’ (‘to keep’) + Adj. This is not a generally used expression in German hip hop discourse and is thus very salient. It seems that Schu employs it consciously to raise awareness of the issue of merely taking over formulaic forms of American hip hop. In the second half of the line this is

Axel Bohmann 212

contrasted with a lack of substance (i.e. skills) in the opponents’ raps, this time using the verb “halten” in a correct collocation with “den Takt”.

At first glance, it seems as if we were witnessing instances of creative language use here in which there are emancipatory moves away from adherence to foreign linguistic forms and norms. But this is not the entire picture, since both formations use precisely these foreign norms elsewhere. In the same song from which the last example was taken, Holundermann states:

Jede Punchline von mir ist’n Finishing Move. Every one of my punchlines is a finishing move.

Similarly, Bushido asserts:

Deiner Mutter bleibt nichts übrig außer Dicks zu blown. Your mother has no choice but to blow dicks.

(“Gemein wie 10,” Vom Bordstein bis zur Skyline)

As the discussion of both formations’ ridicule of the phrase (“keep it real”) has shown, it is important to include the wider discursive contexts and specific cultural meanings of the respective instances of language use in the analysis. There seems to be a very intricate understanding of the role, prestige and ownership of English, or at least a certain type of English. Through its indexical connection to African American hip hop, English is vested with high prestige. This accounts for the rappers’ own use of it. On the other hand, the culture of hip hop also requires very elaborate performances of authenticity. As soon as somebody uses English in a way that shows the language clearly not to be their own, this fact can make the speaker vulnerable to the criticism of ‘faking it’. To make use of its prestige, then, requires using the language in a way that creates a natural, vernacular im-pression, possibly to the extent that it is not perceived as ‘English’ anymore at all. Language use becomes fundamentally inseparable from performance and the much larger contexts of hip hop identity politics.

5. The Ghetto

First and foremost, the term ‘ghetto’ in its hip hop use refers to a certain locality.6 It is a public space invested with certain social attributions like ‘poor’, ‘dirty’, ‘dangerous’, etc. For the invocation of their ghetto backgrounds, rappers fre-quently employ iconic terms, either referring to a ghetto situation or atmosphere as such or to the specific neighborhood the MC is from. In an environment of social deprivation such as the term ‘ghetto’ denotes, a strategy for survival con-sists in strong group affiliations. Particularly in the context of African American inner city communities, communal ties often partially replace family structures, which is reflected in the terminology, ‘brother’, ‘cousin’, or ‘son’ often featuring as terms of address. Outwardly, MCs are expected to give a voice to their com-

————— 6 Here, I can only briefly address the different aspects this concept encompasses. For a very

elaborated and insightful discussion, see Forman (2002).


munity, to ‘represent’. Finally, ghetto can also be used as an adjective referring to people. If someone is ‘ghetto’ does not only depend on whether they live in a certain neighborhood, but whether they have internalized the respective habitus. Attitude and personal biography become important instances of value-attribution in this regard. Let us have a look at the first ten lines from Bushido’s “Leben, das du nicht kennst”:

Ich kann sehen, wie die alte Frau beklaut wird. Weil der Skrupel hier bei unserer Jugend ausstirbt. Kannst du den Jungen sehen, wie er seinen Staub vertickt? Er wandert in den Knast, doch der nimmt die Hoffnung mit. Siehst du diesen andern Jungen, der sich wieder schlägt? Widerstand gegen diese Staatsgewalt, Krieger stehen. Kannst du sehen wie sie grade diese Kasse öffnen? Wir machen sowas, weil wir in die erste Klasse möchten. So nennt man den Smog, der sich hier verteilt. Ganz egal, was passiert, glaub mir du bist hier allein.

I can see the old woman getting robbed because scruple is dying out amongst our youth here. Can you see the guy who is selling his dust [= cocaine]? He is going to jail but he takes hope with him. Do you see this other guy who is in a fight again? Resistance against this state authority/state violence, warriors stand. Can you see how they are breaking into this cash register right now? We do this kind of thing because we want to be in the first class. That’s what you call the smog that is spreading here. No matter what happens, believe me, you are alone here.

(“Leben, das du nicht kennst,” 7)

Here, we have six deictic expressions in close succession, asserting the immediate reality of the description and the artist’s position right in the middle of it. The passage is also a good case in point for the typical vocabulary Bushido employs to describe his immediate habitat. There are examples of crime (lines 1, 7), drugs (line 3), violence (line 5) and general recklessness (line 2). The prospect of jail is specifically mentioned (line 4) and the state depicted as an opposing force (line 6). These are the general vertices of the lifeworld Bushido is constructing, and they are very much in line with the stock image of the ghetto in American rap.

Blumentopf, by contrast, do not come from a social background that could in any way be labeled as a ‘ghetto’ and they do not attempt to hide this fact. Rather, they reject the connotation of rap music with typical ghetto imagery for their own musical production:

Ich bin keiner, der mit Knarren auf Pfandflaschen zielt, Und alten Omas Portemonnaies aus Handtaschen zieht, Keiner von denen, die mit Drogen, die dich krankmachen, dealen.

I’m not the type that draws guns on bottles And steals old ladies’ purses Not the type that peddles drugs that make you sick

(“Was der Handel,” Großes Kino)

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Here, three examples of criminal life – the use of guns (if only against empty bottles), thievery and drug dealing – are evoked and dismissed as not representing Schu’s social reality. Not only do Blumentopf refuse to take over ghetto stereotypes in their own discourse, but they also discredit them as generally incompatible with German social reality. Here is an excerpt from “Alle sind da”, a song that describes an evening in a hip hop club, with all the people present representing different attitudes and stances common in the scene:

[Schu:] Und während Frank represented und sich die Finger verkrampft, Weil er das Wu-Tang-Zeichen übt, das er noch immer nicht kann, Ist Klaus ziemlich entspannt, er hat die Lage im Griff; Er ist der örtliche Chef der Baden-Badener Crips.

And while Frank’s representing and getting cramp in his fingers trying to practice the Wu Tang sign that he still can’t do Klaus is pretty relaxed and runs things he’s the local boss of the Baden-Baden Crips.

[Heinemann:] Doch wenn er Angela trifft hat er’n Kribbeln im Bauch Und stottert, “Ey yo, was geht ab, Bitch?”, denn mehr kriegt er nicht raus.

But when he meets Angela he’s got a tingle in this tummy stuttering Eyo wassup bitch, cause he can’t say any more.

(“Alle sind da,” Gern Geschehen)

First, the concept of representing, i.e. speaking up for one’s neighborhood, town or crew, is introduced. But Frank’s act of representation lacks an object. Either the idea itself is misunderstood – in which case representing is interpreted as little more than showing off – or there is simply not any place or social group Frank can credibly claim to be representing. He attempts to form the sign of the Wu Tang Clan, raising both hands, palms facing outwards with interlocking thumbs to show a large W – apparently with great effort and to limited success. Here, the practice of ‘throwing signs’ is taken up. In certain parts of United States inner cities this can be a real and definitive marker of social group affiliation and identity. In the discourse of Schu, however, it cannot be transplanted into a German context without losing its social meaning and becoming ridiculous. Klaus, the protagonist of the next two lines, appears at first to be a much more self-assured individual than Frank, being the local leader of the “Baden-Baden Crips”. Clearly, gang vio-lence of the Crips’ kind does not figure in everyday life in most parts of Germany, least of all Baden-Baden, a town renowned for its bourgeois population. When Klaus assumes a “Crips” identity, the outcome is necessarily farcical. Here, as in the case of Frank, Schu depicts the wholesale transplantation of norms of ghetto discourse into the German context as an enterprise doomed to fail. Klaus’ ridicu-lousness is further demonstrated by Heinemann’s lines, in which he is depicted as unable to have a normal conversation with a girl he fancies. The only words he manages to get out are “ey yo, was geht ab, Bitch?” Here again, formulaic hip hop discourse becomes a cover-up for lack of rhetorical ability or self-confidence.


But Blumentopf are by far not consistent in their ironic distance towards ghetto discourse. The most interesting example of this is the song “Mein Block” (Gern Geschehen), in which Roger and Holundermann describe their immediate environ-ment in a realistic manner. Here is the beginning of Holundermann’s stanza:

Meine Wohnung liegt im dritten Stock In dem Block mit der Näherei im Erdgeschoss und wenn ich aus dem Fenster glotz Seh ich statt Sonne nichts als Sichtbeton, Denn meine Wohnung liegt im Rückgebäude mit Blick auf den Hinterhof. Dort wird nur Müll geholt, und Kinder spielen da nicht, Und wenn Oktober ist dann riecht man es, Denn dann wird in den Hof gepisst, weil gleich nebenan die Wiesn ist.

My apartment is on the third floor in the building with the tailor’s on the ground floor and when I look out the window I see nothing but concrete instead of the sun cause my apartment is in the back of the building looking out on the back yard. They only go there to pick up the garbage, and children don’t play there at all and come October you start smelling it cause they piss in the yard cause it’s right next to the Wiesn [site of Munich’s Oktober-fest]

From his window Holundermann cannot see the sun but only concrete as his flat faces the backyard, where there is only rubbish and you do not see children playing. Furthermore, it smells of urine in October as his apartment is located close to the “Wiesn”, the location of the Oktoberfest. The fact that drunken people urinate everywhere within a radius of a mile from the beer tents again is not spelled out but assumed as contextual knowledge of the listener. Apart from the localization via the reference to the Oktoberfest, the image of the environment evoked here is striking. It is one of bleak sadness. Of course, Holundermann is employing stock images for the description of the ghetto in American rap discourse here. Thus he is able to claim certain ghetto characteristics that are so important for hip hop culture, without actually coming from the respective social background or having to follow the ghetto agenda continuously.

Such a ‘limited’ ghetto identity is also projected by Blumentopf’s other members. While they dismiss unrealistic gangsta images, they are careful to foreground real-istic aspects of their everyday lives which accord with ideas of marginalization and resistance against authorities. Heinemann sends his greetings to:

Alle, die wie ich auf Kriegsfuß mit Behörden stehen. Everybody who, like me, is at war with authorities.

(“Eins A,” Eins A)

Schu asserts his ability to move the crowd even to slow beats, likening them to the speed of police cars passing him suspiciously:

Auch wenn die Beats mal langsam sind wie Polizeistreifen, Die an mir vorbeirollen. (“Purer Stoff,” Eins A)

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The fans are explicitly asked to go along with this micro-perspective that enables Blumentopf to maintain a ‘real’ hip hop identity within the constraints of their social reality:

Leute hört auf meine Botschaft, ob Drecksnest, ob Großstadt Entscheidet wirklich nicht die Totale, sondern das Close-Up.

Listen to my message, people: whether backwoods town or city what is important is really not the close-up but the long shot.

(“Purer Stoff,” Eins A)

This is clearly not what Bushido has in mind when he talks about his ghetto. The difference between inner-city and rural environments – between “Drecksnest” and “Großstadt” – is not mitigated in his discourse, but essentialized. Among the most frequent lexical items in his lyrics are the terms “Berlin”, “Schönefeld”, “Tempel-hof”, “Block”, “Hood”, and “Ghetto” referring to Bushido’s own habitat, and “Dorf” (village) to denote his projected opponents’ backgrounds. Many of his disses are constructed along these lines:

Du kannst dir hier nicht mal eine Straße merken, weil du mit nem Kuhstall vertraut bist.

You can’t even remember one street here because you’re used to a cowshed. (“Wo du hier gelandet bist,” 7)

Du hast lauter Schweine doch nicht Gs in deiner Nachbarschaft. You have a bunch of pigs but no Gs in your neighborhood.

(“Gangsta,” Heavy Metal Payback)

Berlin, in Bushido’s discourse, becomes the only place in Germany which can invest its inhabitants with the street credibility necessary for a true hip hop identity. While the practice of representing one’s own city has long been part of German hip hop, there has been relatively little aversion between individual cities until the turn of the millennium. Bushido takes a more aggressive stance towards this issue, attacking first and foremost the former centers of German hip hop culture, Stuttgart and Hamburg:

Ich bin der Grund warum Stuttgart nichts verkauft und verreckt I’m the reason Stuttgart isn’t selling anything and is dying.

(“Asphalt,” Vom Bordstein bis zur Skyline)

Ich habe seit meinem ersten verse [vɜ:rs] auf Hamburg gespuckt From my very first verse I’ve been spitting on Hamburg.

(“Blaues Licht,” Von der Skyline zum Bordstein zurück)

Let us have a look at a final example that stresses the importance of Bushido’s Berlin background for his rap discourse. This one also has more immediate linguistic relevance. It is the first eight lines of the cut “Gemein wie 10”:

Ich [yʃ] höre jeden Tag dass irgendjemand [yəgəndje:mɒnt] irgendwas [yəgəndwɒs] hat Irgendjemand [yəgəndje:mɒnt], irgendetwas [yəgəndetwɒs] aus, irgendner [yəgəndnə] Stadt Irgendwann [yəgəndwɒn] wusst ich, scheiß auf die, die irgendwas [yəgəndwɒs] haben Irgendwo [yəgəndwo:] über mich reden damit sie irgendwas [yəgəndwɒs] sagen


Ich [ɪʃ] bin nicht [nɪʃ] irgendjemand [yəgəndje:mɒnt] aus irgendwoher [yəgəndwo:heə] Ich [ɪʃ] brauch nichts machen weil die Scheiße kommt schon irgendwoher [yəgəndwo:heə] Irgendwer [yəgəndweə] macht dann bestimmt am Ende irgendwie [yəgəndwi:] mit Du siehst schwul aus doch irgendjemand [yəgəndje:mɒnt] findet’s irgendwie [yəgəndwi:] schick (“Gemein wie 10,” Vom Bordstein bis zur Skyline)

This passage focuses on the paradigmatic repetition of the prefix irgend- in rapid succession – 16 times altogether. Its precise message remains somewhat unclear, but in general it seems to emphasize the arbitrariness and lack of clear-cut standards in a pluralistic society and in the record business more specifically, contained in the prefix irgend-. The passage mentions somebody always having or saying something in some place and somebody somehow going along with it. This di-mension is contrasted, however, by the way in which Bushido fashions his identity as a very specific one linguistically. The first word of the passage, “ich”, is articu-lated quite differently from the standard norm [ɪç] as [yʃ]. In the course of the passage the articulation of this lexeme assumes a form more closer to the standard and in the rest of the song’s lyrics it is almost identical to it. The rounding of the front vowel becomes even more salient in the 16 instances of “irgend-” that are all realized as [yəgənd] rather than StG [ɪəgənd]. This is a widespread feature of a sociolect spoken among certain parts of the population of Berlin, especially young people with migratory background. By using this feature in such a pro-nounced way Bushido is linguistically making claims to representing a specific place (the migrant districts of Berlin) and the social implications (marginalization, poverty, crime and violence) attached to it. This is underscored by his assertion that he is not just ‘somebody’ from ‘somewhere’.

If we compare Blumentopf’s use of local linguistic features to that of Bushido, the difference is quite pronounced. On all five albums, I could only identify three lexical instances: “Schlawiner”, “Schmarrn” and “wurschtln”. Consider the example of “Schmarrn” and the linguistic environment it is employed in:

Immer der gleiche Schmarrn, ihr alt, wir fresh, wir heiß, ihr whack, Ihr dünn, wir fett, wir Hip Hop, ihr Rap. (“Eins A,” Eins A)

“Immer der gleiche Schmarrn” is best translated as ‘always the same nonsense’. After saying this, Roger switches into a sequence of metaphorical code-switching which features a fair amount of hip hop-specific vocabulary (fresh, whack, Hip Hop, Rap). Here, rather than hip hop and local identity fusing together symbioti-cally, we see the two at odds with each other. Roger uses the Bavarian lexeme to distance himself from a kind of hip hop talk which he depicts as empty and for-mulaic. Hip hop identity and a Bavarian accent seem to be difficult to reconcile. Apart from the general pressure to use a more standard way of speaking in ad-dressing a supraregional audience, this has to do with the low prestige of Bavarian especially among German youth. It is commonly associated with old people, conservative attitudes and rural environments, all three of which are not easily

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reconciled with a hip hop identity. Too pronounced use of local, Bavarian speech might put Blumentopf too decidedly on the “Dorf” side of the city – rural environ-ment dichotomy at play in Bushido’s lyrics.

The last aspect of the ghetto concept to be addressed here is the more personal side of it, having to do with attitude, biography and habitus. Blumentopf take the importance of their biographies seriously and dedicate a number of songs ex-clusively to their upbringing and past experiences. From what has been said so far, one cannot expect tales of hustle and petty crime and indeed this is not the case. Instead, they quite openly address their background from middle class families. With the exception of Holundermann, whose occasionally much more aggressive stance I cannot discuss here,7 the crew’s other members mainly resort to irony to resolve their background’s incongruity with a hip hop identity:

Meine Mutter war besorgt um ihren komischen Sohn “Flo, wie willst du später Miete zahlen ohne Diplom?” Da bin ich los zu meiner Bank um meine Kohle zu holen Um mir Baggy-Pants zu kaufen um in meinen Hosen zu wohnen Ey ich scheiß auf schlechte Jobs mit popligem Lohn Und wenn ich’s mit Rap nicht schaffe, mache ich mit Drogen Millionen. (“Die Jungs aus dem Reihenhaus,” Eins A)

To his mother’s concerns about his future, specifically his being unable to pay rent without a good education, Schu reacts by buying baggy pants which are big enough for him to live in. He will not go for a regular job and if he does not make it in rap he will make millions in the drug game. This last statement again evokes the classic ghetto story where entertainment and crime constitute the only ways to material success. This is again not intended seriously, as becomes obvious from the sum of Schu’s rather peaceful and benign discourse as well as from his biography. To avoid the tensions between hip hop cultural norms and his own background, Schu employs irony towards both of them. Irony is a potent discursive strategy to accommodate divided speaker roles and to say things without fully committing to them (Shoaps 2009). It thus helps Schu reconcile the different requirements and preconditions of his background and his inhabited hip hop identity.

For the rappers of Blumentopf, their hip hop identity is one of several which they can handle apparently at their own free will. Here are some examples in which the MCs directly address this practice:

Weil ich am Abend Rapper bin und nur am Vormittag Student Because I am a rapper at night and a college student only in the morning

(Holundermann; “Die Jungs aus dem Reihenhaus,” Eins A)

Dann bin ich Cajus und nicht Heinemann vom Blumentopf Und zünd mir einen an während ich mir ’n paar Nudeln koch.

Then I am Cajus [his given name] and not Heinemann of Blumentopf and light up a joint while cooking myself some pasta.

(Heinemann; “Ruhetag,” Musikmaschine)

————— 7 E.g. on his solo cut “Zu talentiert”, on Musikmaschine.


Und “keep it real” heißt nicht, man dürfte nicht mal Kurs korrigieren. And “keep it real” doesn’t mean you cannot change/adjust your course.

(Holundermann; “Die Bretter, die die Welt bedeuten,” Musikmaschine)

Again, such an approach is out of the question for Bushido, who prefers to construct his persona in extremes rather than in nuances. His identity as a gangsta rapper is fixed and consistent, as is exemplified by his frequent use of lexemes stressing continuity, such as “schon (immer/früher/damals/etc.)” or various forms of the verb “bleiben”. In addition, some of Bushido’s statements directly contradict the above quotes from Blumentopf:

Du kannst mich aus’m Ghetto holen, doch das Ghetto nicht aus mir. You can take me out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of me.

(“So sein wie sie,” 7).

Du musst auch hart sein wenn der Beat zu Ende ist. You have to still be tough after the beat is over.

(“Von der Skyline zum Bordstein zurück,” Von der Skyline zum Bordstein zurück)

The first passage asserts Bushido’s internalization of a ghetto habitus, whereas the second one more generally elevates such an attitude as a touchstone of authentic hip hop. Barbara Johnstone’s (2009) distinction between ethos of self and ethos of persona is very useful in describing the different approaches to identity displayed by Blumentopf and Bushido. The ethos of self is defined as “the discursive display of consistent personal identity, rooted in a speaker’s personal biography, as con-trasted with the flexible ethos of persona that makes strategic use of flexibility of social identity” (46). These two concepts quite accurately describe Blumentopf’s and Bushido’s respective self-depiction.

Here, then, we witness two very different approaches by German rappers to make use of the concept of the ghetto, an important aspect of hip hop culture. On the whole, Bushido – who is the more recent representative in my study – seems to be taking over ideas much more directly than Blumentopf. This should give us some reason to question whether German hip hop can be described as being in a continuous process of emancipation from American norms and increased local-ization.

6. Race and Ethnicity

The notion of African American ownership of hip hop has repeatedly come under attack. Pennycook calls attention to the need for recognizing the origins of hip hop as “a mixture that at the very least included Puerto Rican and Jamaican influences” (2007, 89). The number of successful hip hop artists from various non-black backgrounds underscores the invalidity of an understanding of hip hop as an ex-clusively black cultural form. I certainly do not wish to make claims to the con-trary. But the crucial notion of authenticity in hip hop remains fundamentally tied to race. In his essay “No Time for Fake Niggas: Hip-Hop Culture and the Authenticity Debate”, Mark Anthony Neal (2004, 57) discusses how debates about

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‘realness’ between East and West Coast largely focused on the question which one was more ‘black’ (58). Of course, authenticity in hip hop is not an attribute reserved exclusively for a specific ethnicity. What can be said, however, is that “Blackness occupies the role of the dominant, unmarked social category” (Cutler 2009, 80). People of other, especially white, extraction have to actively prove their “realness” in order to be taken seriously. An excellent analysis of the (lin-guistic) processes that result from the markedness of whiteness is provided by Cutler (2009), who analyzes how a white rapper in an MC battle cooperates with his black opponents in constructing white otherness. In the German context, which comprises a very different set-up of ethnicities than the U.S., this pattern of markedness can hardly be adapted without considerable alteration.

One has to look very carefully for references to race, ethnicity or skin colour in Blumentopf’s lyrics. In all 106 songs of my corpus I was able to identify less than ten instances that might possibly be interpreted in this direction, and most of these do not address the issue straightforwardly. Instead, ethnicity and racial stereotypes become the source domains of metaphors with the clear exclusion of a political dimension:

Manche ham Probleme, die erzählen mir ich rede Stuss Der politisch nicht mal so korrekt ist wie’n Negerkuss (“Blues,” Eins A)

Schu positions himself as a critic of political correctness, underscoring his point by using the word “Negerkuss.” While the word simply means a certain kind of pastry, its first part has similar, though not as strong, connotations as the English ‘nigger’. Its use in the German language is certainly controversial. By interpreting the problem as one of mere ‘political correctness’ Schu mitigates the salience of race as a social issue that is at the bottom of hip hop culture.

Apart from such examples, questions of race and ethnicity in Blumentopf’s discourse are conspicuous by their absence. What predominates is a portrayal of hip hop as an egalitarian cultural form, a competition amongst participants with an equal basis in which only skill, originality, and the quality of the music deter-mine who wins. The chorus of the track “Ich bin so” (Eins A) directly puts this agenda into a rapped form:

Es ist egal was du anhast, egal wieviel du kiffst Egal welches Mag du liest, egal welchen Slang du sprichst, Egal wie du drauf oder mit wem du unten bist Entweder fühlst du Hip Hop oder du fühlst ihn nicht. (“Ich bin so,” Eins A)

The hip hop culture that is constructed here is one that is big enough for every-body, where it is essentially pointless to argue over minor issues such as clothes, drug habits, language use or social affiliations. The fact that these categories are discounted may be a first indicator of their actual salience. They are indeed central at least to the general understanding of hip hop culture in that they usually work together to construct a decidedly ‘black’ identity: baggy pants, AAVE speech, social ties within the community, etc. Consequently, by denying these concepts


their validity, Blumentopf eliminate race or ‘blackness’ as a criterion for ownership and access to hip hop.

Coming from a migrant background, Bushido has other possibilities at hand for reworking the role of race and ethnicity in his discourse. The term “Kanake”, a derogatory expression for mostly middle-Eastern immigrants, has been known to get reframed in a positive way in German rap, creating an analogy to the use of the term ‘nigga’ in U.S. hip hop. This schema is fully exploited by Bushido, who refers to himself as “der kriminelle Scheißkanake aus der Hauptstadt” (“Intro”, 7), his music as “Kanakenrap” (“Untergrund”, Staatsfeind Nr. 1) and his opponents as “Schauspielkanaken”, i.e. imposters (“Asylantenstatus”, 7). Quite in accordance with Bushido’s ethos of self, ethnic differences are drawn in absolute terms, essen-tializing the respective categories. It should be pointed out that, while there are many surface correspondences between immigrants to Germany and African Ameri-cans, the equation of “nigga” and “Kanake” is not without complications as the historic trajectories in the situations of the respective groups are very different. I will examine the role of blackness in Bushido’s discourse in more detail below.

The immediate background against which Bushido establishes his own position is that of the society he lives in. First and foremost, just as being a “Kanake” is interpreted as a source of cultural capital within hip hop, Germanness is endowed with negative attributions, specifically weakness:

Alle Rapper, die du kennst, sind zu lieb und deutsch. All rappers you know are too friendly and German.

(“Ersguterjunge,” Electro Ghetto)

Was weißt du Kartoffel schon von einem harten Leben? (“Untergrund,” Staatsfeind Nr. 1)

“Kartoffel” is a derogatory term for Germans, employed by some youths with foreign-migrant backgrounds to counter the negative ascriptions they receive from parts of German society. It would be only partially true, however, to say that Bushido takes an anti-German stance in his entire musical output. At least as pronounced are instances where he puts the popular conception of German culture into question and attempts to amend it with his own definitions. He attacks a discourse which denies the existence of the social reality he aims to represent:

Ich leb hier im Ghetto, du sagst Deutschland hat keins. I live here in the ghetto, you say there is no such thing in Germany.

(“Hymne der Straße,” Staatsfeind Nr. 1)

Das ist Musik aus einer Gegend, die die Deutschen nicht kennen. This is music from a place that the Germans don‘t know. (“Intro,” Staatsfeind Nr. 1)

Writing against the ignorance of the existence of ‘the ghetto’ in Germany and defending himself against accusations of lying and corrupting German youth, Bushido portrays himself as a member and representative of the ‘real’ Germany, the people who are silenced:

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So wie ich ist diese halbe scheiß Nation. Half of this goddam nation is like me.

(“Alles verloren,” 7)

Das hier ist Volksmusik […] Ich bin der Underdog der einfach aus dem Volk kam (“Goldrapper,” Von der Skyline zum Bordstein zurück)

Wer ist der Volksheld, der deine Freunde krass besiegt? (“Wer ich bin?” 7)

The use of “Volk” is not extremely frequent. But since the expression carries con-notations of conservative culture (“Volksmusik”) as well as potentially Third Reich rhetoric, its repeated use does surprise. In Bushido’s case, laying open these con-tradictions may exactly be the reason for his use of the word. In reclaiming even a term connoted in this way as part of his identity, he subverts nationalist discourse. However, he also creates a proximity of his own lyrics to such discourse, as will become more obvious below.

The track “Flug LH3516” (Heavy Metal Payback) describes the situation of a speaker that is deported to an arena of war, “wo es Bomben regnet und der Himmel leuchtet”, a trip from the German home “zu den Toten im Krieg”. These evocations of war are not isolated instances. In a number of other songs, the surrounding circumstances are brought into sharper focus:

Ich bin Kanake, Amerika sagt ich bin ein Mörder. I am a “Kanake,” America says I am a murderer.

(“Nutte Bounce,” King of Kingz)

What is brought into play here is the United States’ ‘war on terror’. Bushido’s pronounced self-positioning as a representative of the Arab world puts him in an antagonistic relationship with America as such, a fact that he repeatedly fore-grounds:

Siehe Bin Laden, ich denk ich hätt’s ähnlich getan. Consider Bin Laden, I think I would have done something similar.

(“Das Leben ist hart,” Staatsfeind Nr. 1)

Ich hab ein Foto von Osama in den Pass geklebt. I have glued a picture of Osama in my passport.

(“Wer ich bin?” 7)

Also hol die Mics, du Bitch, oder Soda mit Wasser Ich falle mit der Tür ins Haus, nenn mich Mohammed [Pssst] (“Deutschland gib mir ein Mic,” Electro Ghetto)

In the last example the rhyme of the second line is prevented by a fictitious inter-ruption silencing the last word. As the end of the line has to (half-)rhyme with “Soda mit Wasser”, however, it is not hard to guess the conclusion of the second line, i.e. “Mohammed Atta.” Likening himself to one of the terrorist bombers of 9/11 apparently even in Bushido’s understanding breaches the borders of the accept-able. Shock value might indeed be an explanation for such statements, but one


can argue that there are also other dimensions involved. In adopting a global Muslim/Arab, anti-American position, Bushido is able to reconcile several positions. Firstly, he underscores his own standing as a member of a marginalized group. In the field of hip hop, conventional social hierarchies often get reversed and signs of discrimination are endowed with covert prestige, thus acting as a source of cultural capital. At the same time, Bushido’s pro-Muslim, anti-U.S. discourse effectively capitalizes on the resentments prevalent within German society against American foreign policy at the time. Consequently, the MC can adopt a radical underdog position as well as appealing to a more mainstream listenership. Thirdly, by putting emphasis on his Muslim background, Bushido can also make use of a parallel to a substantial part of African American culture, specifically the Nation of Islam and related groups.

Bushido’s equation of himself with African American hip hop activists can best be demonstrated in his references to his apparent role model 50 Cent. The following four quotes trace a line of development of his self-positioning that is quite typical of the rapper’s general discursive practice:

Ich hab schon immer auf das Jam-Ding gekackt und höre immer noch 50 Cent in da Club. (“Sex in the City,” Von der Skyline zum Bordstein zurück)

Ich bin für deutschen Rap wie Fifty in den USA. (“Dealer vom Block,” Von der Skyline zum Bordstein zurück)

Meine Freunde würden 50 Cent umbringen. (“Gangsta,” Heavy Metal Payback)

Ich leg die 50 Cents und fünfzig Fans in den Sarg. (“Gemein wie 10,” Vom Bordstein bis zur Skyline)

In the first example, Bushido simply asserts his fondness for 50 Cent’s music and, by extension, the type of rap he represents as opposed to the more egalitarian, grass-roots type represented by the “Jam-Ding”. From here, he goes on to put himself on the same level as the American rapper. In the third and fourth example, his aggressive self-assertion turns partially against his idol. Rather than as a diss against 50 Cent, however, this should be understood in terms of the dynamics of Buhido’s identity construction. He first consolidates his similarity to an institution of prestige in hip hop culture. Having thus established his position, his preference for extremes often results in his turning against the original point of reference. In adopting such a rhetoric, there is a danger of distorting cultural concepts that are kept in balance in their original context. Elsewhere, Bushido takes issues such as drug consumption or rivalries within the hip hop scene to extremes that do not reflect their meaning in American hip hop culture anymore. With issues like race and ethnicity, these dynamics become decidedly more problematic.

With regard to blackness Bushido renders any possible parallels between other German MCs and their American models as fake. Especially on King of Kingz, the MC takes over the politically charged term “nigga” from American rap discourse:

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Ihr schwulen Hip Hop-Muthafucka-Wannabe-Niggas aus Deutschland (“Intro,” King of Kingz)

Du bist blond und machst auf Nigga (“King of Kingz,” King of Kingz)

Schrei Nigga, doch du bist white y’all (“Pitbull,” King of Kingz)

Though Bushido refrains from using this terminology on later albums – possibly for censorship reasons – he continues to display the same discursive self-positioning in relation to Germanness and blackness. Examples of this abound, but for the present article one will have to suffice:

Du willst gern schwarz sein, Junge nein, Guck mich an ich bin der Staatsfeind Nummer eins.

You want to be black? Man, no. Look at me, I am the public enemy. (“Intro,” Staatsfeind Nr. 1)

While in this example blackness is not criticized as such but rather as an identity category for German rappers, such statements at least open up room for racist interpretations. A far more extreme case is the introduction to the song “Gemein wie 10” which features the following sample from the film American History X:

Gut, es gefällt mir nicht, dass es inzwischen das tollste ist, schwarz zu sein. Gut. Ich hasse diesen … Hip Hop Nigga Einfluss auf die Highschools.

[The original script of the film (McKenna 1997) reads:] “I hate the fact that it’s cool to be black these days. Good. I hate this hip hop influence on white fuckin’ suburbia.”

(“Gemein wie 10,” Vom Bordstein bis zur Skyline)

From this example, it is easy to see why Bushido has occasionally come under attack for his lyrics’ proximity to racist discourse. This is enhanced by his use of the term “Zigeuner” (a derogatory expression for Sinti and Roma) to debase his opponents and his references to fashion items popular in right wing circles (“Springerstiefel”, “Bomberjacke”). I do not claim that Bushido is a racist rapper per se. He certainly makes statements in the very opposite direction, as I have shown in my discussion of his relationship to Germanness. I do think, however, that he exploits the racist undercurrents in some of his statements consciously. Perhaps the clearest demon-stration of this can be found in the chorus of “Electro Ghetto”:

Salutiert, steht stramm! Ich bin der leader wie A. (“Electro Ghetto,” Electro Ghetto)

The English term “leader” employed here as the salient feature of the comparison directly translates as German “Führer”. The allusion to Adolf Hitler is carefully calculated to stir up controversy, as Bushido admits himself (Laut 2005). This is most likely first and foremost a strategy to create attention, but Bushido engages in it despite full consciousness of the risk of being misused by ultra-right groups.


7. Conclusions

What lessons can be learned from the analysis above? Firstly, with regard to the role of English and local languages in hip hop culture, we can specify findings of previous studies. Pennycook’s qualitative analysis of Japan’s Rip Slyme is very insightful and has pointed the way for my study in many regards. However, I do not share his conclusion that in globalized hip hop, languages become indistinguishable and that “hip-hop as a culture rises above different languages: the universal language is not English; it is hip-hop” (2007, 126). As I hope to have shown, if we look at rap discourse more comprehensively and take into account the larger cultural con-texts and the indexical potentials connected to different forms of speech, there are rather clear distinctions.

In my data specifically, both formations display two broad types of English usage which reflect their ambivalent relationship to the language. The first is unmarked use of English as part of a rapper’s discourse. Often, this is related to culturally specific items and practices like cultural terminology to describe the act of rapping (Blumentopf) or gangsta vocabulary and terms of insult (Bushido). The other category consists of highly marked use of English usually employed in describing and ridiculing others. Such usage frequently occurs in stretches of meta-phorical code-switching. Bushido’s depreciatory statement “Du willst beef? Keep it real” (“Stadt der Engel”, 7) is a ready example of this kind of language use. Here, apparent clashes between English terminology and their German linguistic and social environment are often highlighted.

To understand this linguistic behavior, we need to keep in mind the competitive character of hip hop culture. Much dispute within it evolves around the question of ownership, delineating who is ‘allowed’ to claim the cultural form and fashion himself as an authentic practitioner. Much the same seems to be the case with English, especially AAVE forms. The language is indexically connected to hip hop’s place of origin and to the dominant model that American hip hop still constitutes for its German counterpart, making it a source of prestige for German rappers. Consequently, what is questioned when MCs ridicule the use of English in their rivals’ lyrics is not so much the status of the language as such, but the opponents’ right to use a contested form. Consequently, although in individual instances German and English can become so intertwined that it is in fact very hard to ‘keep them apart’, language choice is of central importance in German rap.

Here, Blommaert’s idea of centring institutions can usefully complement Pennycook’s “anti-foundationalist perspective” (2003, 528). While languages do not exist detached from performance, this performance itself is subject to con-straints. Which linguistic resources can be employed, how much they are worth, and what their function is are questions that often go beyond the individual’s creativity. Centring institutions on various levels organize regimes of language use or orders of indexicality (Blommaert 2005, 75). Hip hop culture can be under-stood as one such institution, attributing high prestige to (AAV) English forms

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of discourse. Taking popular culture seriously also means taking account of in-stitutional pressures of this kind.

In theorizing the phenomena of language contact involved in German rap, Ben Rampton’s (1995; 1997) concept of crossing promises to provide the most suitable framework. Crossing expands the usual perspective in code-switching research by focusing not on a situation of more or less perfect bilingualism “in which the use of two or more languages is a routine expectation” (Rampton 1997, 8), but on instances where speakers momentarily switch into a language that is not generally perceived as belonging to them, entailing a rupture in the ordinary flow of con-versation and social order. As Rampton locates crossing “at the juncture of two competing notions of group belonging” and emphasizes its possibilities for “ex-ploring other people‘s ethnicities, embracing them and/or creating new ones” (8), the concept seems apt to describe the identity work that German hip hop practi-tioners are engaged in, where ethnic group belonging can become a major issue. The distinction between the two categories of English usage I made for my data corresponds with Rampton’s differentiation (going back to Bakhtin) between uni-directional (metaphorical) and vari-directional (ironic) switching (1997, 11). The former describes a process whereby a speaker uses a voice that is recognizably not originally his to articulate a message that is in line with this original voice. This would be the case when German rappers adopt English language e.g. for talking about hip hop cultural practices. The second term, vari-directional switching, presents a case where a speaker uses a voice other than his own to articulate a message contrary to the original voice. This corresponds to MCs’ stylization of other MCs’ English use in order to ridicule them.

I would like to conclude with a few remarks on creolization, a term which Penny-cook has applied to hip hop outside the United States (Pennycook 2007, 130-2). Familiar in linguistics and of wide currency in Cultural Studies, it would in principle be highly suitable to explore contact zones between the two fields (which, after all, is the aim of this special issue of Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik).

At first sight, creolization seems an apt term to describe local appropriations of globalized, ‘de-territorialized’ cultural forms. There is a strong tendency, dating back to the origins of Cultural Studies, to emphasize the subversive potential and individual creativity involved in such processes. This is certainly the case with regard to hip hop studies, where authors continuously point to “the active and creative aspect of globalization” (Androutsopoulos and Scholz 2002, 1). Focusing on local cultures as active participants in processes of cultural globalization is a laudable enterprise, especially where they are still not accepted as serious forms of expression. On the other hand, this agenda has a way of itself developing into a dominant ideology, where local appropriations are by definition celebrated as creative, subversive, and liberating. That this is not the whole picture is clearly illus-trated by some of the more problematic aspects of discourse in my analysis, most clearly by Bushido’s occasional proximity to racist discourse.


Thus, the term creolization – if it constitutes an ideology – may well stand in the way of in-depth scholarly analysis. In the present case, and put very bluntly, much writing on global hip hop contents itself with identifying local elements like lan-guage, references to food, places, etc. in song lyrics and goes on to celebrate the successful local appropriation of a global, de-territorialized cultural form. We have seen, however, that cultures do not easily get “de-territorialized” in the sense of losing their original local ties. Nor is “localization” a continuous, linear process of emancipation from the mother culture. The more recent artist in my study, Bushido, arguably takes over many American concepts (e.g. ghetto imagery) much more directly than his older colleagues of Blumentopf.

To summarize my point, I am afraid that creolization might develop into yet another paradigm in evaluating authentic hip hop that is constructed by academics rather than reflected in the practices of the actual participants of the culture. We need to move beyond celebrations of how a global and a local component combine into a “glocal” (Mitchell 2001, 11) form and look more closely at the actual processes involved. This can sometimes make notions of creolization less than euphoric in individual cases. It also means considerably more work for the cultural analyst. However, if it results in a more thorough understanding of the cultural forms in question, this is a price we should be more than ready to pay.

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