Album review “Sonny Black 2”
Bushido against himself: a rapper falls out of time
Bushido in the Tiergarten district court in Berlin. At the time, he was charged with assault. Today he is suing his former manager and friend Arafat Abu-Chaker himself.
© Bernd von Jutrczenka / Picture Alliance
Bushido is back – back to the past. His new album “Sonny Black 2” exaggerates the image of the caring family father. That would not have been necessary.
These days, Anis Ferchichi seems to have lived several lives. I looked at one of these lives on the Internet in the past few days. For a free trial subscription, you get six episodes of a family drama, the plot of which is often repeated despite its short length. Bushido appears in his documentary as a family man who threw everything away to protect his family. Who went to the police because he was afraid for his children. Who turned his back on an old life and paid dearly for it.
The pictures in the documentary show a man with a gray beard who is building a small wooden house in the garden for his children with great devotion and at the same time a locked man with a lot of money, who posed but lovingly argues with his wife in front of the camera. You get used to the pictures of a former gangster rap star who strolls his son’s school backpack over his shoulder to the garden fence and waves to his children when they are driven to school by men from the LKA. So far everything is pretty stuffy, but nice and somehow damn complicated in the life of Bushido.
Make old out of new
A different and carefree version of Bushido’s life can now be heard on Spotify. It consists of 16 songs and is called “Sonny Black 2”. Named after the American-Italian gangster prototype that Bushido always wanted to be. The first part of the record is seven years old. Homophobic rhymes, pedophile insults to rapper Kay One, and death threats to celebrities quickly put the record on the index. To date, it is only available from the age of 18. In 2021, despite the break with the criminal Abou-Chaker clan milieu, Bushido’s listeners will take an image journey back to a time without police protection.
The first stanzas on the intro track show where the journey is going: “Listen well, you Nu ***, now I’m on the trigger, I was only nice for a moment, but now I’m fucking your mothers again”. Bushido’s self-produced tinny and dark beat sends the listener back to a time seven years ago. That doesn’t sound bad, but it doesn’t sound modern either. Because the old sound image should pick up its old fans: But will it still work in 2021?
Bushido in wonderland
It continues with snow metaphors about vacations in Kitzbühel and drug sales in Berlin (“Poison Green B”). If you didn’t know from the Amazon documentary that Bushido enjoys police protection and can’t ski, you might be able to listen to it. But with the knowledge of Bushido’s new life, everything seems little nostalgic and a lot seems very intentional.
Bushido doesn’t care, he continues undeterred and fetches his “cordon sport jacket from the gun cabinet” to an epic flute-harpsichord beat. How caught Bushido is in his past is revealed more and more when he casually states: “The Juice Magazine is at the end and Viva is dead too”, while he himself continues to be unswervingly successful. But who will rap on Spotify tracks about extinct TV channels and print magazines in 2021? You know this reflex from your parents’ dining table: Help the Berliner to cope with the new times and recommend a few new apps or leave it with a simple “Ok, Boomer”.
Two lives
I feel addressed for the first time by the track “Magazin für die Magazines” – This is where critics and journalists are shot … And yes, it goes on and on on tracks whose names reveal everything: “Scars”, “Ghettofaust 2”, “Dead Fish” . Insults against his former rap colleague Fler and hip-hop journalist Rooz alternate on the same epically-produced beats. In other words: the phrase “fallen out of time” is set to music. Because between sexism and insignificance is the only Bushido line that sticks: “I used to love rapping and sampling. That’s how I became immortal. Boy, who do you want to cancel?” (“MPC of Gold”). Bushido himself gives the answer.
The two lives of Bushido coexist these days on Amazon and Spotify. One Bushido looks grown up, the other fallen out of time. Only on the last song (“Family”) does it seem as if both worlds merge into a sympathetic authenticity for a fraction of a moment. While his daughter speaks into the microphone “The most important thing in life is family”, Bushido raps: “When I come to your house, then I am just me”. Just be yourself – that would have done his new album good.
