When the moderator of the BR format “Artist of the Week” strolls into the studio to greet her guest, Edgar Wasser is already there, but not ready. The camouflage is still missing. “Let me just put my glasses on first,” he mumbles, and pulls oversized sunglasses with an integrated peak out of the hoodie, which, in combination with his hood, give him a distance without which this platitude-ridden act of sabotage from an interview would probably only be half as good would have worked.
How was it when he performed at the Splash Festival recently? “That was super nice! I really feel it, interacting with people like that.” Would the increased attention to himself be important to him? “Uh, no.” Does he then make his music more for himself? “Yes, well, music is something like therapy for me.” When it came to whether he also wanted to earn money with his music, he finally waved the fence post to the irritated moderator. He is now bringing out a jewelry collection because the music industry is dying, but a new album is already being planned. “It’s called, uh, ‘risk of sarcasm’. There’s something for everyone. Such profound stuff. And a bit personal too.”
Rapping from the meanest perspective
It’s been ten years since the Munich rapper’s only interview to date, since then he has only let the music do the talking. This Teflon-coated appearance actually reveals more about the artist Edgar Wasser than one might think, because as little as he lets himself look at his cards, his enthusiasm for role-playing games is unmistakable. The best, most recent example: his new album “wtf irl” (translated from the digital language: “What the fuck in real life”), on which he also seems to be Edgar Wasser, but preferably from grotesquely exaggerated Fiesling perspectives rapping out, which come together on the 15 tracks of the record to form a polyphonic panorama of horror between brutalization, dumbing down, social division and looming climate catastrophe.
If Wasser first sets the apocalyptic tone with the opener “WTF”, in which he metaphorizes the state of the world with a plane crash, in which eight billion passengers are still fighting over the armrests, then you will meet him again and again in the episode new shape. As an aggressive sociopath who, as a counterpoint to woke culture, takes its moral rigor in a pincer. As a web-damaged selfie fetishist who overdoses on dopamine when looking in the mirror. As a jaded soldier who can only cope with his war trauma when he is intoxicated. Or as a violent police officer who is looking to relax with his colleagues in the right-wing extremist chat group in the evening. And no, these tracks freshly tapped from the present in the beat-powerful boom-bap guise are certainly not edifying. No one in German Conscious Rap has tumbled along the abysses of our time more elegantly and provocatively than this smart shapeshifter.
Edgar Wasser: “wtf irl” (@K H20)