It’s been more than ten years since the Düsseldorf rapper Kollegah was dismissed in the press as a “mistaken mix of Mike Krüger and Eminem”. Today, such criticism sounds harmless. Since then, that scandalous rapper has even brought down the renowned “Echo” record prize. Based only on sales figures, this prize also awarded two rappers in 2018, Kollegah and Farid Bang, whose lyrics can certainly be read as anti-Semitic. As a result, numerous artists who were also honored gave their echo back. Accordingly, massive protests, including from the President of the Jewish Community in Munich and Upper Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch, prevented Kollegah from appearing in Munich in 2019. Three years later, Kollegah and Farid Bang are announced again at the “Hip-Hop Moves” festival on Saturday, September 10, in Munich’s Sugar Mountain.
“Apparently we haven’t made any progress since then,” criticized Knobloch, who had hoped after the 2019 scandal “that we wouldn’t have to have such debates again”. She told the epd news agency on Thursday: “I’m shocked that musicians like Kollegah should get a stage again in Munich.” In doing so, she supports the call of the Association of Jewish Students in Bavaria and the Left Alliance against Anti-Semitism in Munich to cancel the Kollegah concert in Munich planned for this weekend. The associations criticize that his new album “Free Spirit” can be “described as an anti-Semitic total work of art”. Although the rapper avoids open hate speech, “anti-Semites of all stripes” are able to decipher texts and videos.
Kollegah describes the text passages as “exaggerations and/or comparisons”
“We distance ourselves from discrimination, sexism, anti-Semitism and fascism in any form,” explains the organizer of the “Hip Hop Moves” festival, Marco Sansone from Munich’s Wir Liebe Deutschrap GmbH. The selection of the artists who appear with him is based on the demand “of our very diverse and multicultural community, which integrates many nationalities, countries of origin and faiths,” says Sansone: “The artists Farid Bang and Kollegah are very popular with our followers and fans and perform therefore at the festival.” Canceling the concerts is out of the question for him. In his press release there is also a statement assigned to Kollegah. In it, he responds to the allegations “in relation to anti-Semitism and sexism” against him and Farid Bang by describing the criticized text passages as “exaggerations and/or comparisons” that “have no personal or ethical connections with the artists”.
Now one might be surprised that a festival that, by its own admission, also distances itself from sexism, sponsors Kollegah, a self-proclaimed pimp rapper who sometimes describes women as “shitholes”. And it’s certainly a good idea to take a closer look at phrases and buzzwords like “The do-gooder tweets that we’re to blame for climate change” on Kollegah’s new album “Free Spirit”, “militant alliance like NATO” or “fake feminism bitches”. . But what scares you most is a society in which such clumsy, sometimes stupid and often inhuman rhetoric receives so much attention and recognition. Ultimately, the man who raises himself above “fake rap for shisha bars” and “disco-goers” can’t hold a candle to either Eminem or Mike Krüger. But Kollegah counters such insight on his new album with the sentence: “They always tried to talk me down because they know who wears the crown”.