Who wants to “earn up to 250,000 euros per year”? Simply fill out the contact form – “and we will get back to you immediately”. Welcome to the business bubble of Berlin’s hip-hop bosses. These are the ones who never have parking problems, even with the longest limousines; the one with the scantily clad women in the back seat. Drinks in Beverly Hills, champagne breakfast with a view of the Eiffel Tower, chilling on a private jet to Dubai – that’s how Luciano is currently posing on his Instagram portal.
Quite a few of his fans probably dream of such a life with feast and drink, with bros and butts. Now Luciano not only wants to fool his entourage, he also wants to make them really rich.
So what’s behind it: Thanks to his popularity, the 30-year-old self-made millionaire Patrick Großmann alias Luciano not only sells millions of copies of music (“Beautiful Girl”), but also cornflakes and iced tea. Now he has opened his own Fastfoot chain “Loco Chicken”, so he doesn’t just want to make money with “Mios with bars” like in his hit, but also with restaurants. So far, his fans have only queued up at a single store in Friedrichshain to buy fried chicken with white truffle flavor in a cardboard bucket, but by 2024 there will be 24 stores.
Even more important, however, are the “virtual restaurants”. What is this again? Luciano’s “Loco Chicken” (the name comes from his first hip-hop group Loco Squad Gang) is intended to be sold primarily via “Ghost Kitchens”: Underutilized partner restaurants use deep fryers and ingredients provided to fry the dishes according to Luciano’s recipes, which are then ordered via the “Lanch” app and distributed via delivery services. There are currently around 100, but there are plans to grow many more. “Apply now!”
Growth in height is the goal of the son of a German mother and a Mozambican father: It started with the piece “Jagen die Mio”; a dream that he shares with millions of fans and has long since fulfilled himself: all seven albums from “Eiskalt” to most recently “Sedcutive” landed in the top ten. But what’s much more profitable is that in the past three years, Luciano was, according to his label Universal, the most streamed artist in Germany with around a billion plays.
“Despite all the pain in our hearts, we are who we are,” raps Luciano.
(Photo: Tim Adorf)
He always thought big, orienting himself not on the Berlin aggro sound, but first on the trap sound of the French banlieues, then on the “drill rap” that spread around the world from the gang-dominated neighborhoods of Chicago via South London and New York shoots – with puffs and bangs in a staccato manner like something out of an artfully choreographed Bruce Lee brawl and brutal gutter slang. But Luciano never wanted to be the baddest, craziest, but rather a pop star: So he sounds tough, but is harmless, has a feel for melodies and – in his macho way – even shows something like respect for the female object of male desire.
Munich is a gap in the market
He is currently showing again on “Seductive” that the German market is too small for him in the long term. For many, its crippling length of 29 tracks, including two intros and one outro, can only be explained by the fact that he had to fit as many collaborations with stars from all over the world on it as possible (“track factory farming,” judged the pop portal laut.de): He raps with the Turk Uzi, with Niska (“Blue Porsche”) and Freeze Corleone (“Haaland”) from France, RAF Camora from Austria (“Children of the Streets”), Morad from Spain, Sfera Ebbasta from Italy and the Brit Stefflon Don. And Bia (“Mami”), Aitch (“Soldier”), Gzuz from 187 (“2 Germans”) and Omah Lay from Nigeria also bring “Another Vibe”, i.e. their styles and their target groups.
In his videos, Luciano usually celebrates himself as a businessman who has been dragged away from some business, steeled, gallant, smooth as in a Netflix Rich Kid series, lonely but safe behind dark Rolls-Royce windows or in a string ensemble: “Despite all that Pain in the heart, we are who we are.”
Anyone who doesn’t want to be put off by a brutal life of wealth could now look for a partnership with Luciano, even if it’s not a musical one. Munich is a gap in the market: “Loco Chicken Giesing” right next to Schinken Peter does not appear in the Lanch app, the next official franchise branches are listed in Augsburg and Friedberg.
Luciano, Munich, OlympiahalleSaturday, February 24, 2024, 8 p.m., and December 2, 2025