“Off”
Hard sound on Alligatoah album: “I’ve become more sensitive”
Lukas Strobel is better known as the rapper Alligatoah. photo
© Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa
Rapper Alligatoah declared himself dead in November. The artist is now back with twelve new tracks. In “Off” he ventures into a style of music that he has always loved.
When the first track “I feel you” begins, you’re a little frightened: Rapper Alligatoah’s new album starts with a kind of explosive guitar sound. And then it’s another Alligatoah song, with its conspiratorial chanting and winding language images. His new album “Off” will be released on March 22nd – it will be featured by Limp-Bizkit frontman Fred Durst and the Guano Apes.
“I broke out of my comfort zone and created a new sound world,” says the 34-year-old, whose real name is Lukas Strobel, in an interview with German press agency. “Still, people tell me: ‘That sounds like Alligatoah.’ I can’t get out of my skin 100 percent either.”
The music is hard and the lyrics are soft
Even if he’s playing hard musically, lyrically he’s now softer and more vulnerable. “My new album contains songs that are about feelings and love. I have become more sensitive and these topics have become more important to me over the years,” said the 34-year-old singer of older songs like “Fuck Him”.
In his early 20s, he was very focused on his music and didn’t take interpersonal relationships that seriously during that phase. “In order to still maintain the heaviness in this album, the music that lies underneath is very guitar-heavy and is reminiscent of the metal era of the 90s and noughties.”
Alligatoah really became known in 2013 with the pop rap song “Willst du”. The full question is: “Do you want to do drugs with me?”, to which millions of people that summer bawled “Let’s go down the drain together” in response. To date, the song has been streamed over 200 million times on various platforms, and the accompanying album “Triebwerke” started straight at number 1. Alligatoah dances on the thin line between pop and rap, between social criticism and kitsch. And now he’s embracing his hard metal side.
That was the style of music that Strobel fell in love with in his youth, and “a spark ignited.” He heard screaming people and loud guitar riffs up and down the street. He was then able to start rapping on his own – he didn’t have the band to form a metal band. “I always knew in my heart that this more musically brutal side of metal would eventually come through in me.”
His musical oeuvre also includes his music videos, in which Strobel takes on various roles – either as a princess, a bourgeois or a worn-out musician. “In the end, I tell stories – whether through music or film,” says Strobel. The 34-year-old moved to Berlin from Lower Saxony when he was 19 to study film and become a director.
Is it his last album?
Last November, Alligatoah declared himself dead, deleted all social media posts, and fans speculated whether that was it for the fictional character. His album “Off” is said to be a kind of legacy, and he himself has “retired behind the moon,” as it says in a press release.
After an estate there is usually not that much left. “I rarely have a plan for what comes next. I think it sometimes seems as if I don’t want to reveal the secret. But I don’t know the secret myself,” says Strobel. “My career may end at some point, but I will never stop creating things.”