“Teenage angst has paid off well,” Kurt Cobain quipped in the 1993 song “Serve The Servants.” He wasn’t entirely wrong: the difficult circumstances in which he grew up and the mental problems that later accompanied it certainly paid off financially for the Nirvana frontman. His songs became grunge anthems. And the musician, who died at the age of 27, became the misunderstood anti-hero of a whole generation. Not least because what many people can identify with is well received. And these are often the not so nice feelings – anger, sadness, teenage fear.
The Berlin trap artist Beyazz also raps about them: “There are a thousand reasons why I can never dream again,” it says, for example, in the number “Wach”, which deals with pressure and a lack of prospects. Listeners have already identified themselves 33 million times on Spotify. Appropriately, his entire discography sounds like melancholy and gloomy trap. Of course, there are still enough songs in hip-hop that rely on escapism; splurge and dollar signs are the selling point – and the fat beat by the way. Beyazz delivers that too. But he charges it with zeitgeist. And that has meanwhile arrived somewhere else: topics such as mental health are no longer taboo, money and partying are de-glorified. “Drugs in my body, but they don’t answer” is a line in the song “Nights in the Trap”, for example.
It feels a bit as if Beyazz, even as a successful newcomer, already has the intoxication of fame behind him. Like asking: what now? The young artist doesn’t just lose himself in metaphors that still need to be deciphered. Instead, he gets to the heart of the matter, what is sometimes uncomfortable and what many have felt for a long time anyway. He deliberately addresses Generation Y, smiles at the “boomers” (“Lost”) and thus creates an outlet not only for himself but also for his listeners. It pays off – so much so that, in addition to his sold-out concert on October 16th, there will be an additional concert three days earlier in Strom.
Beyazz, Thursday, October 13, 8:30 p.m., Strom, Lindwurmstr. 88