German Rap

When I was a junior in high school, I had to retake a lot of freshman classes. In fact, I was in remedial English at the same time that I was in Advanced Placement English. Since I had been kicked out of school in my sophomore year for missing too much class, I was in a sort of limbo of trying to catch up while I was advancing. By all means it didn't make any sense and all the administrators should have been sacked. Anyway, being the only junior in a class otherwise entirely comprised of sophomores felt way more alienating than one year of age difference seemed to warrant, and it held true when I went to college in a class of students who were a year younger than me. Everything was "random" or "awkward" or "beast". There was a whole different slang and attitude and, apparently, nobody listened to music.

On my first day of being a junior in sophomore Spanish, we were given the task of interviewing at least three other students in Spanish. The questions were basic: what's your name, do you have any pets, what is your favorite color, what did you do over summer vacation... and who is your favorite band?

Every time I got to that last question, I was answered with a look of the same kind of smug exasperation now mostly associated with hipsters.

"I only listen to rap," they would reply. Also, they never replied in Spanish. Everybody in that class was effing terrible at Spanish.

With the first one, I persevered beyond the call of the assignment.

"Then who's your favorite rapper?"

"It's not like that."

The kid I tried that on was irritated immediately. He thought I was a complete idiot for thinking a song could be attributed to AN artist. It would be a while yet before I'd realize that every popular rap ditty is Somebody and Somebody ft. Somebody as remixed by Somebody. He didn't bother explaining that to me, he just turned the question around on me combatively.

"Well how would YOU answer?"

"I dunno. Led Zeppelin, Foo Fighters, the Smashing Pumpkins."

"I don't even know what those ARE."

I remember he said it while laughing, and a girl next to him with half her hair dyed blonde and the other half dyed black laughed with him at my liking of such obscure music that clearly nobody liked. It took me right back to the time a girl smugly told me she had never heard of Green Day, citing that they couldn't be good because they weren't on any of the NOW That's What I Call Music CDs (they were about a year after she said that, though, not that it's anything to tout).

Anyway, that was one of the most confusing exchanges I had ever had up to that point in my life. These kids were speaking a language I couldn't understand, and what I perceived to be reality (that Led Zeppelin is an amazing band that everyone is raised on and respects) was laughable to them. But even as I stumbled into more of it, rap never made much more sense to me.

And maybe that's why I am addicted to German rap.

Fast forward eight or nine years. I dated a guy who listened to the same like five Social Distortion songs on Spotify every time I was at his apartment. Then I learned that Spotify has basically all the music and a radio feature that works like a Pandora that actually understands how music can relate to each other beyond sounding exactly the same. I listened to some Rammstein and it suggested more German artists. I found Alligatoah and suddenly Willst Du was my favorite song ever.

Fast forward to now and at least half of the music I listen to is in a foreign language. German rap songs are liberally sprinkled throughout all my playlists and it has become the one genre I can listen to at almost any time and the mood seems right.

And absolutely nobody seems to agree with me.

The first time someone is in my car with me and a German rap song comes on, the response is laughter when the lyrics start. Now, I laugh at pretty much everything; most of my acquaintances don't bother asking what I'm giggling at unless we are in a quiet room by ourselves and it seems likely I could be laughing at them. But I can listen to J-pop, Swedish metal and German rap with complete sincerity and be completely moved by them. I don't understand what difference it makes to love music whose lyrics you can't understand.

In fact, I think not understanding all the lyrics is fundamental to my enjoyment of German rap. I never got much into American rap for many reasons. The shameless sexism, the swearing, the shallow content, and the rhyming are all offensive to my ear. Yes, rhyming. When I hear people talk about how "clever" a rapper is or how great their "rhymes" are, you can guarantee I'm going to hate that rapper's work because for me, rhyme is cheap and obnoxious. Maybe it's because I've read and heard so much poetry, or maybe it's just how my brain is wired, but I find much more merit in the formatting of e. e. cummings or the perceptiveness of Dostoyevsky than somebody realizing two words end the same way and painstakingly coming up with disconnected phrases that end with them.

But I love a good mashup, a good beat, and my brain does respond to the cheap musical candy of a good hook. When I listen to German rap, I don't know enough about the language to make observations of how clumsily the words are crammed into the music. (If I weren't a native English speaker, I might not want to launch my fist through the nearest window when Kid Cudi repeats "listen up" four times in "Sky Might Fall", struggling to turn "up" into a two syllable word each time.) The rhyming of German words is exciting and unexpected since I don't even know what their words are, it just sounds like linguistic sorcery that certainly must be a spell that will open an ancient portal to an underground world inhabited by unicorns and leprechauns. And if those lyrics are actually just some douchebag going on about spreading women's ass cheeks (and still talking down to them even though he's the creep staring up anuses) like that one rap song I heard that was about that exclusively, I don't have to know that. Most English-spoken rap songs I've heard sound like the rhyming letters of a madman before he snaps and murders a gas station attendant he has been stalking obsessively. With the German-spoken ones, I don't need to know.

All I hear is the human voice as a rhythmic instrument, a complement to a bassline and a beat that inspires me just as much as any other instrumental piece. So when people ask how I can listen to rap without understanding the lyrics, that is why I suddenly feel myself wanting to judge them. Because to my brain, it is way better to regard a new instrument than to listen to anthems of hate, sexism, and boasting, or what to me is ear-itching Dr. Seussian patchwork.

And seriously, do you really know all the lyrics to all the songs you like?