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RAG will always be one of those bands that gets re-discovered by future generations.
RAG was my favorite band - Aphroe!
Aphroe was the voluble poet.
With Pahel, you felt a certain energy. Very artistic.
Pftaster, Pftaster. (Pavement, Pavement.}
And Galla had this enormous emotional impact.
Abstract and philosophical.
Plus Mr. Wiz, one of the best producers of his era.
'Unter Tage' is a milestone of German rap.
Like Wu-Tang. This combination was utterly unique.
Ruhrpott originals: RAG!
♪♪ RAG - Unter Tage
1. Vacuum
In 1998, RAG released a German hip-hop classic with their debut album 'Unter Tage.'
20 years later the band is back on tour.
Without Galla.
Dortmund, February 2018
PAHEL: There doesn't even have to be something going on, really, just... psychosomatically something's up.
I guess, I'll retrain...
GABRIEL: All this bullshit, what's going on, eh.
KARSTEN: Hey Pahel, wasn't there something about a banner?
PAHEL: He couldn't design that, no, didn't work out, timing-wise...
KARSTEN: This is not working at all...
KARSTEN: Everyone okay with me taking the #1?
KARSTEN: Horst, do you have another mic stand for a DJ mic? A small one?
GABRIEL: And another SM-58, please? What?
KARSTEN: All gone already?
HORST: I didn't bring anymore, wasn't requested!
KARSTEN: Okay, I don't get this, because we... oh well, it's not your fault.
GABRIEL: Nevermind, no discussion. No discussion. No discussion.
♪♪ (Rapping in German) “Mischen Cocktailbars auf, Bloody Marys im Kreislauf / heute Sekt morgen Setters (mir schmeckt's), Alter, scheiß drauf.“
♪♪ 'Setzen auf Mundpropaganda für das erste Exemplar Kein Kommentar, vor laufender Kamera.”
KARSTEN: I'm still not entirely sure about my monitor sound, maybe if someone could lend me an ear here...
sounds a little muffled to me.
PAHEL: Like I said, this can still work out... Can easily go down the drain as well.
Welcome back on stage for the first time in 13 years, true Ruhrpott originals: RAG!
Up there on the third floor is where we lived. This was my parents' first flat.
My mother is a traditional housewife and mother. And my father is now retired but used to be an electrician.
He's worked on construction sites and traveled a lot for Esso, Texaco and such.
Just imagine how much time he spent on the Autobahn, so much tension.
And then you get home and there you have these... kids. But no, he's been really cool, all things considered.
Aged six, you slowly start to take in music and then at nine it already started with the first rap tracks.
That's when “New York, New York” and breakdance, Bravo magazine, and Mr. Robot were around.
At that time, I was allowed to go buy my first record, in a store called Melody.
It should have been 'Breakdance Sensation 84,' because the commercial for it and this Mr. Robot guy had impressed me so much.
So I went and told the record shop guy: “| need this breakdance record.”
He gave me 'Scratch & Break.' Some fake shit with Kajagoogoo on there and stuff like that. I was like, “what the hell?”
That's the first time I got fucked over in a record store.
| can't really say when a Ruhr area hip-hop scene first started to form. I believe, in the beginning everyone found it in their own way.
Personally, I discovered hip-hop in the disco.
Cologne didn't have any hip-hop clubs, so we had to go to the Ruhr area.
Bochum, actually...
Yeah, right... what was it called again?
Bochum had one of the most important hip-hop clubs back then, called Logo.
That was a classic new wave disco. You would hear Siouxsie and the Banshees and New Order.
One of their DJs, Ralf Odermann, was an old punk rocker who would add LL Cool J, Public Enemy, and acid house to his rock sound.
Everyone who defined themselves as hip-hop at that time met at this club.
STF before they became STF, for example. I used to see Scopemann all the time.
And, of course, Karsten {Aphroe}.
He was just a teenager, 16 years old, I guess... a total nerd, total fan who just wanted to know: what's happening here?
No matter which song was on, he was rapping along. And I just thought “something's odd here.”
So I told him: “Look, if you can rap along to every track, why don't you try write your own?”
And that was the starting point.
About that time we started making music ourselves. Gabriel said “Come over to my house.”
And there, in the basement of his mother, aunt and grandmother, he had an Ensoniq sampler, a Linn drum and other fun stuff.
Most importantly, loads of records from his mom.
That's when I first understood that you had to sample from old records.
Without us even knowing at the time, this was the birth of our band, Raid.
Raid were Gabriel and I. Gabriel could be grouped in with Torch and co.
They all knew each other and were already down. He basically lifted me up to a new plateau.
I grew up pretty much everywhere. My father had a job with the government that took him around the world.
Thus, we were affiliated with the diplomatic corps.
Since 1979, after my parents had divorced, I've been permanently in Germany.
My mother got custody for me and took me back to Germany. Before that, I lived in countless places.
My aunt, my uncle, my cousins are from the Bronx and still live there.
Accordingly, I had a different connection and easily got my hands on records that were hard to get over here at the time.
Good.
Here's where it all started. Crazy. It's been a while, but it still looks the same.
My family lived here for a long time, and they refurbished the basement for me.
I would have gotten on my family's nerves, so they moved me into the cellar.
It was just a cool move to jump on the train from Herne to Oberhausen, two or three times a week.
Just to meet here and be creative. Man, it was so different.
I mean, I did have my friends and we all got attracted to rap, hip-hop and DJing early on.
But hands down, those were all, sorry, slackers!
It was all about smoking and binge drinking while listening to something you dug but barely understood.
Developing an understanding for being part of a culture, that first happened here.
Like, okay: do it yourself!
Okay, live and direct from the Freestyle couch: we're here with Raid. How long have you been around?
About two years now.
That's when you started causing havoc on the jams. Now you've dropped this thing here,
“Stille Post” {He said, She said}. What's it all about?
The record deals with trying to get a foot in the door of the scene but being met with misconceptions.
There were people that simply didn't like us personally and felt like they needed to talk bad behind our backs. So this is payback.
Snakes!
Freestyle was the first ever hip-hop show on German TV that was done by actual heads.
The editors were music-minded people who wrote a lot for magazines like Spex and such.
Oliver von Felbert and Dirk Scheuring. And Storm, Torch and myself were hosting the show.
Viva Freestyle aired from 1993 - 1995. A time, in which, commercially, hip-hop played no role at all.
Which is why we could do whatever we wanted. We ran every Monday at 10pm. Who's watching TV at that time?
I'm not even sure, if the Viva guys actually watched the show, because we delivered some pretty anarchic stuff.
♪♪ Raid - Stille Post
I thought it was sick, like, how does this guy rap so well in German?
Aphroe was one of the first in Germany with a sick flow. He's a trailblazer, a pioneer.
♪♪ Raid - Stille Post
“Stille Post” was the second ever German rap record I held in my hands.
It's true. I'm not trying to suck up to them, it's just a fact.
♪♪ Raid - Stille Post
We had one thing in common, namely the song title “Stille Post.”
We talked about that the first time we met, because naturally we had already found out.
We immediately had good chemistry. It was apparent that Aphroe thought about similar things that he wanted to express, too.
♪♪ Raid - Stille Post
At this point, I did not believe there would ever be a substantial market for hip-hop in Germany.
We were cool with the whole thing leading up to a TV appearance on a niche programme.
We'd only realize later what came out of it.
Shoutouts to the whole Herne Massive, the Bochum Posse. My family, one love. And once again, and we're out.
Do you want me to call before I get there?
This is Doze {of Too Strong} on the phone. - DOTZE!
They wanna do a track with you and me... - Yes.
for their LP. Are you down, Galla?
Sure I'm down. - Galla is down... he's down.
♪♪ Filo Joes - Low Budget
Pahel and Galla were Filo Joes. And Aphroe and Wiz were Raid. Those were two different bands.
From early on, you had a lot of graffiti in the Ruhr area.
And when you took the train from Essen or Bochum to Dortmund, the walls got more and more colorful, and the trains did, too.
♪♪ Filo Joes - Low Budget
I started writing graffiti in 1988, while I was living in Witten.
A friend of mine lived in Dortmund-Barop and there was a train station in Dortmund-Dorstfeld near the Hannibal, a now defunct ghetto high-rise.
That station looked like something out of a US movie. It was completely bombed, and all the pieces were stylish.
1986, that's where I saw anything like it for the first time. So I started writing myself in 1988 and I stuck with it to this day.
I started dabbling with music on Wattenscheid's ska scene.
Pahel is essentially a rudeboy. He even played with Die Kassierer for a while! He's just a little punk.
♪♪ Die Kassierer - Mit meinem Motor
Cigarettes...
Do I mess up your concept, if I smoke?
♪♪ Die Kassierer - Mit meinem Motor
The guy who distributed our first records in Bochum made ska music.
That's how our band got affiliated with that scene, and Pahel somehow ended up in our band.
Die Kassierer had been around for a decade already. One time, I went to their front man Wolfgang after a gig and said:
“I could do what you guys do on stage,” to which Wolfgang replied: “Well, in that case, you're now in the band.”
In those days, we already played songs like “Sex mit dem Sozialarbeiter” (“Sex with the Social Worker”)
Or “Mein Glied ist zu groß” ("My Member is Too Big'), which are still stone-cold classics.
♪♪ Die Kassierer - Sex mit dem Sozialarbeiter
At 17, 18 I just really wanted to go wild. Die Kassierer were maybe even a little too wild for my taste.
Butt-naked on stage for the album release and stuff like that... I mean, the other guys were naked.
I didn't need that kinda stuff necessarily, so I dropped out.
I thought it was great that he went on to find much more success with RAG. I was really happy for him.
Rap was a little more structured, I guess. Sometimes, I felt like what was going on in hip-hop was even too normal.
We are in Chocolate City, USA, AKA Washington D.C.
Pahel's Home Washington D.C.
It's not very bright in here, so we have to improvise. Like that. It's dark in the basement, y'know.
Here's where I record. My little dungeon where I can still be creative.
My mother, my fathers and my sister. My parents met in Munich, but my sister was born in the North of Germany, before me.
My father is Afro-Brazilian and had lived on the streets in Rio de Janeiro. My grandma couldn't provide shelter for him.
From 13 until 19, he lived by himself on the streets, learned English and decided to come to Europe.
It seemed like there were opportunities for someone of a different heritage. Which is still not the case in Brazil today.
Damn, one second, let me check.
That's my father. The poster is from a solo show he did with Michael Leye, who still runs the Pantheon theatre in Hamburg.
The show toured all across the country in the 70s.
Yeah that's papa... like father, like son, right? A rolling stone...
My father studied acting in the 1970s, from 75-79, under Peter Zadek.
That's why we moved to Bochum from Hamburg.
Otherwise I would've probably been a member of Absolute Beginners.
Here, this is in front of Bochumer Schauspielhaus, when he was working under Zadek. This might have been a piece with Herbert Grönemeyer on the ensemble.
Here's Lee Strasberg, the inventor of method acting. He was the teacher of Marilyn Monroe and Robert DeNiro, and also taught my father.
My parents split up in 1986 and my father went back to Brazil, to Sao Paulo, to be exact.
He died in 2010, in Cuiabá, Brazil.
Like me, Galla did not start out with rap. He was a freestyle skateboarder and also tagged.
We've met through other b-boys in Bochum. Our first forays into German rap were in the early 90s. That's when we started Filo Joes.
Galla and I met through the skate scene and all the freaks affiliated with that. He was one of them.
A long-haired dude who ran his mouth. So funny, we almost got into a fight the first time we met.
It was just stupid, I went clubbing with my friends from Herne, he came with his Bochum posse and then shit went down.
And next time we saw each other in the club, we had a beer and it was all back to normal.
On the surface, Galla was something else. He was in a good mood 99% of the time.
Wherever you went, you had fun with him. A very positive person.
Very different from his lyrics, which were always very deep.
He {Galla} always was a very funny person. That's what attracted me to him, I just like humorous people.
Somehow he always needed a co-pilot. That's what he called it, co-pilot.
Me and Galla, we were a team and did everything together. We lived together, too.
He was very catholic. He loved religious imagery.
Pictures of the Virgin Mary and things like that. He also had these rose tattoos.
We made fun of that, but it was another really beautiful side of him.
He had faith. It gave him strength.
The death of his parents led him to seek a higher purpose in religion.
Raid already had official gigs with bands from other parts of Germany. We {Filo Joes} were more underground.
One day, we went to the Magic Records store in Dortmund and Gabriel and Aphroe came in. That's how we first met.
I was really into the guys, because I realized that they provided content that I can't deliver myself.
We were a perfect match because their approach was so different.
While I was always trying to put style first and then tell a story,
they were big on social criticism. It was great and very different.
We all talked about what would happen if these guys team up... like Wu-Tang
each member of RAG had mastered a different flow, a different discipline. Everyone excelled at something else.
The next big step came when they were all living together in Witten. That's where they wrote most of the lyrics to their first record.
We lived as the “MC WG” {MC roommates} on Steinstraße in Witten.
Such an exciting time for us in Witten. There was a tangible upward movement.
Now we all made hip-hop in Witten and in the Ruhr area and we could create something dope together.
Our crew was the Bunkerwelt, Dike was around, Phillip {Flipstar} and I freestyled together.
And since we've always been local patriots and the whole Ruhr area mentality was a huge part of our music,
we thought: “Cool, something's happening.” You always want things to move forward.
And now even Karsten lives in Witten, RAG share a flat in Witten, wow!
At that point they started to write together, and correct and inspire one another.
I've often taken the lead on these sessions, which wasn't always the best idea.
It was just due to my understanding of perfectionism, how it needs to be done...
That's when the tracks to 'Unter Tage' were created.
♪♪ RAG - Kreuzwortfeuer
2. Pavement
Each city had its own sound and flavour. Broadly speaking, Hamburg rap was humourous, ironic.
Stuttgart had the more serious and political rappers. And the Ruhr area, we perceived as “the realness."
When guys from the Ruhr area came to jams, they came with a crowd.
I remember when Too Strong took us along to Viva Freestyle. They were the first ones to show up with a mob.
We've got the Dortmund posse in the house - Or at least parts of the Dortmund posse.
Actually we just expected New Attempt and Too Strong, but ended up with a few more people.
Shark, Mason, the whole Dortmund posse is here, Silo Nation.
Mentality-wise, there were similarities to the early Berlin graffiti mindstate.
Back in the jam days, I definitely partied with those guys and not with Torch.
♪♪ 100 Strong - Dortmund Silo
A bit of a rough attitude, they liked to drink as well... and their sound reflected that.
To me, Too Strong always provided a proletarian element in hip-hop. A working class thing.
The connection with Too Strong came through me, mostly.
Der Lange was from Herdecke and, when we started making music, he was already a world-famous graffiti writer.
Just because he pulled off the most insane stunts.
♪♪ 100 Strong - Dortmund Silo
One day, we were partying at the bunker in Dortmund, had a few drinks, some BBQ.
Karsten came with his car, so! told him to play our raw demo of 'Unter Tage.'
He had a couple of songs on tape, “Westwinde,” for example. He put it in and they went: “Dude, what IS that?”
♪♪ RAG - Westwinde
One time, we played a La Familia show. When we came into the room, Wiz was doing soundcheck.
He started to play beats, and it completely knocked me over.
I totally lost it. I went up to him and went “what is that?”
“That's our record, Pahel, Galla and Aphroe are making an album together as RAG, Ruhrpott Aktionsgemeinschaft.”
♪♪ RAG - Westwinde
They proceeded to perform those songs, all three MCs on stage, and those flows and all...
dude, that night was devastating for me!
Abstract and philosophical. They knew how to abstract and play with words.
While we were always a bit more daft, they were on a new level, verbally.
Listening to the first four, five songs of 'Unter Tage' for the first time was crazy... crazy!
Was that that night? I might confuse the two... there was the legendary night of our first RAG performance.
We were so nervous because the STF guys came along and we hoped to put out our record with them.
At first, there was a bit of miscommunication. I went, “I would like to release your new stuff...”
And they were like Hey, you're Peter, right? We have this album almost done.”
Well, okay, so... let's do this then.
I remember well, when Fast Forward started his label.
My label was called Put Da Needle To Da Records.
Put Da Needle To Da Records. I thought the title was pretty goofy.
I ran the label out of my student flat. At some point, I had to find an office space,
just because there were records and boxes in every corner and I couldn't handle it at home anymore.
Put Da Needle was a platform that didn't care so much about the next big thing and guaranteed sales.
We felt like there were people behind it, whose approach is purely cultural and music-minded, not strictly business.
Peter had studied in Aachen and was signed to MZEE as an artist.
He's a bit older, so for us hip-hop kids in Aachen, having him in town was super.
Put Da Needle was the first label that started completely underground and suddenly released records, that became successful.
Ruhrpott AG, Der Klan, Kool Savas, STF...
Creutzfeld & Jakob
You could already feel the explosion that was about to hit.
A new level had been reached on which listening to German rap was totally fine, and no longer embarrassing.
Tell me something about the LP, what was important to you, when you put it together?
Mostly, we wanted to make no compromises. It's a 10-track record and it didn't matter if there was a hit single on it or not.
We teamed-up with Peter, Fast Forward, Put Da Needle To Da Records... it's like that!
♪♪ RAG - Kopf Stein Pf taster
Scopemann let the video play on Viva once and MTV called the next day, like “what was it that you played last night?”
♪♪ RAG - Kopf Stein Pf taster
We ran around for a whole week, saying “Pf taster. Pf taster. Pf taster.” {Pavement, Pavement, Pavement.}
♪♪ RAG - Kopf Stein Pf taster
To me, this was more than music. When 'Unter Tage' dropped, it became clear to me that German rap could actually be cool.
There was a vibe to it.
That was pure flavour.
I liked this album a lot and it had a major impact on me. Aphroe was always my favorite rapper in Germany.
I felt sucked into it, like I'm driving on the train through Dortmund, listening to this album on my headphones.
♪♪ RAG - Kopf Stein Pf taster
We quickly sold out the first batch.
20,000 units, which was a notable effort in those days.
To me, RAG were always underground. I had no idea they sold so many records.
None of us expected it to go through the roof like that.
It catapulted us right out of our daily routine. Nothing was the same.
It's a milestone. 'Unter Tage' is a milestone for German hip-hop.
It was very grown up. The themes, death and such, but also the general attitude was rather calm, not so loud.
This melancholic element, not to say depressive, was something I hadn't heard in German rap before.
Just take what Galla wrote in “Requiem,” so sick, if you think about it. And such a self-fulfilling prophecy in hindsight.
♪♪ RAG - Requiem
♪♪ RAG - Requiem Angels cry, screaming silently over graveyards through tears I see silhouettes that lay my parents to rest
Angels cry, screaming silently over graveyards through tears I see silhouettes that lay my parents to rest
Looking back through weary eyes that water dead acres use the pains of yesterday to better my tomorrow.
Crazy. Someone who was hit with something so terrible since his early childhood...
and addressed it so brilliantly, with such a heavy burden on his shoulders.
If scriptures are to be trusted, then why would we grieve? Stories of disciples, written for the transition
Don't think about how you died, think about your lives and your shared times.
We did not realize that at the time... It was like... heavy stuff.
Think about our life and your time together Think about your teachings and a life spent together
Galla, my dear. Rest in poetry, forever.
Thanks so much for everything you left us with...
it's more than most of us will ever leave behind.
Thank you, thank you. Thanks a lot.
From then on, it all went really fast. And 'Unter Tage' was incredibly important to build the foundation for the label.
In the beginning, I barely noticed the changes. It started, when we didn't have to borrow a car from our friends,
but got a rental instead. When we had proper hotel rooms.
And when our opening acts were Curse and Kool Savas, and not some kids from the suburbs.
All of a sudden, we were on jams with 1,500 - 2,000 people in the audience. We'd never imagined that.
Of course, I noticed how people wanted to talk to us, or when kids at the gas station approached us to chat.
They got hip to us through the media, magazines, Viva and yada yada.
As usual in the music industry, big companies discover this subculture and think, “oh, we want some of that profit.”
For me personally, making money and hip-hop didn't go together at all. I didn't understand that you could even make money with hip-hop.
I think German rap has left the underground and entered the public consciousness with {Absolute Beginners's} 'Bambule..'
'Bambule' was the first hip-hop album that was commercially successful, but also, musically, really good.
Suddenly, this is working.
Literally everything hit the charts in those days. And then the major business kicked off.
We also met with Edel Records, and with Peter Cadera, and Peter Burz, and EMI.
With Moses {Pelham}, too. They all told us: “Guys, we're a bank.”
Okay, what does a bank do? They give you money and they want a return for that.
That's the most basic economic principle. We want to make profit,
and we define the rate of return before we start. And yet, they gave out huge advances...
this was insane money for young people.
First time I ever met with an A&R, we sat in a cafe in Kreuzberg and he said he'd give me 80,000, 100,000.
I couldn't believe it, this must be a mistake... I couldn't wrap my head around these numbers.
Samy {Deluxe} received four times the advance that I got.
EMI went all in, right from the start, with 200,000 Deutschmark...
Eventually, we found the best deal for us in a joint venture of Motor Music/Universal, us and Put Da Needle.
We had a few offers and they won the race. Tim Renner won the race.
I can understand why underground groups like RAG received huge advances at that time.
I think it's because people in the music industry back then didn't understand what they were actually buying.
We were scared even before we ever received any money in our account.
Like, if we agree to this deal, what will happen next?
What's going to happen, when these guys that used to travel from jam to jam, for the love of music alone, start having success?
How will they deal with the success, the fame, and the money?
How will they act once they're part of the music industry?
In 1999 RAG decide to cooperate with a major label.
For their second album they sign with Motor Music /Universal.
I guess, I did see this as a serious perspective for my life. I was a bit delusional and in love with a girl...
so I thought, this is my thing, I'm gonna make rap music for a living.
My dad used to roll his eyes but my mom was like “if you think it's right, do you.”
They came to a few gigs and, of course, they were proud. Papa, too.
Gigs like Bochum Total, with half a million people running through the city.
It feels like they just came for you. Naturally, my parents enjoyed that.
The internet didn't have today's reach, so you needed certain structures.
It wasn't as easy to make stuff independent.
Who do you want to to blame if the industry starts waving their bucks and buying out half of the scene?
That was very exciting. You know, reading my name between Eric Clapton, Elton John and Barbie Girl,
or whatever that shit was called. I felt like, sick, I'm making official shit now.
We've reached a new dimension now and everyone is eager to make something happen.
We have more budget at our disposal for advertising, more money for videos. We felt like this is really good for us.
Major labels were so attractive because they were a goal to reach.
But no one seemed to consider, what it actually meant to sign with them.
It's a different form of pressure, having to deliver certain sales numbers, and to do a special kind of promotion.
They have their template, and whatever works for Captain Jack has to work for Karsten, too? Doesn't always work that way.
This discrepancy caused, I think, the biggest problems of that era.
Artists and music business people were suddenly in the same boat, while their interests were completely different.
The assumption, the major labels had destroyed the scene, completely negates the fact,
that these musicians were all adults with a mind of their own. No one forced them to do anything.
The scene itself made a huge mistake when we didn't help and educate one another.
We could've made so much more money independently, had we realized that all we needed was a distributor.
We could have even distributed our own stuff, too.
That's why I think, the major labels only illuminated how broken this scene had already been.
Bochum City, August 9th, 2000.
We're still not flying, although in the year 2000 we should be flying.
But we're moving, as always, with a VW Passat from 1987.
Hi... just go on...
In those days, the second RAG album was recorded here in Bochum.
You could feel the pressure that was building up.
PAHEL: Woaaaah, I thought, wooooah.
KARSTEN: Eh, eh!
GALLA: Pssht, for fuck's sake.
KARSTEN: Yes, okay I will call him and then... I will call you again.
In these premises it all went down. Not on the ground floor but upstairs.
That's where we lived and made a whole lot of music.
There was my bedroom, a small kitchen. And the booth was in the back.
So nice. It's been beautiful here.
GALLA: Act like no one's watching.
PAHEL: Acting natural.
GALLA: Completely natural, guys. As if nothing's going on.
My behaviour was not much different from when we recorded our first album.
PAHEL: Galla, do you wanna smoke?
No, no, no!
PAHEL: Wanna smoke Galla?
No, no, no!
No!
PAHEL: You do.
-Yes!
No, no, no, no, no!
PAHEL: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
Mr. Wiz on the cut.
He can scratch, I'm telling you...
The issue has been brought up that I act exactly the same as when we did the first one.
Despite being signed to a major label for the second album.
But I also didn't want to play-act like I was someone else.
To me, this had become a job-like thing. I wanted to envision, where we wanna go with this record.
What are our options, what could be done?
Money changes everything. Where there's big money, the turf battles start.
I remember, they had their difficulties with 'Pottential.'
The production phase was very exhausting. We had a very rough time.
It was easier to live together and finish 'Unter Tage, ' than working on 'Pottential' together in this space.
It messed up our whole work flow. It was difficult for every single one of us.
The main problem of any second album is always, that you overthink it.
Just because there's pressure for the sophomore record to make more waves than the debut.
On the second album, a lot of things were discussed so much, that more important things might have fallen behind.
Even when it came to song titles, we had these endless discussions just to name one track.
It really made you wonder, if we're still right in the head...
Just like you could ponder over the right snare sound for weeks...
everyone is waiting to be creative and all you heard was “kch, kch, kch, kch.”
There were moments where you felt like it's not easy being in a band.
One goes all in, three fool around. Everyone felt like that at some point.
I came to the studio from the gym, or the other way around.
Karsten was like, “dude, can you please stay here so we can finally get this done?”
But I had three or four things simultaneously, that I wanted to work on.
Karsten said he was sweating bullets to get the guys motivated. Gabriel didn't function.
And they knew they had to deliver. Imagine you'd have to squeeze a record out of that.
We have received this money, but we haven't earned it yet. It's an advance, folks!
Not for work that has been done already, not for the last three albums, but for the one we're making right now.
And that's when I started to be a monkey wrench in the works.
I had a hard time staying focused and developing as an MC.
That annoyed the hell out of Gabriel and Karsten. Galla wasn't much different from me.
Not getting an external management involved at some point was an epic fail.
We were not ready to handle and organize everything ourselves.
KARSTEN: and be creative at the same time.
That was a huge task.
We even met with {German pop star} Herbert Grönemeyer. He had already caught wind of what we were doing.
But how can we involve Herbert so that he's into it, but without making it a pop song?
Oh well, we sent him two loop-based sketches. Totally bananas, in hindsight.
What did we expect, that he'd come back with a chorus idea, or what?
I don't know.
In 2001 the second RAG album 'Pottential' drops.
♪♪ RAG - Ragtime
The second RAG album, 'Pottential, ' is, for me, the better RAG album.
In all honesty. It's more concise. It's hip-hop on its highest level.
I thought 'Pottential' was beyond awesome, but it didn't have the same element of surprise.
'Pottential' was maybe too complex for my taste.
It obviously didn't have what a major album needed at that time.
Namely, a big, commercial song that promotes the album beyond your core audience.
I have never properly listened to the second RAG album. Which doesn't mean, it wasn't good.
I obviously can't be the judge here. But my interest in the German rap scene at that time was non-existent.
From an industry perspective, it definitely flopped.
We made two expensive videos and sold less than we did from our debut, which we made independently.
So, it had to be a flop.
I mean, the label didn't call anymore either.
Well, yes, it could have happened.
It did not, I guess.
2001 was the end of an era in German hip-hop.
That's when it all changed, followed by a period where everyone was trying to find the next big thing.
But, for a year or two, it was nowhere to he found.
Most importantly, everyone who rocked a snapback got signed! So much garbage music came out...
It felt like a self-cleansing to me.
Only logical, seeing that someone like Nina MC got 250,000, 300,000,
400,000 in advance, just based on speculations she might deliver another “Bon Voyage”
so everyone can cash in again...
It was insane. And that's how it all killed itself, by making it completely uninteresting.
That didn't change until Berlin and Aggro {Berlin} came in with a new impulse for a new generation.
I thought, the drought was a good thing.
It felt right, because, to me, everything sounded wack, at this point.
2002, the first Savas album came out, followed by Bushido in 2003.
2004, Sido released 'Maske' and everything was different.
This means, in 2001, two developments started to overlap.
The commercial development went down while the underground was bubbling up again.
The commercial development went down while the underground was bubbling up again. And RAG somehow fell between the cracks.
How much potential for self-destruction does a so-called sub culture,
that is wholly based on the idea of letting your ego roam freely, have?
That explains why a band like RAG didn't continue to move forward.
Due to their own impetus, or the lack thereof. It's not like anyone told them: “you're no longer allowed to take part.”
Even during recording it was clear,
that we wouldn't work together again once it's done.
It became apparent that our momentum was good for one or two albums.
But it was necessary that we'd go our separate ways.
The four of us together is always difficult.
Three is okay. Two of us is fine!
We never lost touch. We just didn't gather as a group,
knowing all too well, what that would lead to.
And then everything drifted apart.
No one ever officially said, RAG is dead. It just slowly petered out.
Karsten once said that we don't have to kill the cow, if we can still milk it.
You know, not burning any bridges. But it's been a real test at times.
For example, in Leer, Karsten and Galla had an altercation.
That's one thing, I really didn't mean to speak about.
The idea was to play a revival gig. We don't really make new music but,
hey, maybe we can record something, try some stuff out.
And then that day turned out to be just so fucked up.
We were all so moody and played a really sloppy show.
Not how we're supposed to perform.
And I've been telling Galla all night don't do this, don't do that, fuck, fuck, fuck.
It was too much for him.
At one point he just had enough and came for me.
“You don't get to tell me what to do anymore!”
There was some back and forth, I was like, “what's wrong with you?”
Gabriel held back Karsten, I was holding back Galla.
Pahel tried to intervene and basically caught a hook for me.
Galla just started swinging and Pahel went: “Did you... did you just punch me?!”
We all knew, this is it for a while.
In the early 2000s RAG go separate ways.
PAHEL: So, Gabriel is still here...
GABRIEL: And tomorrow and next week.
PAHEL: Sure, but since you're not here tomorrow we gotta go to the Lincoln Memorial right now.
When I went to Brazil for the first time, I felt much more at home than in Germany.
I'm much more German, than Brazilian. But emotionally, I felt much more welcome in Brazil.
In Wattenscheid, I couldn't walk for five minutes up to school before someone yelled,
“there goes the negro!” Straight up!
Totally normal, when we grew up.
Exactly. That's one of my main reasons for being here now.
When my daughter was about to be born, I didn't want her to have to go through the same things.
When I was 14, there was no black life in Germany. Not that I recall.
When I started to go to a regular school, everyone started grabbing my hair all the time.
Excuse me, I'm no zoo animal. I'd like to be asked before someone touches me.
Then there was a lice outbreak in my school, and guess who they sent home: me!
Funny enough, because they sent me home, I was the only one who didn't catch lice.
Wow, it's packed here today.
We're here in the South Bronx. My family lives here, which means I'm here a lot, too.
It's a bit of an annual trip.
New York City, Bronx. South Bronx.
Best bagel round here. Yes.
This is your boy almighty Gawdflow, I'm with the one and only monumental Beat Sampraz,
representing Germany, all the way in the South Bronx. Promoting that vibe and spreading positivity.
It always feels like coming home, when I'm here.
On my father's side, we're American-Liberians.
I have to hack up a little: Liberia is a state in Africa that was founded by former US slaves.
The plan was repatriation and freedom,
But then they suppressed the population over there with all-too-familiar methods.
At one point, my family went back to the US. My father's brothers all ended up here.
My family has a Liberian history, but our life is clearly African-American.
Have a prosperous day.
We decided to leave Bochum pretty early on.
When I came here for the first time in 2001 to see how my future wife lived and to meet her parents.
We weren't married then, didn't have any kids.
This is where we sat. It was a relaxed October evening and I thought, you could live here.
Another beautiful city. Amsterdam is beautiful, Bremen is beautiful...
Saarbrücken... But you might as well live in D.C.
And now I've been here for 13 years. Crazy.
When I moved to the US, I had trouble with the tax office.
I came here with very little money.
Just enough to get settled.
I worked on construction sites as a heavy equipment operator for six years.
Just to have a steady income, because I didn't make any money from music.
That was difficult. It went from doing one show for a few hundred,
or a few thousand Euros, to working a whole month for 2000, 3000 Dollars.
It's a big difference.
I didn't really make any money from music in the past years.
At one point, I released an album in Germany.
But I make my own money. I do whatever it takes for my children.
I'm fortunate enough that the mother of my children is a doctor and can provide for our lifestyle.
It's more than what I could provide.
Which is why I think my children should rather go into a field, where the income is more secured.
Now that I'm here, it's not all smooth sailing either.
Things get stressful in every relationship and every marriage.
Two years ago, when I was planning to move permanently to Brazil,
I found a letter from my father, written in 1986.
“I shouldn't have left you. We could have figured it out somehow.”
It felt like a message from the past.
“Don't make the same mistakes. Stay with your family, pull through.”
It was almost a bit eerie. So I thought, okay, I won't be a coward and I won't just piss off.
It was quite rough for some time. Now it's a bit more calm.
But it's never easy, living between worlds.
Oh, the tower house, an utterly ugly building. Frequently used for suicide attempts, too.
I never had a traditional 9 to 5 job. I've always worked part-time or freelance.
At one point I was working for a streetwear distribution. I drove to fairs and sold their stuff.
But that was all just temporary. I knew I'd have some gigs again soon,
so I wouldn't need to do this forever.
I didn't actually have a plan after 'Pottential.'
For Galla and Pahel, it seemed much more important to release their own albums and show what they're capable of.
But in my case, with a lot of people asking for a solo album, I didn't really have that plan.
He's one of the reasons why I even started rapping. I even got accepted into drama school with lyrics
by the rapper who now stands beside me.
RAG was my favorite band. Aphroe!
There's a song on Roey Marquis's 'Ming' album, it's called “Eiszeit.”
And the verse that Aphroe rapped on “Eiszeit,” I wrote it down,
learned it by heart and got accepted into acting school reciting it.
So please give it up for, Aphroe!
Aphroe is one of the most gifted MCs Germany has ever seen.
Everyone who really engaged with hip-hop knew that.
So it's no surprise that after the band split up
people wanted to hear an Aphroe solo record. You just wanted to hear more of him.
He hadn't released any solo material at this point. He was basically gone for years.
But he still had a special reputation: this is Aphroe from RAG. A very special MC.
Pahel and Galla did release some music, it just didn't get a huge response.
Which was a shame. In terms of quality, there was some good stuff in there.
It just didn't fit the times anymore.
Around 2010, contact between Karsten and me intensified again.
He wrote me that he had new music and wanted to release it somewhere. “Are you down?”
I believe, this was the first ever Aphroe solo release.
BEN: How have you found the response to your gig at Splash! today and, of course,
to the announcement of your album and single?
It's still a bit reserved, which is to be expected
when there's nothing but radio silence from my end for ages.
But the feedback we have had is overwhelmingly positive.
People are excited, Facebook gets visited, WPM and Groove Attack get their pre-orders in... it's moving.
When we started to link up, this sword of Damocles-type 'Kavaliersdelikt' album title already hung over his head.
For years, he had made announcements:
“Kavaliersdelikt? my album, it's coming. The Aphroe solo album. I'm doing it."
In certain circles, everyone was losing it: the Aphroe solo album, the Aphroe solo album, it's coming.
BEN: So we'll see you in 2011 with the full record.
Exactly, that's the plan. We're working on it.
Thereby, he raised the bar for himself and, at the same time, put a heavy burden on his shoulders.
In the context of the new Aphroe releases, he also played a main stage show with a live band at Splash! Festival.
That gig was somewhat ill-fated.
If that was psychosomatic, I don't know... I totally lost my voice.
The day before the gig I had rehearsed with the band and Rheza in Dortmund.
Maybe that was the root of the problem.
The next day, I'm driving to pick up Rheza...
I couldn't utter a sound.
That's your mind playing tricks on you. I have no idea, what was going on that day.
The slot was at 6 in the afternoon and it wasn't too crowded in front of the stage.
It was apparent that a lot of them were rather bored and waiting for {German rapper} Casper to begin.
That's when you have to go, “okay... whatever.”
♪♪ Unter Tage live
It felt like there's Karsten and then there's a live band,
but they never seemed to form a union.
♪♪ Kopf Stein Pf taster - live
It didn't do justice to what he represented as an MC.
It was an attempt to deflect from himself.
RHEZA: Splash!, are you enjoying yourselves? Are you down with Aphroe?
What's up with your album?
It's coming!
Just a little teaser upfront. A tiny teaser after 18 years...
what am I supposed to do...
It's not like I only announced it once. I've even announced Raid albums in the past,
it's a recurring theme with me.
I've thrown Raid titles like 'Syntaxterror' and 'Jackpott' out there.
Here's the lost copy of the never-released Raid album 'Syntaxterror.
Goosebumps.
I think, on this song he explains, why he calls himself Aphroe.
That's “Stille Post.”
Working on a solo record, you have to defeat your inner demons
that tell you, it's not good enough. That you have to get back to the drawing board.
That the lines are not perfect. And, that you don't wanna be on stage by yourself
but with your friends, your safety net.
Aphroe puts so much into his music and his craft.
And, I think, he also has those dark phases.
So when you, at the same time, insist that your album is coming
-no really, it's coming - and you have such a devoted fanbase,
then there's a lot of pressure building up.
I heard a ton of tracks that Karsten has made. I made a bunch of them myself.
However, none of them got finished.
Sometimes you get too little, sometimes you get too much.
The problem is somewhere in here. I couldn't point a finger at it, like, this is the problem.
Every artist suffers from their own perfectionism.
You're always blocking your own way. Who's in your way, really?
Well he and he is... stop it. It's always yourself.
Eventually, I didn't come up with anything I wanted to get out there, like it would change anything.
Until I stumbled over a stupid idea like '90.'
♪♪ Aphroe - Wer halt das Wort?
I remember, when he came with the idea: he wanted to pick his favourite 90s cuts
and add his own lyrics in the style of the original. My initial thought was “well, okay...”
♪♪ Aphroe - Wer hält das Wort?
But I was happy that he found something that enabled him to he creative.
And when he sent over the first results, they were dope!
♪♪ Aphroe - Zeit ist knapp
He re-built the flows as well.
That's an incredible feat, there's just little appreciation for such an effort.
NIKO BACKSPIN: We're sitting in our office and suddenly we hear there's a new Aphroe album.
But instead of “Kavaliersdelikt, the subject line says '90.
Naturally, we think, oh man, What's up with 'Kavaliersdelikt.
Is that your personal 'Detox?'
To him, '90' was an exciting challenge, and, of course, a tribute to the kind of hip-hop that informed his style.
But, to me, it felt like another sidestep.
However, it was and still is a great record, a fun record.
It wasn't 'Kavaliersdelikt, ' but '90' was an Aphroe solo album
and I'm still thankful that it exists.
He remains to be RAG's MC legend, no one can take that from him.
And we're still patiently waiting on the big solo album.
As a fan, I'll forever wait for the Aphroe album to drop.
And I'll love it, when it's out. Period.
We're not far from where I was born, just down the street, actually.
A few years back, there was an arts and graffiti event called Infusion
for which the writers had a bit of a memory lane theme.
These pieces are paying tribute to dudes who have passed away.
That's how the piece for Galla came to be.
Some hum crossed the piece. We'll soon make sure it looks nice again.
Galla had moved to Berlin at an early point. Mostly, because he was in love.
But he also needed this for his personal development.
It was about time for him to let go.
Our encounter came at the right time for him. Everything was brand new for me as well, so we discovered Berlin together.
I remember, on his first ever Labour Day {May 1}, Berlin was full of police and helicopters. A gripping atmosphere.
Suddenly, two hooded guys ran up to him and yelled “Kopf Stein Pf taster” {Pavement}! He was very happy.
2004 he opened up his store in Kreuzberg. I went there a few times.
My company installed the ad banners at the front of his store.
Me and Pahel went to the opening. Back then, Galla was still doing fine.
The Köpenickerstraße 1. He really believed in his idea - and he was generally good at convincing people, including me.
His idea was to open up a hip-hop fashion store.
That doesn't sound outrageous from today's perspective but, at the time, this was rather unique.
He wanted it to be a store with real emphasis on style,
which is why he called it Hoodlum Street Boutique.
Around that time I was working at {German rap label} Royal Bunker with Marcus Staiger.
I did PR for Fumanshu of {Berlin rap crew} MOR. We regularly hung out with Kool Savas.
Liked Galla a lot. We saw each other every now and then.
I lived nearby on Wrangelstraße, which wasn't a good area at all back then.
That was Kreuzberg. And not like today, where it feels like a fairground.
My tour manager Adnan used to live with Galla.
From RAG, Galla is by far the one I had the closest and warmest relationship with.
He continued to make music here. 'Swing Kid, ' the Galla solo album...
I saw him flourish, with his new relationship and the solo record.
I was very proud of my guy. Man, dope.
Initially, I didn't believe he would make it in Berlin. I was proven wrong.
Galla was always open and accessible.
I think he wanted the shop to be a hangout spot,
simply because the hip-hop scene and community had given him a lot of stability.
We had a lot of visitors and people loved hanging out at our store.
However, they didn't buy anything. Very few did. It was more of a meeting point.
Of course, he met people that he connected with and that accepted him.
But at the same time, he encountered difficulties that he didn't expect.
The Ruhr area is by no means a soft environment, but Berlin is always a bit different.
No one in Berlin cares about your fame elsewhere.
If you're the shit in Dortmund, that means nothing in Berlin.
He was a rapper that a few people in Berlin knew and liked,
but some of the street guys also wanted to fuck him over. Some of them tried to do just that.
He didn't expect it, and it really threw him off.
He was 10 years too early with an idea that could be successful there today.
But he wasn't business-minded enough, either.
Neither of us were professional enough.
That was the main problem.
We didn't think it through.
The shop went out of business two years later. I heard it went bankrupt.
It was very tough for us. And that was the end of our relationship.
You don't plan a separation, these things just happen.
I simply reached a point where I couldn't take it anymore.
That's when we started to lose track of him...
In 2008, I was stuck in Germany with an expired Green Card.
I saw Galla a few times back then and he was planning to go back to Bochum.
He knew that if he stayed in Berlin, he'd go under.
His relationship falling apart might have pushed him over the edge.
Even before that, he'd dropped most of the people who'd been there for him.
One evening, I hear someone knocking on my window.
My friends know, if the doorbell rings, I'm not opening up. Who knows, who's at the door.
But everyone who knocks is very welcome.
I opened the door and there was Galla, holding an Aldi bag: “Sven, I'm back.”
And then he crashed in my living room for three weeks.
I went to work, Galla slept a bit longer. Watched cartoons on TV.
That was all he needed. It was a very good time.
It was a fresh start for him.
I know that he enjoyed being back in Bochum.
He kept me company when I went writing graffiti.
We went to gigs, he even did a few solo shows.
Nothing fancy, just so he had some money.
We took care that he always had a place to sleep for a while.
After a month, I had to part ways with him. Sadly it just wasn't working out.
We always made sure he had a few jobs. We painted apartments together.
I helped him earn his own money. Worst case, I gave him some... but that didn't help.
And then it all went downhill very fast.
I have to say, 10, 15 friends
supported him with all they had.
We told him, you can't stay in bed until noon every day. Get a grip.
You gotta keep things moving, we're all here for you.
He never complained.
Never asked for help.
No one left him hanging.
But I can't ask him to please do something for the 50th time,
and get disappointed for the 50th time.
At one point, I had to tell him, Michael, I'm sorry, I'll happily go to the shops with you
but I won't give you any more money. Because you'll just go to the pub.
We tried everything to shake him up. But it was futile.
A friend of ours always kept an eye on him, like an older sister, basically.
One day she told us, “I don't really see him that much anymore.”
Truth is, for some time, we had no clue where he was.
We didn't hear anything, no sign of life.
That's when you understand what it means to feel helpless.
We lost touch with each another for about six months.
At the time, my company opened up a clothing store in Bochum.
That's where Galla and I met again, after a long time.
I lend him some money and learned that he was homeless.
He never told me that before, he always said he was going to his sister.
I honestly did not know that he had developed such an alcohol and drug habit.
Next thing I know, I received a call from the cops asking if I knew a Mr. Galla.
They found my number in his most recent calls. That was a punch in the face.
I was asked yesterday, if he'd died from cancer.
I've heard that before. He didn't die from cancer.
No, I think his body was just done with it.
He simply died overnight in his sleep.
It wasn't inevitable. The night when it happened,
he was alone in a hotel room.
Hadn't he been alone, he might have just ended up in a hospital for a while.
But when he needed it most, he was alone.
It's difficult, because...
it happened, y'know.
There's nothing you...
we couldn't influence him, Galla lived his own life
and didn't take anyone's advice.
He listened, but he still made his own decisions that led to this.
There's no one to blame. None of us, not his family.
These are individual decisions.
We're all still coping with the grief, to be honest.
Which is... very exhausting.
It's just surreal to think, we're still here and he's gone.
And everyone has this one moment that is particularly terrible.
I remember, I DJed in Dortmund when Galla was back in Bochum.
And then the whole crew got on the train I took from Cologne to Dortmund.
Michael and I were talking and...
the whole conversation subtly felt like saying goodbyes.
Just awful...
Fuck.
This is a really terrible moment for me. It still is.
Galla was religious. So we knew we didn't want the welfare office
to pay for a standard funeral. We didn't want that.
Instead, they organized a jam to gather enough money to finance the funeral.
My company rented out the location, the Rotunde in Bochum.
Pahel, Karsten and Gabriel got in touch with everyone. It mostly just took one email.
They all came and performed for free.
Everyone we asked to come, whether it's Curse, Stieber Twins, Torch, Cora E.,
everyone went, “of course, I'm there for Michael.” Awesome.
It was our goal to throw a party that Galla
would have absolutely loved, had he been there.
This was so hip-hop.
I mean, everything you ever believed in,
the whole community aspect that Galla missed so much in Berlin.
My man, if you could have seen this.
Everything that you missed, it was not gone.
I have friends that I'm closer with in person or in my day-to-day.
But it's a bit like a school class; as if we really formed a generation.
Something in those days connected us in ways that
I... I'm getting goosebumps just thinking of that moment.
♪♪ Kopf Stein Pftaster - live
IMMO: A few words?
RAG, the best.
This was the dopest thing I ever experienced. Rest in peace, Galla.
Since Galla's death in 2011, RAG have not performed live.
In 2018, 20 years after their debut, Pahel, Wiz and Aphroe go on tour.
December 2018 Final tour stop, Dusseldorf
A lot has happened since.
We went back on stage together.
We did a 'Unter Tage' 20th anniversary tour.
It was awesome. Whether it was 200 people or 1000 people,
it was sold out everywhere. Nothing but love.
We were a real unit, the three of us.
We never even wanted to imagine that it could work, or that it should work.
I almost felt beamed back in time.
Standing in a venue with so many people...
do you really want that?
I hadn't really made up my mind.
I was just happy being able to perform the songs again.
Because I know we can perform.
The fact that we have to do it as a trio now... it's shit.
But it's incredibly beautiful, that we have created something that really means something to people.
It feels like we can be proud of what we've done.
And that we sometimes put our foot down and didn't comply with every kind of bullshit.
It's not like now the band is back together and tomorrow we're recording the new album.
That won't happen, of course.
It's a real relationship. We're working on it, we're talking things out.
That's a clear win, it's always a win.
As a child, all I ever wanted was to be heard.
And I achieved that. So it's all good.
No problem.
It's hard to explain, but we're real friends.
This is something that will last. I don't think we'll ever lose track of one another.
We had so much fun together
and really, really, really laughed a lot.
I love these guys.
I went away for three years. I simply needed to find myself.
I left the city. It's been nice, working up there in Berlin.
But peace of mind can only be found here, in the 'Pott' {the Ruhr Area}.
The heart stays here. God in heaven!