The sample goes in the wrong direction, the drum loop goes against itself, the piano treads water, Textor enters the room with a head-nodding line. Can this work, here, today? Before you can seriously address these questions, you are somewhere else entirely, with the human body, the proclamation of immediacy, and all of this feels even more irritating because the beat underneath lurches so neatly in a loop, so everything and nothing has changed, after ten seconds in the song, after ten years in reality.

Kinderzimmer Productions played their last concerts around this time, (pretty) unplugged in Dortmund and orchestrated in Vienna, an experimental but conciliatory gesture to say goodbye after around twenty years of hip hop, always slightly off track. From the beginnings as a trio under the already very nursery-friendly name "Die 3 Rüben" to the time as a duo, whose name is committed to the uncompromising nature of the Boogie Down Productions crew, but at the same time is aware of the difference between Ulm and the Bronx, to success in feature articles and on festival stages. For six studio albums, anyone trying to classify the music was left with no luck - the sound was too rough for the charts, the lyrics were too vulgar without coming from the street, the songs drifted into jazz territory without leaving hip hop. When German-language rap wanted a short break for the second time after the boom and the subsequent lull around the turn of the millennium, Henrik von Holtum (aka Textor) and Sascha Klammt (aka Quasi Modo) agreed. The Aggro era came to an end and Kinderzimmer stopped production.

If these days withDeath Contempt To GoSo when a seventh album is released after all, one may feel a brief moment of uncertainty about the past time, but as anticipated: The music dispels any doubts in no time, precisely because Kinderzimmer Productions developed an independent approach so early on, which they can also easily pursue in 2019. Especially after some comebacks that seemed rather confused between the spirit of the times and tradition, this certainty is a relief, without the record becoming boring. On the contrary, part of the plan is to haphazardly build almost endless spaces in which bass lines can get lost, through which organs haunt, voices take off and drums roll like bales of hay. Only here does Textor have enough space to associate himself through a no man's land between high school slang and battle rap. There is no reason for the usual feedback rhetoric, there is no need for such a “gala procedure”, nor is there any need for personal reflection or a look at the life already lived, after all, this is not an “attempt to overcome a midlife crisis”.

Nobody here wants to know again, Textor and Quasi Modo already know. At Christmas two years ago, the two got together as friends, exchanged a few ideas, interfered with each other's suggestions, and the team was back in sync. A warm-up phase with live concerts and testing whether there was still a market for this band was not necessary. In fact, the "flavor of the month" was to be avoided, says Textor, and instead to channel a "power in hip hop that many people don't get a hold of." It's about multidimensionality in text and music, not necessarily what you say, but "the way you talk shit." To use this association again, it is certainly reminiscent of jazz, especially when such a beautiful film noir atmosphere arises as inWatch Me. In the end, this is rap as it has always been rap, with an attitude that Textor calls “bravado” – that is, showing off, “fighting the army of darkness with a pocket knife”. Although that is almost too concrete an image for a group that works best in the vague, in the abstract – listen to it onDeath Contempt To Go.

Sebastian Berlich