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Berlin: Rap lyrics are sometimes controversial: References to sex and violence, along with the fluid use of profanity, offend some. But German rappers Kollegah and Farid Bang took offensive to a level leading to criminal investigation.
Ahead of Germany’s biggest music awards ceremony in April, the pair were nominated for two awards. But controversy emerged over lyrics from the duo’s newest record, “Jung, Brutal, Gutaussehend 3,” (Young, brutal, good-looking 3). The album included references to the Holocaust, saying their bodies are “more defined than those of Auschwitz inmates,” and that they will “make another Holocaust.”
German rappers Kollegah and Farid Bang, whose song refers to “my body’s more defined than an Auschwitz inmate’s” receive the “Hip-Hop/Urban national” award during the 2018 Echo Music Awards ceremony in Berlin.
Photo: AP
A number of people filed complaints to the police over the lyrics, saying they violated German laws concerning hate speech and anti-Semitism. But on Saturday, the Düsseldorf prosecutor’s office issued a statement saying the lyrics were “neither an endorsement nor a trivialization of the Nazi regime and its genocide”.
The prosecutor acknowledged the lyrics are misogynistic and violent, but said that does not offer him grounds to prosecute the rappers.
“The comparison of a concentration camp inmate with their own body may be tasteless, but it does not represent denial of the Holocaust,” the statement said.
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