CHANGE OF TUNE
It’s a Tuesday evening in the east Berlin neighbourhood of Friedrichshain. A diverse young crowd is gathered outside Badehaus, a run-down music venue that closely resembles a western saloon, waiting patiently for the doors to open. After a short while a man – wearing a vest so low-cut both nipples are on display – appears from inside and gestures for them to enter. Dutifully, they begin to file in.
Once inside, two frontmen promptly emerge on-stage. One’s short while the other is so tall he almost hits his head on the low ceiling. A voice booms from behind the bar: “I wanna hear everybody up in here say… ‘It’s Tuesday!’” As the crowd break into cheers, the performers begin drilling out razor-sharp freestyle verses over an up-tempo trap beat. “Welcome to the hip hop revolution,” one of them says, surveying the room. “It’s beautiful to see you all here tonight. Now: bounce.”
This is SWAG Jam, a hip hop open mic night that’s grown from a spontaneous gathering of like-minded friends to something of a weekly phenomenon. Events like this are becoming a regular fixture on the German cultural scene – because right now, hip hop is the single most influential genre in the country. While artists from the UK and US remain popular, Germany’s homegrown acts are the ones that dominate: you’re far more likely to hear domestic artists such as MERO, CapitalBra,
