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There seems to be one thing that you need to achieve in order to get a deal with Austrian's Tonträger Records: You gotta be ill with the words. And not the superficial, blah blah, pc, yeah everybody is lyrically kinda tight. Naw man, Tonträger has shown in the past what you can do with the German language. Be it that you're one of the Texta rappers, a Die Antwort rapper or Kayo. And with this Rückgrat release, you can add MC Markee (the group's sole rapper) and his guests to that list, including the female rapper Miss Verständnis.
She appears on "2 in der Tinte" and her verse is mainly poetic, but with double rhymes and a secure flow, she manages to really put a firm foot on the ground. MC Markee then spits "ich schreibe Fairness gross wie Kayo", what must be a reference to Kayo's incredible verse on "Hot Calibre". So both person's words are definitely on point, but it's the beat that gets the gas face. And the beats are actually the main problem on this album.
While Megga pleases with many really hard beats, be it on the very dominant "Arbeit", the good "S'nexte Extrem" or a little less on the cut after that: "Mein 1x1 sind Rhymes". There's however something that still separates him from a true master like The Opus. While he comes closer on the good "Wortgefecht" and close on "Auf der Flucht", he again really fails with "2 in der Tinte", where a horrible keyboard flute appears over an unimpressive shuffle.
The beat on "Dreckige Rapz" is also really bad. It's based around one of those desperate bass like guitars, that are bouncy and were already annoying a couple of years ago. It's completely lacking anything new and thus is just old and boring. The same type of style is again approached on "Arche Noah", but here completed much better. "Strassenwissen" then even takes some old elements and mixes it with speed and the attempted bareness to create one of the best beats on here. Just as good is "Spuck Rapz", as Megga takes the hardness, gives it a science fictitious element, and it suddenly tells a story too. What is something that Twang also achieves on his only beat "Zeit-Rougher". Other than that, he's responsible for the many, the very many scratches, that are always precise and add a lot of content to the hooks, or gaps in the verses. An incredible example of that is "Konfrontation", where Markee and Twang converse together.
The best lyrical moment however appears on "Schmutzige Wäsche", as Markee really lets out a lot of steam, criticizing the state of the art, calling rap the celebrity and himself the bodyguard who protects it from all the crap. He goes on to rhyme "mein Repertoire reicht von Battle Rap bis Bussgebet / ich bin wie Medusa: Rappers sind schon stoned wenn sie nur zusehn' / und müssen zusehens zusehn' und sich zusehn', um überhaupt noch etwas zu sehen".
What's pretty much a typical style for the Tonträger artists, are the wordplay songs like "Strassenwissen", where Markee takes street and traffic sayings, similes, etc. to write the verse. Or on "Mein 1x1 sind Rhymes", where he battles you with mathematics expressions. And while this is very typical for the camp, it's actually on a level that's very rare anywhere else in the world. While there's also serious issues approached, as on "Fortschritt". So sit down and pay attention. Something you'll especially need to do to understand a track like "Dreckige Rapz", which is one of those where Markee starts to rhyme in dialect, or 'Mundart'.
Of course it's always hard to sell a record to someone that doesn't speak the language. Especially if there's restraint excitement about the element that's communicated in the universal language: the music. But the number of beats that are less than average is small. The number of good beats is actually above average, compared to the rest of the rap world. And lyrically, well, there's very little competition. |
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