Germany´s #1 thug rapper Bushido just released his autobiography “Bushido” and promptly lead Germany´s best seller charts, breaking the 100.000 sales barrier in just three weeks after its release.

Riding on the coattails of American rappers like 50 Cent and Eminem, German gangsta rappers have made a strong showing on the charts in Germany in the last years. The last albums by Tunisian-German Bushido have made their debuts in the Top 10 — and shaken a Germany not used to hearing ghetto tales of death and revenge in its own language. A good 15 years after the music genre spread from the streets of American cities to tough neighborhoods from Rio de Janeiro to Marseilles, gangsta rap has hit it big in Germany, where tamer rap has been popular for years. German rap has traditionally ceded ground to imports from across the Atlantic. Though some German hip-hop groups found success in the 1990’s, German, unlike French and English, is not a language that accommodates the genre. The language features many combination words with an avalanche of syllables that don’t rhyme well together, impairing a rapper’s ability to let loose a smooth and creative flow. That, combined with inferior production quality and beats, kept young people listening to rap imports. German rap’s newfound success is partly a result of improved production quality and better lyrics, and partly a realization that Germany has its own problem neighborhoods, where failed integration and social hardship are part of the daily struggle.

The first ever German thug rap was released in 1994 by Frankfurt based Konkret Finn Duo, consisting of Iz + Tone, which can be considered a blue print for all following German thug rap. Check out their legendary “Ich Diss Dich” (I diss you), rapped in hard boiled “Hessian” (the local Frankfurt dialect). Download it from here:

KONKRET FINN “ICH DISS DICH”