For several reasons I took a little break from this blog. First I watched a lot of games UEFA Euro competition and second my former wife is in Germany to visit me. So I seldom found enough time for posting. A few weeks ago my brother introduced me to a video by HipHop band from Hamburg that really went out of my radar. Beginner is a Hamburg based in the mid 90s as Absolute Beginners. Their first album with their English spoken songs sold a lot of copies. From their second record on they did their rhymes in German. I am not a huge fan of HipHop though, but some bands/songs grabbed me. This is the first song from their upcoming album. They do their rhymes about bringing back HipHop to Hamburg over a drastic keyboard sequence that. It is a good song and a great black and white video.
The last week I have a contribution in this series posted which has concerned psychedelic music in the farthest sense. Today I am back on earth again with a musician that I love all over the years. He started with an album full of reggae track and explicit political lyrics to turn a few years later into the funk and soul scene. Jan Delay is a German singer, songwriter and producer whose stylistic range includes mainly hip hop, reggae, dub and funk. He started with a band called Absolute Beginner. I first recognized him with his first record by his own name in 2001. His record Searching for the Jan soul rebels was tribute to Dexy's Midnight Runners first record with a similar title. When I have heard the album the first time I was simply overpowered, because I would not have thought that a German musician can have such a feeling for reggae and dub. Not only that he created his own style in music he wrote some lyrics that impressed me as well. I could agree to this left-wing influenced statements until now.
After this record it was very quiet about him, although he played several big open air festivals in Germany throughout the years. He came back with a totally different style. Also singing through his nose the way Bob Dylan used to do it his whole life he returned with a new sound. Changing from reggae and dub into funk and soul. With his record Mercedes Dance he entered the charts again and it was a high recommended record in this kind of music. But if you would ask me, which kind of Jan Delay I like most you would get the answer: I like more his reggae style than his funky style.
