One of my favorite rap artist’s name – correction, my absolute favorite rap artist’s name – is an anagram of that American-Intelligence-Token, which recently attained quite an amount of media reputation over here. Guess who. Right, it’s NaS, born Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones. His voice accompanies me since the age of 13, that is, more than half of the time I’m alive. I admit: His lyrics aren’t significantly more thoughtful or distinct than those of most American Hip-Hop idols – check: Life’s a bitch and then you die / That’s why we get high / Cause you never know when you’re gonna go. It’s an ongoing mix of infantile rebellion and supposedly street-approved knowledge on, well, the way shit just works. NaS’ fluffy bomber jackets, the use of diffuser in his videos, his tattoos – it’s an aesthetic disaster, even for the 90ies. Still: He’s simply the coolest. Illmatic, an album released in 1994, is my way to cherish a fading myth of New York as a city between underground-scenes, Graffiti (the Graffiti which has not yet been domesticated into the Lifestyle-Section of your local, alternative bookstore), the glittering echoes of cultural appropriation: music, dance, poetry. This New York might have never existed, again, I admit: I hardly know the city! Most of what I claim to know stems from an unhandy CD-Player (one of those things we once called Boom-Box or Ghetto-Blaster), which has its place right above the flush of my toilet. Since the summer ended (since the sun left Berlin like the color left my face), every morning when I take a shower, instead of listening to stuff people of my age and profession should be attentive to (Deutschlandfunk, daily news, foreign radio), I get deep with Illmatic – and stamped out of time. Me, myself and I feel like the coolest triple on earth. The water drips off my skin and the beat makes me mimic what must look like some fanatic in front of the Western Wall. I towel myself waving my arms in the air like a confused cowboy who suffers Tourette. I feel – this is not an act of admitting –, this kind of music has the power to pull me through a proper Berlin winter. To me it delivers, what others get from relationships or a weekend in some SPA-retreat: seasoning soul food.
All this should leave room for doubt. Sometimes I feel that I won’t ever be able to visit New York, not even for my friends there, because I want to retain some of those vibes magnetized in NaS’ music. If it contained a bit more NSA – transparency in the bad sense – the myth might disenchant. Maybe it’s also just my selective imagination preventing this. Anyway, for now I’ll keep showering.