The Fans call you “Fantas”, their music is singing in German hands. Plates scratched to be of the “And. Ypsilon, the rhythm of a President”. 30 years ago they gave their first concert on a stage made of Euro-pallets.
Pretty shaky, it was on this stage, remember. Ypsilon, real name Andreas Rieke. “I stood there with my tape deck and I have fired the base beats.” And the Whole front of 50 people in a Kindergarten. This Gig has remained the Andreas, and the three MCs, Michi Beck, Smudo, and Thomas D. such good memory that you have chosen the date as the “birthday” of your Band: 7. July 1989.
Since then, the “Fantasista” ten Studio and eight Live – have released albums that were five Times the number One. On several occasions they won the most important German music awards. And they brought the Hip Hop to Germany and German Rap salon ready.
For services to the German language, the Fantas received the prestigious Jacob Grimm prize that honors the “development and maintenance of German as a language of culture“
Their Singles have become, with two exceptions, no number 1 Hits, but still, Songs like “she’s gone”, “day of the sea”, “The picnickers”, “Too Horny for this world”, “Michi Beck in Hell” or the word storm in “Let the sunshine in” from Fans in and out mitgerappt. Their Songs are a cult. Many of today’s 30-Year-old grew up with the music of the Fantas.
Older than Cro and Alligatoah
Today’s German Rap Stars were not yet in the world, as the Fantas started their band career. With colorful clothes and baseball caps, they bounced happily through your Videos and put in the German music scene very quickly your own brand. The first Album “it’s on” was first recorded time behavior.
Rap and Hip Hop was an English domain; the one who rapped in other languages, it was rather Exotic. With the Album “4 wins” this changed abruptly. The hit single “die da!?!” the four guys from Stuttgart catapulted (affectionately called “Benz-town”, because Mercedes Benz has in the vicinity of its headquarters) in the top ranks of the German pop scene. And there they stayed until today.
“A feigned joke”
Colorful Hip Hop with the word joke: The musical beginnings of the Fantastic Four
Even if the Album “wins the 4” was a great success – there was also violent criticism on the part of the “real” Hip-hoppers, Instead of social criticism here, fun was made of music; Hip Hop and Rap, which originally came from the Ghetto, had become the commercial fabric softener, it was said in the scene. Thomas D. remember years ago in a dpa Interview at this time: “Notwithstanding any other songs that we had written up to that point, reduced us to our Hit single ‘die da!?!’. We were a played joke.”
Especially from Frankfurt and a harder Wind was blowing the four cheerful guys. The “Rödelheim hard-rhyme project” by German Rapper Moses Pelham, she hardly missed an opportunity, Stuttgart to “dissen” to insult you so well in your songs.
Enough with the colorful slapstick!
With the 1993 Album “The 4. Dimension”, played freely, the Fantas finally. The colorful clothes were thrown off, the lyrics sometimes almost psychedelic. In the “day at sea” describes Thomas D. a LSD-Trip, in a “Schizophrenic” yells at us Smudos electronically distorted voice. The music: typical 90s Acid Jazz is, often sweaty and electrifying.
With the Single “she’s gone” had the Fantas in 1995 and their biggest commercial success. The Album “listening gift” turned back on a new course. Harder and at the same time a philosophical, a little self-critical, and sometimes sad.
MfG: A Stroke Of Genius
The first jump on place 1 in the German Album Charts, the Fantas exactly 20 years ago: “4:99” was until then the musically most Mature record.
Your Singlehit “MfG” was a stroke of genius: The verses of the song consist of only abbreviations. The line-by-line sense, and reflects the political and social Situation of the time. In many Parts of the Text is still up to date.
We also can’t forget her first MTV Unplugged Album, in the year 2000 in a cave in the Sauerland shots. With a Live Band, they played their greatest Hits, a reissue 2012.
The Unplugged-concerts in the cave are legendary
The later Studio albums were always different than their respective predecessors, boring it was with the Fantas never. The Fans thanked him, and drove the plates regularly with your purchases up to the chart-tops and attracted a sold-out concert tours.
Only Fantas don’t have enough
As they would not have celebrated plenty of success, had all four from the beginning to your own projects. “Microphone Professor” Smudo (Michael Bernd Schmidt) saw at times on the Nordschleife of the nürburgring in the Studio: His great passion is racing.
Sustainability on track: Smudo drove his VW Scirocco with the biofuel rapeseed oil
Thomas d (Thomas Dürr) had with his eponymous solo project’s success, and sang with Nina Hagen (“Solo”) and actress Franka Potente (“Wish – come on to me”). He was also a singer in the Rockband Son Goku.
Michael “Michi” Beck is with the way the DJ-project “turn table rocker” on-the-go, And. Ypsilon produced, in addition to the Fantas more German artists. Smudo and Michi Beck, also over several seasons the Coaches for the TV talent Show “The Voice of Germany”.
Michi Beck and Smudo in the backdrop of “The Voice of Germany”
And now also a Film
The whole band history in September 2019 as an evening of cinema abundance movie on the big screen. The world premiere of “Who is 4” on 2. July 2019 at the Filmfest München is held. Directed by Thomas Schwendemann, who has turned in several music videos with Thomas D. and a documentary about the music collective “The sons of Mannheim”, not only with a view to the Band, but also on each of the four protagonists. Every man for himself is quite a character of its own. All of them have different models of life and still go to a common path and for the past 30 years.
You don’t stop jumping…
Three Open-Air concerts there are still, in this summer of 2019, and then the Tour for the last Album, “Captain Fantasic” to the end. But the Fantas self is not to see for a long time that you wanted to finish your career already. Free to an older Song (Buenos Dias Messias): “This house is occupied without a break until now, because we came first and we go last.”