Curse - “Warum nicht?”

~Zumi Underground

We’ve had some Korean hip hop on RIBM before and now we’re bringing you some German hip hop (and Japanese hip hop is FOR SURE coming at some point as I do listen to quite a bit of it). This one from Curse came out way back in 2001, but being foreign hip hop might still be new to you which is our goal here at RIBM.

First off, I love the beat. If it wasn’t clear already (or if you’re new here), I can’t get enough of jazzy piano featured hip hop beats. And if you can, listen with the bass turned up. You’ll be missing out if you’re not getting the subtle bass notes that compliment simple piano melody.

Unfortunately, I don’t understand German, but I can still appreciate the flow Curse uses in the song. The frequent callback to the track title “Warum nicht?” (meaning “why not”) I think helps non-German speakers establish a baseline familiarity with the vocals and lets us get into the song more than otherwise. In looking up the lyrics with Google’s translations, you can see the theme of the song is [why not] pretend life is okay—better yet, better than okay; life is good! Why not pretend we don’t have doubts, we don’t need money, we don’t have racism, we have peace. The one line I’m curious if translated correctly though is “I just asked for something and got it right up the ass.” I saw that line and was like damn…just because I want something doesn’t mean I want to receive it up my ass!

Very cool song though that I hope is new for you all despite being now about 20 years old.

Check out more Curse on Spotify.

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