Waving The Guns

Kicking the butt of big talkers while grinning through your stocking mask? Breaking down the status quo into its component parts and melting down status symbols like old candles at the same time? Playing word games in chess mode and then wiping out all your own pieces at the end? Milli Dance, Dub Dylan and Doktor Damage are masters of many things  - the message, the flow, the rhymes. For a decade now, the crew from Rostock have led the rebirth of local political hip-hop after German rap was betrayed, screwed up and sold off by bogus real-estate agents. The dialectical backlash had to come at some point. It didn't just start with the acclaimed ‘Das muss eine Demokratie aushalten können’ (2019) and certainly doesn't end with the new album ‘Zwischen Wand und Tapete’ (2025), which sees the trio add exquisite samples to their side-splitting boom-bap beats and provides some urgently needed political enlightenment. As mature as Adorno, as wily as Dutschke and masked like the Beagle Boys, Waving The Guns take the hammer to the critical weak spot of late capitalism. So, the question is not ‘Why are they wearing masks?’, it’s more like: Why aren't you?