"I'm standing here with the notary, Ms. Massih, to whom I have sworn that it is the original 'King Of Rap' document." Speak Instagram video.
Then he says: "I'll burn that now." It is the real sheet of lyrics to "King Of Rap" from 2000, his most important song, which is a classic of German rap.
Accordingly, the clip is underlaid with dramatic music.
Yurderi even wears medical gloves and looks serious when he lets the twenty-year-old scrap of paper go up in the flames of his lighter a few moments later. The remaining ashes are buried in a glass with a screw cap. It's a bizarre scenario. A clever marketing campaign? Or does Kool Savas finally want to bury his questionable lines from the past here? How did a German rapper get the idea to burn his lyrics?
The answer is “a commitment to the digital world”, as Yurderi can be quoted. Together with the digital auction house NIFTEE, Kool Savas digitized these old lyrics and three other memorabilia from his private archive and offered them online for auction. The “King Of Rap Collection” includes the aforementioned text sheet, two iconic record covers and the very first music recording by the Berliner, who has been a formative figure in German rap since the late 1990s. The highlight: The text sheet, the cover and the recording now exist digitally as so-called non-fungible tokens, or NFT for short. The hype surrounding these “non-replaceable” objects developed in the art world at the beginning of the year. They are basically digital certificates of authenticity and ownership:A digital work of art is registered on a blockchain and receives a unique digital signature, which due to the blockchain technology can practically not be changed.
At the latest when the auction house Christie's offered NFTs by American graphic designer Beeple with an option to pay via cryptocurrency in February, it was clear that this neo-tech gimmick would reach a larger dimension. Now German rappers have also joined. “It wasn't long ago that I was confronted with the subject,” says Kool Savas. “I didn't get it right at first either, which I probably still don't do enough. But I find it insanely interesting. It's just a new level. ”Not unsuitable for the“ experiment ”, as Yurderi calls his cremation campaign, was that his rapper colleague Sera Finale is one of the shareholders of the auction house in question and advised him. "He was on fire, not just because that would get a lot of attention,but because he found my idea with the text sheet super cool. 'The action is a bit of an art,' he said to me. "