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Chart-topper Waalkes (at a performance in the Audimax of the University of Hamburg): Previously specialized in album charts

Photo: Georg Wendt / dpa

The music should be familiar even to Otto laymen: "I'm a Frisian boy, I'm a little Frisian boy," sang the goofball Otto Waalkes to the tune of Sting's "Englishman in New York" and thus opened the best-of album "Otto. The CD – the very best«.

30 years later, Otto's »Friesenjung« entered the official German single charts at number three as a sample in the version by rappers Ski Aggu and Joost. It is Waalkes' highest single placement ever. Otto was represented in the album charts again and again, already with his debut in 1973, which reached number one, as well as other records in 1974 and 1976.

"I've always been in the charts with all my LPs, but never with a single," the comedian is quoted as saying by Bild. Strictly speaking, however, this is not true, as the chart investigators from the market research company GfK Entertainment announced. Accordingly, it is "the second chart hit after the film song 'Stand up when you stand on dwarfs', which stormed to number twelve in 2006". However, in this »Go West« cover version (here on YouTube), 7 dwarfs were named as performers at the time.

Otto Waalkes owes his chart comeback to two younger colleagues: Joost Klein comes from the Dutch region of Friesland and therefore has a direct connection to the song of the comedian from East Frisia. The Berlin rapper Ski Aggu, on the other hand, who wears ski goggles as his trademark, rightly raps that he is "not a Frisian boy". Nevertheless, the track brought him his greatest commercial success to date.

Joost and Ski Aggu had first presented their version on TikTok, where they begged for Otto to release the chorus sample. Waalkes finally opened an account on the short video service and wrote about his second clip: "Holdrio Ski Aggu & Joost, you have my permission 👍🏻🤘🏻🎶".

By early Monday afternoon, the music video for the new »Friesenjung« version had already received almost 750,000 views on YouTube. In the daily charts of the streaming service Spotify, the version with the faster played Otto chorus and the fast beat reminiscent of the Dutch gabber techno of the early nineties has been at number one since the weekend.

feb/dpa