NEROMUN: Yeah, it’s funny, I never really use the word „home“ for here, I don’t have a connection to the term in general. It is definitely the place where I grew up, went to school and spent most of my life, even though it’s getting a bit tight. Mainz is very special, also because Wiesbaden and Frankfurt are so closely connected. There used to be many army bases here, which brought a lot of Black culture into the region. There were many Black clubs in the area, also in Mainz, but mostly Frankfurt and Wiesbaden. Techno too – this club „Dorian Gray“ in Frankfurt started techno in Germany first, but actually it was a funk and disco club, so also a Black space. But they were open to it, and that’s how the first raves started.
All that has definitely influenced me. I grew up with very good music, not only from my upbringing but also from the streets and my surroundings.
Also my old crew, „Sichtexot“ or Eloquent, who now lives in Wiesbaden, they were all here and we hung out and influenced and inspired each other.

N: I do read quite a bit, even though I don’t even enjoy it that much. I don’t do it for fun or to kill time, but to access art. I read books that aim to go in interesting directions with language itself.
To me, rap creators, but also musicians in general, are nowadays poets. They create poetry that people can actually access, much more maybe than contemporary poetry. I don’t even know many contemporary poets like that.

N: I actually do. I always carry a poetry book with me. I am not wearing my jacket, otherwise I could show you now.

N: Right now I have Georg Heym’s poetry with me, and Rilke is always in my bag. Poets from the beginning of the 20th century, they really resonate with me — Georg Heym, Georg Trakl, Else Lasker-Schüler, Rilke, Gottfried Benn — those are the kings and queens of poetry for me. And always have been. We read Hermann Hesse in 8th grade, and I was like, „whoa, this is crazy, I need to dig deeper into this“. So from there I moved over to Kafka and others and was just always reading a lot of that stuff.

Growing up, listening to artists such as Tyler, the Creator, I would google every single word I didn’t understand and treated lyrics as poems. For me they’re on the same level, there’s no difference.

N: I don’t really think about it in that context, but if I had to, I’d say it’s a circle that closes, sort of finishing off the previous three albums. It almost sophisticates my previous works where I was experimenting more – many techniques and approaches  that I was developing for the past six years I could finally apply instead of experimenting with them.

N: Everything has meaning and reference, it’s all thought through. But it’s important to me that, just like you said, it’s also feelings and vibes, because then the words gain a whole new meaning. They gain a new quality that means more to me than their alleged meaning.
There are plenty of deep reasons, such as: „How does meaning work?“ There’s this theory that we limit words to what they mean, but in reality there’s much more, such as the sound of it. The sound, the vibe is what actually sets our body into vibrations. And I really like to play with that. 

Open texts inspire more people to click onto that and continue writing, or not necessarily writing but just expression in general.
Like Kafka, his works are open, „not finished“, with an open ending. And there’s this huge argument about whether they are actually unfinished or intended like that. His novels are endless, such as in „The Trial“, the protagonist is just trying to understand what’s happening to him and there’s no end to it. If there was one, it would be too easy — we could say, okay, that’s the moral of the story, done. But with the story remaining open, there are all these threads continuing forever. And that’s one of the reasons why Kafka is so popular, it simply doesn’t end.

N: Right now it’s a bit of a transition phase, to see what’s happening, what’s working. I have the feeling I want to change my name again. For now, I’ve always done three albums for each artist name, like trilogies. I have the feeling I haven’t reached my final form yet and the name has a lot to do with that somehow. But the new identity hasn’t revealed their sound to me yet – just some feelings and playing around a bit, but nothing final yet. To me that’s the most beautiful phase of creating, when you’re figuring it out and are insecure and tripping over like a child that has just learned how to walk, it’s cute.

N: Gratefulness, consciousness, empathy, love of one’s neighbour as well as your enemies. We haven’t really covered that yet, but somehow I really found Jesus in the past year, my whole life just flipped around.
Gratefulness is so important — for example before my song „Prayer 3“, in which I am saying „I am hella thankful“, I’ve never done anything like that. I never expressed gratitude in a song. So many times I’ve worked through my anger and sadness, but when I made this song, I was levitating. When recording, you need to repeat it maybe 50 times. So for 50 times I was saying „I am hella thankful, I am thankful, I am thankful“. After that I was flying. And I realized: „Oh my god, this is it, I must be way more aware and thankful and actually say ‘thank you’ after each day.“
Same as for my song „Im Licht“, where I’m saying „You’re being heard when praying“, and it’s true. You are being heard when you pray, you can manifest everything. And that’s something that is far from finished for me, I want to really get to the bottom of this and work with it.