Songs We Coud Have Rated: Sabrina Setlur / Xavier Naidoo
Sabrina Setlur – Du liebst mich nicht (You Don't Love Me) - 1997
German Sabrina Setlur, daughter of Indian immigrants, is the first female rapper with a #1 song in Germany. But after a badly received third album she couldn’t continue with this success. In the beginnings of the noughties she only got negative press anymore: anorexia, drugs, losing her driving license due to drinking and an affair with bad boy Tennis star Boris Becker. She then retreated into private life as an event manager. Starring in some bad TV-shows recently she gave away a little spicy detail: she got to know Robbie Williams at the MTV Music awards in 2000: he puked on her sandals …
In “Du liebst mich nicht” she talks very aggressively about a lover whom she accuses of not loving her with lyrics like “Alter, du bist faker als ‘n Wonderbra” (bro, you’re more fake than a Wonderbra), yes. But I do like the refrain. The song peaked at #1 in Germany and #3 in Austria and Switzerland and sold 250.000 copies in Germany.
As she considered herself only as a rapper, she introduced German singer Xavier Naidoo in one of her songs (she had 20 songs written or co-written by her in the German charts).
Sabrina Setlur introducing Xavier Naidoo – Frei sein (To Be Free) - 1997
I like this song. Xavier is a hell of a singer and it has a really good refrain. The lyrics are about society, how you have to fit in and can’t be yourself, which is usually an interesting topic, but as they put it, it rather sounds like a conspiracy theory. I do believe that this was no intention, but with such lyrics she introduced Xavier better than she could have known.
Xavier Naidoo became one of the most successful musicians in Germany, but also one of the most controversial. He was accused of possibly anything you could imagine like being racist, xenophobic, homophobic, antisemitic, spreading conspiracy theories and preaching questionable religious believes …. but still he really has wonderful songs with beautiful lyrics like “Ich kenne nichts (das so schön ist wie du)”, which I tried to submit to a PJ00s, but had to withdraw, because of Xavier going crazy once more right then.
Xavier Naidoo - Sie sieht mich nicht (She Doesn’t See Me) - 1999
“Sie sieht mich nicht”, German version of Jean-Jacques Goldman’s “Elle ne me voit pas” sold more than 500.000 copies (#2 in Germany, #5 in Switzerland). So this song could have been featured, but Xavier is more a noughties artist to me ...
Xavier Naidoo ft. RZA - Ich kenne nichts, das so schön ist wie du (I've Never Seen Anything As Beautiful As You) - 2003
Xavier - born in Mannheim, Germany - has Indian, German, South-African and Irish roots. He was raised as a catholic and started his musical career in school- and church-choirs. In the beginning of the 90s he found salvation with a bible group who believe we are living in the last days of earth, so many of his lyrics have religious origin. By 2000 he was convicted of drug possession and driving without license. In 2001 he covered Jeanny by Falco and while promoting this song, he explained why this song about kidnapping, abuse and most possibly murder of a young woman was so important to him. As a-9-year-old boy he was raped by a man he had trusted. Later he engaged himself in some really good projects, like Brothers Keepers (German-based transnational anti-racism project) or Rock gegen Rechts (music against far-right politics). So far so good, right?
And although some criticism accompanied him since the start of his career, he has been becoming weirder and weirder for about 10 years now. He released songs with gross lyrics, explaining that he wanted to draw the attention to those horrible ritual murders of children that happen throughout Europe (2012) (?!), in 2014 he spoke publicly at an event of Reichsbürger movement, who reject the legitimacy of modern Germany. Xavier advocated the conspiracy theory there that science and the press don’t depict the terror attacks of 9/11 correctly (?!). There were more incidents, but just let's look what he's up in 2020: He denied climatic change and Covid-19, he supported some gross theories of QAnon, he explained that his father worked and was mistreated in “jewish gold mines”(certainly nothing about that is true), but he didn’t hate Jews (?!). He said that beneath Germany there is a huge tunnel network reaching ‘till New York, where clones and robots are fighting (?!). And that the earth is flat (?!).
Whenever I heard him talking about music or in some shows, I had the feeling, this is a gentle, down-to-earth guy and most of his lyrics are beautiful. So I really can't believe all of the accusations, but no-one can deny that he is a very ill man, who shouldn't be allowed to broadcast his silly and crazy ideas anymore.
