It truly was a Heimspiel (home game) when the four pioneers of German hip-hop took the stage on Saturday evening in Stuttgart, at the Cannstatter Wasen. And that alone deserves respect.

Rumor had it that as early as the gates opening around 3:00 p.m., crowds had already begun filling the standing arena on both sides of the catwalk.

When we arrived around 7:00 p.m., Clueso was on stage, the sun was beating down relentlessly, people were in great spirits, and the day simply felt right. There was, admittedly, a noticeable shortage of large beverage containers. I will deliberately refrain from calling them glasses. But aside from that, everything about the evening felt perfectly suited for an open-air concert.

As a brief side note: the supply of chilled chocolate Mikado sticks did not even make it to the Wasen. This was entirely due to a certain person in our group. 😉

We eventually settled into a comfortable spot among roughly 50,000 people. True, we were far back. Too far back to really participate in the on-stage action. In return, we were compensated with live images on a monstrously large screen. Only during the concert did it become clear just how far away we actually were, when we could occasionally make out the four performers as small silhouettes on the stage. Personally, I found the sound a little diffuse, though that may well have been due to our position.

Musically, the group guided the audience through the past twenty years of their work. They played their collective hits while also giving space to the solo projects of each member. The program was anything but a dull, chronological greatest-hits parade. Instead, it felt like a carefully curated mix representing two decades of sustained success.

Trying to single out specific tracks as “highlights” would almost certainly spark heated debate driven by personal taste. So I’ll simply point you to the setlist. Die findet man hier.

They were joined by the Philharmonic musicians of the Bolshoi Orchestra Minsk. Once again, I was struck by the sheer range of musical variation such a combination can produce. In one piece, the familiar bagpipe theme from “Pipes” was clearly recognizable, yet largely carried by the string section. The vocals merely complemented the arrangement, never dominating it.

Would you, twenty years ago, have given even a moment’s attention to four rappers layering their spoken word over bagpipe motifs performed by violins, violas, cellos, woodwinds, and brass? Speaking for myself: very unlikely.

Did Die Fantastischen Vier take a risk with their experiment “Fanta4 meets Classical”? Yes. But in today’s world, it is a remarkably calculable one. Even if a few of the Minsk string players occasionally pulled facial expressions reminiscent of traditional blini-making, the result was undeniably impressive.

Equally striking was the way the crowd responded. On Smudo’s command — “I want to see your hands! I need to see 100,000 hands!” — nearly 50,000 people raised their arms simultaneously. I briefly wondered whether this had been fully thought through, as it also revealed approximately 100,000 sweaty armpits.

This maneuver was only surpassed when a man standing in front of us decided to lift his partner onto his shoulders. To put it plainly: if you plan to climb onto someone’s shoulders at a tightly packed concert, please be aware that your backside may end up directly in the face of the person behind you. And if said backside is not exactly magazine-cover material in scale, this can be… challenging for those affected.

The home game ended with “Populär.”
Everything felt right. Everything felt fair.
No rush, no noise, no need to flee.
Just like it should be — a day at sea.