"Everyone here is unhappy. Everyone is disappointed in the state”

Prince Pi, born Friedrich Kautz, 43, is still an exception in the German hip-hop scene. After his beginnings as the battle rapper Prinz Porno in the Berlin underground, he also celebrated great success in the mainstream thanks to his sharp observations of society and unconventional perspectives. While on his last albums he focused more on topics that were fixed on one's mood, on "ADHS" he turns more to the spirit of the times. We met him in his apartment in western Berlin.

ICONST: With "ADHS" the 18th Prinz Pi album will be released this week. It sounds more political and socially critical than it has in a long time. How come?

Prince Pi: I wrote "ADHD" during the Corona period. That was a time when it felt like society was ripping apart in many places. Trenches, wounds and conflicts became visible that were not visible before Corona. On the one hand, we had people who accepted the government measures completely unquestioningly, people who would have preferred to have pulled three masks over their heads and were really keen on being told what to do. And then there was the faction that not only completely refused, but also saw a conspiracy behind everything. But there were relatively few people in the public discourse who approached it with common sense.

ICONST: Maybe that's also because the people who took more balancing positions were drowned out by extreme fringes. A phenomenon that now goes far beyond Corona.

Prince Pi: Yes, that's right. One had the feeling that a point had suddenly been reached where debates became difficult. If you don't agree 100% on something, you're no longer the ally who agrees to within a few percentage points - you're suddenly the mortal enemy. This split was there before - it just became obvious to everyone now. Those were things that had been smoldering for a long time. Like a woodworm that eats its way through a piece of furniture for decades. Eventually you will see the first hole. But from the inside everything has long since been hollowed out. The election results show that something has been wrong for a long time. They are completely different in the new federal states than in the old ones. Something has been building up there for a long time.

ICONST: What are the causes of this social division?

Prince Pi: In the elections? The West has made mistakes in dealing with the new federal states, which lead to justified distrust of established parties and career politicians. Many feel they have been duped. But it's not just a west-east thing. There are obviously large sections of society that feel badly treated. I have many friends with a migration background here in Berlin. And although there was a red-green-red coalition for many years, these people are still disadvantaged. What's the point of all the integration politics if you're trying to rent an apartment or get a bank loan? Then only your last name counts.

ICONST: The integration policy has failed?

Prince Pi: In parts yes. The integration policy that we made was aimed at the people who came here. But we forgot to take the rest of society with us. We have failed to come together as a multicultural society.

ICONST: Why is that?

Prince Pi: We don't have a common consensus. No common vision for our society. What unites people is just the common negative view of this country. We all have the feeling that the state is becoming increasingly ineffective, the police more violent, we pay too much tax and get too little in return. People are unhappy. And each in a different way. It's the 80-year-old German retirees, and so is the entrepreneur of Turkish origin, who lives in Germany in the third generation and still can't get a loan because he has the wrong last name. Everyone is disappointed in the state for other reasons. What is missing here is a common social idea of ​​where to go.

ICONST: That means Germany needs its own identity - a guiding culture?

Prince Pi: No, that's also a wrong word. It would be enough if we could find some kind of consensus that gives us a form. Do we want to be the economic motor of the EU? Or the country with the best CO₂ balance sheet? Or is something else our vision for the coming decades? If you ask people abroad, they can quickly characterize Germany. From the outside, people see how well organized Germany is. How efficiently our authorities function, how well everyone is cared for in the event of an accident, how low corruption is, for example.

ICONST: But this picture no longer corresponds to reality. This highly praised German efficiency has long been in decline.

Prince Pi: Yes, in many institutions you can see this decline every day. Most recently, when parents had to wait for hours in the emergency room with their sick children because there was an RS virus wave and the clinics were fully booked. That sucks. The thing is this: we often rely on a structure that worked very well up until the 1980s - when the number of processes to be managed in all areas was smaller and in many cases still analogous - but since then it has not been rethought and has been improved. There is an obvious problem here. At the same time, this applies to a society whose attention span is falling – and with it the ability to deal with increasingly complex problems.

ICONST: Which brings us back to the album. So attention deficit disorder is a societal diagnosis?

Prince Pi: Yes, it's a stark dilemma. People have become more short of breath in their media consumption. Media formats are becoming shorter and shorter. First there were movies, then series, then YouTube videos, and now TikToks that only last a few seconds. At the same time, the total media usage time is constantly increasing. So we have more screen time with much smaller snippets, each of which is a stimulus, a dopamine hit. The ability to concentrate decreases and this means that people can no longer understand complicated content so well.

ICONST: And at the same time, the world is becoming more and more complex.

Prince Pi: The state of the world today is based on an ever-expanding causal chain. It's like a series. You can't just step into Season 7 and understand why the characters are the way they are. You have to see them from the beginning to really understand all the connections. It's the same with history and society. That's why more and more people feel that they can't understand the world anymore. This disconnects them from society because they no longer understand why things are the way they are. At the same time, it makes them easy prey for people who present a supposedly simple universal explanation.

ICONST: There has never been a time when more knowledge was freely available than today.

Prince Pi: The very worst phenomenon of our time is the story that consistency no longer works. As late as the 20th century, it was said that you have to deal with your specialist area long enough and sustainably until you are so good at it that you can make a career out of it. If you wanted to be a professor of history, you had to have half a library and prove yourself in front of qualified authorities before you were awarded that title - and you were also able to pass your knowledge on to other people.

ICONST: This form of authority is no longer recognized today?

Prince Pi: Instead of these certified experts, today you have some amateurs who tell you, hey, reading books is wrong. You don't need to, I have a shortcut here. Most of the time it means a shortcut to money, but often it's also a shortcut to something like enlightenment. That opens the door to many fatal developments. Then some short videos are washed in, where someone sits with Joe Rogan in the podcast and explains the "truth" about the pyramids of Giza in 30 seconds. This brevity is always accompanied by the tenor: you are stupid if you read the entire text. You only need the "best of", then you are the clever one. This is a radical reversal of our knowledge society. Knowledge is no longer verifiable. Knowledge becomes a matter of opinion. It's completely absurd, just imagine sitting on a plane with a guy and he tells you, oh, I didn't follow the laws of aerodynamics, I just built the thing like that my opinion is. It'll be fine.

ICONST: This is also how echo chambers are created. There is a song on the album called "Telegram Group" that deals with this topic.

Prince Pi: Exactly, I'm trying to get a little closer to this phenomenon. I think one of the main reasons these groups are attractive is that people find validation in these echo chambers that they don't have in their everyday lives. When does someone pat the common man on the back and tell him you're great or you're a hero? But if you move among like-minded people in Telegram groups and don't just write what the others write, but go a step further, you suddenly get unusual encouragement. And that encouragement can be addictive. And lead to radicalization.

ICONST: So there are people in conspiracy theorist groups who are looking for encouragement?

Prince Pi: Sure. That is the case with all promises of salvation. Who went to IS? Successful people with families who were in the middle of life? Rather not. They were usually complete losers. People who then hoped to be winners in the new IS society, a hero even, with fame and virgins. Such promises of a new world always address the losers in the old world. And we have losers in our society without end. It is very difficult to statistically be a winner in this system. What everyone wants, financial freedom, material luxury paired with social recognition, only very few have in capitalism.

ICONST: But on media like Instagram it is suggested that everyone has it.

Prince Pi: And that is precisely this second side of the attention deficit – hyperactivity. Everybody's nervous, people are doing something all the time, they're working on little bits, tiny snippets. But no one is working on one big consistent plan anymore. This is reflected in many biographies. Many apprenticeships and studies are broken off, marriages are divorced, and the number of children in blended families increases. Because people constantly believe there is a better option. I just have to search Tinder long enough. And here lies a very big problem. If that is no longer possible in private, how should an entire country be able to reform itself?