MZEE

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MZEE.com (formerly MZEE ) is a German company that is active in the development and establishment of hip-hop culture in European and, above all, German-speaking countries. Until the end of 2014, MZEE mainly operated a mail order business for "urban" fashion and music. Since 2015, the website has consisted of an editorial online magazine and a discussion forum.

history

The result of the personal commitment of founder Akim Walta (aka Zeb.Roc.Ski / Zebster ), who organized hip-hop parties under the name Mzee in Munich and Mainz in the early 1990s , began publishing Mzee Magazine in 1992 ( actually a fanzine ) the structure. Ralf Kotthoff, who originally came to the project as a graphic designer, soon took over the business of the mail order business Mzee-Mailorder (now also known as From Here To Fame Mailorder and Hip Hop Mailorder ), while Akim Walta built up an independent record label called Mzee-Records , which is dedicated to shows many milestones in the early German-speaking rap history. These included the first publications by Advanced Chemistry , Stieber Twins , Cora E. , Massive Töne , Ferris MC (as part of FAB ), MC Rene and the sampler Alte Schule and Die Klasse von 95 .

In the early years, the MZEE team was very active: the book Graffiti Art Germany (Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf Verlag) and the magazine On The Run and five issues of the Mzee magazine were published, parties and concerts were held, tours were organized, and radio and television broadcasts were organized thematically accompanied, graffiti commissioned work arranged and much more.

The prerequisite for this development and building-up work was that the normal structures of society such as the media or trade were closed to hip-hop culture: German-language rap music was not taken seriously by major labels or even published, the publishers and broadcasters and the trade were not interested in Hip Hop content or products. So MZEE has largely created these contents, products and structures itself or at least helped to create them.

The central hub was mail order until 2014: MZEE has been cooperating with EMP Mailorder since the end of 2005. This collaboration ended at the end of 2014. In mid-July 2014, MZEE.com announced the closure of the site and on January 1, 2015, only the discussion forum on MZEE.com remained online. In mid-2015 it was announced that MZEE.com would function as a hip-hop magazine (online) in the future. The magazine was launched in September 2015.

On August 8th, 2018 MZEE.com was nominated for the European Youth Culture Award (EYCA) in the category "Art and Media". The prize was awarded on September 7th at the Berlin State Center for Political Education. As part of the nomination, senior editors and founder Ralf Kotthoff were asked about their self-image and current developments in hip-hop.

Origin of the term MZEE

MZEE is derived from the license plates of Munich (i.e. M) and Mainz (i.e. MZ) and an American way of speaking from MC in quasi-phonetic spelling. Akim Walta organized a hip-hop jam called MZEE Frisch. Both events had the same line-up and were first held in Munich in November 1990 and a week later in Mainz, Akim Walta's home at the time.

MZEE means something like old man in Swahili and is a respectful form of address. In the Bantu language, an MZEE is a wise man who passes on his knowledge to younger people, which Akim Walta only became known years later.

MZEE as an early hip-hop label

MZEE-Records was one of the first pure hip-hop labels in Germany , alongside Blitz Vinyl and Rap Nation. Previously, hip-hop artists published on independent labels like Buback . Other labels, which mainly concentrated on German hip-hop, followed within a few years - including Yo Mama , 0711 Entertainment and 360 ° Records.

MZEE.com as a website

Since the early 2000s, MZEE.com has been known primarily as an Internet platform and temporarily called itself “the largest German-speaking hip-hop medium at all”. MZEE.com mainly consisted of news, discussion forums, an event calendar and a very extensive shop - the latter was closed at the end of 2014, with only the discussion forum remaining. Since September 2015, MZEE.com has also been an online magazine about German hip-hop under the direction of Florence "Lupa" Bader.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The nominees 2018 - Category I: Art and Media - Olad Aden - Gangway Beatz , on eycablog.respekt-stiftung.de, accessed on October 8, 2018
  2. ↑ "You don't put out a fire by simply ignoring it." , At eycablog.respekt-stiftung.de, accessed on October 8, 2018