Marcus Staiger

Marcus Staiger (born September 26, 1971 in Leonberg ) is a German journalist , book author , industrial climber and former label owner . He is considered one of the pioneers of Berlin rap .

Training and first journalistic steps and other employment

Staiger was born the son of a plasterer and a secretary. In 1991 he passed the Abitur in Kornwestheim at the municipal Ernst-Sigle-Gymnasium. After working for a year as a factory worker at Sika Chemie and Daimler-Benz AG , he moved to Berlin in November 1992 and worked there as a cook, among other things. In 1993 he began studying economics and philosophy , which he broke off in 2000 without a degree. During the first years of his studies he started his journalistic work for the hip-hop magazines Mik's News and MK Zwo . Articles for Juice , Style and other publications followed. At the same time he worked as a freelancer for the radio stations Radio Eins and Radio Fritz . In addition to his work as a cook, Staiger also worked as a waiter and at the post office, as well as a temporary worker and a Berlin city guide. Staiger has been working as an industrial climber for several years and has been training Jiu-Jitsu .

Royal bunker

In 1997 Staiger started organizing freestyle and battlerap events on Sundays in the Musik Café Royal Bunker Berlin . Today, the meetings are considered the nucleus of modern Berlin rapeseed. Sido , Kool Savas , die Atzen , B-Tight and other greats of today's German rap scene performed there regularly . In the same year Staiger, Kool Savas, Mk1 and others founded the label Mikrokosmos. After differences in content, Staiger and most of the artists separated from Mikrokosmos and Mk1 in 1999. Then Marcus Staiger founded a new label and named it after the now closed Café Royal Bunker. Artists such as Kool Savas, Sido, Eko Fresh , Kay One and Prinz Pi helped the label to become well known in the early days. Although the formation KIZ managed to enter the top ten of the album charts in 2007, at the end of the same year Marcus Staiger announced the imminent end of Royal Bunker's label. In 2008 it officially closed its doors. The last album by Royal Bunker was Sexism Against Right . By his own admission, no one had spotted more top ten acts in hip-hop than he did by then.

rap.de

Since April 2008, Marcus Staiger has been editor-in-chief of the rap.de website . Because of his provocative interview style and the sometimes ironic reviews, he is often criticized by the rappers concerned. He was therefore repeatedly exposed to both verbal and physical attacks. In an interview with Falk Schacht at Mixery Raw Deluxe , he defended his writing style with journalistic due diligence. With the Internet, the filter between record companies and consumers would disappear and would have to be replaced by journalism. Therefore, clearer statements would have to be made.

In the Mixery Raw Deluxe program on July 18, 2011, Marcus Staiger announced that he would be replaced by Oliver Marquart as editor-in-chief at rap.de on August 1, 2011.

Freelance journalist

Since 2011, Marcus Staiger has worked as a freelance journalist a. a. Active for the Berliner Zeitung , Juice , Junge Welt , Melodie und Rhythmus , Spex , Vice and Zeit Online .

Political commitment

Staiger was involved in anti-fascist demonstrations and protests by refugees in Berlin. He is a member of the radical Left Berlin organization . Marcus Staiger's publications and positions on the complex of topics Israel , Palestine and anti-Semitism , which became particularly relevant to the German rap scene around the rapper Kollegah , are controversial.

Others

The rapper Kool Savas accused Staiger in September 2014 of having called him a “slipper hero” in an interview with WOZ . In response to a letter from a lawyer, the newspaper said that this term did not appear in its article, but blacked out two sentences in the interview.

Marcus Staiger is the protagonist of the Mockumentary Blacktape by Sékou Neblett , published in 2015 .

Staiger has been moderating the weekly radio program Die Wondersame Rapwoche on Flux FM since 2017, together with rapper Mauli . Since 2018 he has been running the Youtube channel Kommon as part of a media collective , which primarily deals with political issues.

literature

Bushido with Marcus Staiger: We are Germany too: it doesn't work without us. Not without you either. Riva, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-86883-243-3 .
Hope is a son of a dog MFM Entertainment, 2014, ISBN 978-3-98145-157-3 .