“You’ve already been a thing on the internet / in the underground for a while”, stated Fionn Birr at the beginning of a long interview with Haiyti in Splash Magazin. For the Hamburg-born rapper, distribution channel (the internet) and self-conception (the underground) are blood relatives—both points of reference, according to test cases in the US, serve as breeding grounds safely distanced from the tactics of major labels and ghetto imitations. Haiyti is a cloud rapper, although one of the reasons she remains firmly on her pedestal is that she keeps hyped categories like this one at an arm’s length. Her sound has little to do with the antediluvian hip hop of her Hanseatic forefathers: her beats are digital and ethereal, her voice melodic, sometime hysterical, always Auto-Tuned—more song than speech, and more Drake that Dendemann. Meanwhile, Haiyti crosses boundaries far more unabashedly than her colleagues. Her words, which tell of fast cars, loose change, and life on speed or coke, are sources of friction against billowy, dreamy sonic backdrops. Take her latest mixtape “City Tarif” as Exhibit A in a showcase of how German rap can be profoundly musical as well as both convincing and radical in content.

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