If you want to achieve something, you have to work your arse off. Ahzumjot has known this since the very start of his career, and he sticks to it: The copies of his first album, ‘Monty’ (2011), are not only produced in-house from recording to mixing, but the lyricist from Berlin also takes care of the artwork and online presence, packs every CD himself, and hand-delivers them to the post office without a car. Now, that’s dedication. Throughout the 2010s, he was at the forefront of a new generation of rhymers who see rap as fertile ground for all kinds of experiments in terms of both pop compatibility and the stylistic exploration of the genre’s boundaries. This resulted in near-legendary albums such as ‘Nix mehr egal’ (2014) and ‘Luft & Liebe’ (2017), which are neither simply trap nor cloud rap, nor do they simply open up room for discussion or ponder existential issues. Either way, nothing is simple with Ahzumjot. Instead, his style circulates across genre boundaries, dives into dubstep baths, dances with crisp 808s and buzzing synths over irregular sampling, is modern without being a victim of fashion. Now comes ‘Francis’, the next offering from the creative jack-of-all-trades whose eclectic rap repertoire seems far from exhausted. German hip-hop won’t get any more adventurous this year.