01099

In the artist's words:

On balmy summer evenings, the setting sun bathes the old buildings of Dresden-Neustadt in this very special, deep blue light. Yesterday is long gone
long gone and tomorrow still a distant future. Anything seems possible in the blue hours of the evening and early morning, and there is no one who translatesthe feeling of these tender moments into melancholy aphorisms as perfectly as 01099.

Named after the zip code of Neustadt, the band consisting of childhood friends Gustav, Paul and Zachi conveys a reflected joie de vivre in their songs that seems to speak from the soul of an entire generation . 01099 wave the rainbow flag on festival stages, and the Zoomers cheer them on. Their big breakthrough came in the pandemic years with anthems like "Frisch" and "Durstlöscher". In total, their songs have been streamed over 500 million times; in the most important popularity currency these days , monthly listeners on Spotify, they currently have over four million, putting them in the top league of German-language artists. And they seem to be just getting started. The 01099 single "Anders" with Ski Aggu, the golden boy of the current German rap season, was one of the defining songs of the summer. They have played at least one co-headlining slot at every relevant festival .

Now it's time for "Blaue Stunden", the third 01099 album. Of course, there are once again the sweet odes to wine from the Späti, hanging out outside the front door with friends and the other night owls of Neustadt. But it also contains tracks that hint at a certain maturing process of the protagonists and in which different themes play a role than before: in "Herz ist kalt" or "Alles war gelogen", the rappers tackle new content and move away from pure vibe rap towards almost adult song concepts. In addition to the already released songs with Ski Aggu and the young Berlin rapper $oho Bani ("Cider"), there is a conclusive collaboration with Trettmann ("In der Nacht"), a track with the Viennese singer Verifiziert ("Matin"), as well as a track with RIN ("Wahnsinn"), who inspired the band at the beginning of their journey.

If you look for the secret of 01099, you will eventually come across a not particularly complex formula: They are completely authentic, no matter how
hackneyed this vocabulary may seem. Because they don't fantasize about a fictional hip-hop biography, they are simply themselves - three friends from Dresden Neustadt with an inimitable flair for great melodies and to-the-point lines. Their greatest strength is to reduce universal emotions to their pure essence and use them to create images in the mind. Nothing else happens on this album, and nothing else has ever donegreat pop music . The next blue hours are sure to come.