The native Kreuzberg resident WEIL will release his debut album "Groll" on September 17, 2021. WEIL combines trap sounds with ballads and revolutionary fantasies with love songs. Amidst a crowd of notably tough guys, the theater and film actor stands out as one of the few musicians who takes a new masculinity in rap seriously – without turning into an overly sweet softie. The new single "2. Mai (Alles bleibt gleich)" is released today along with a music video featuring a guest appearance by Grim104.
We know the narrative of the rapper who, after a discography full of hard sounds, suddenly strikes a soft note to surprise his fans with a kind of shock vulnerability. The actor and musician WEIL, who grew up as Anton Weil in the early nineties at Oranienplatz, with a squatter dad who often doesn't know if the money will last for coal in winter and a mother who keeps afloat with odd jobs, skips this preamble and immediately shows us his entire emotional range. Why?
Because it’s 2021. “In my youth, I lacked role models in hip-hop who could connect weakness and emotionality with coolness and strength,” says WEIL, who is now used to showing vulnerability in his profession. Anton Weil studied acting at the UdK in Berlin and has performed since 2012 at venues including the Maxim Gorki Theater, Thalia Theater, Schauspiel Frankfurt, and Schauspiel Köln, as well as in international productions for Netflix, SverigesTV, arte, ZDF, ARD, and is currently seen in the Greek-Italian-German LGBTQ road movie “The Man With The Answers,” which premiered in Sydney in 2021 and is currently impressing at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in the USA.
The link to the video “2. Mai (Alles Bleibt Gleich)” is as follows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLo_SJQTQcI
Over the years, WEIL has been increasingly affirmed in his art: During the production of the Peter Fox theater piece “Affe” at the Neuköllner Oper, he is vocally coached by Nicola Rost (Laing), who tells him and singer Houaïda to keep at it, trust himself, it would be worth it, music is his artistic outlet. WEIL collaborates with musician and video artist Valentin Hansen and producer Antoni Radtke on songs and gradually shows them to his contacts. Through DJ V.Raeter and the circle of Yassin, Audio88, and Fatoni, a handful of demos eventually land with the Cologne producer cousins Dienst&Schulter — and they are excited for a session.
When the film and theater world suddenly comes to a halt due to a global pandemic in 2020, WEIL is in Cologne, a week before a theater premiere. Instead of holding final rehearsals, he barricades himself for six weeks with the guys from Dienst&Schulter (Goldroger, Yassin, Lugatti & 9ine, Casper) in the studio and feverishly records one song after another. These will later form the basis for WEIL's debut album "Groll".
What does "Groll" sound like? Like a mix of trap and indie, Ton Steine Scherben on 808s and political pop, one might say. But the times when music was still stuffed into artificially labeled boxes are thankfully over. To quote music journalist Alex Barbian: “With WEIL's music, it’s not about genre at all, but about what he has to say.” This is likely in the spirit of his role models Frank Ocean, 070Shake, and Die Toten Hosen. In the lyrics of his debut, WEIL candidly confronts his fears, tells of the early death of his mother, love itself, and the eternal hangover of May 2nd: the day when the revolution ends every year before it has even begun.
