Peter Fox HHV Records 4 Items

A rapping pop revolutionary

It was hardly expected in the mainstream of 2008 that Berliner Pierre Baigorry, also known as Peter Fox, would revolutionize German rap and pop with just a single solo album after the international dancehall breakthrough with his band Seeed. In the German music scene, he has achieved legendary status since Stadtaffe, and despite the unexpected success, he has kept fans waiting for a new solo album for a whole fifteen years. In the meantime, he has been performing with the eleven-member crew of Seeed on the country’s biggest stages, collecting three Echo Awards with them and earning one Golden Record after another. Peter Fox is an exceptional talent, whose artistic ability was evident from an early age: he started playing the piano at the age of seven, and after completing his high school education, he struggled with various music projects alongside an unfinished piano builder apprenticeship, hoping for success that had not yet materialized. In 1998, he co-founded the group Seeed with friends and formed one-third of the multinational frontman trio alongside Frank A. Dellé and Demba Nabé. Seeed draws inspiration from the Jamaican culture of mobile sound systems and functions more as a collective than a band, celebrating music as a unifying element. With their first two albums, New Dubby Conquerors and Music Monks in the early 2000s, they blended dancehall, reggae and ska, resulting in nationwide and international hits.

Film music to dance to

After the successful album Next! in 2006, Baigorry decided to finally embark on a solo project. Initially, his colleague CeeLo Green was supposed to step in as the singer, but the native Berliner himself took the microphone and also assumed the role of the producer – having gained ample experience as a producer for Seeed. His aim was to create “film music to dance to,” for which the musician invited the Babelsberg Film Orchestra to the studio in order to give sufficient expression to his high standards for his own rap lyrics. In 2008, Stadtaffe hit the record stores and made a nationwide impact: Fox’s mix of hip-swaying beats and lyrics oscillating between love and hate for his hometown metropolis resonated with his peers and simultaneously influenced an entire generation of Berlin youth. While the idyllic Haus am See conquered German radio stations, Fox addressed those who are annoyed by the dirt and throw things onto the streets themselves in songs like Stadtaffe, and combined it with monumental party tracks like Schüttel deinen Speck and the Berlin ode Schwarz zu Blau: “Und ich weiß, ob ich will oder nicht, dass ich dich zum Atmen brauch‘.”

Love for everyone and himself

The album quickly became a German classic, and the success overwhelmed Baigorry. Because in reality, the native city monkey wanted to focus again on his eleven-member home: “That was always the plan. I wanted to release a project outside of my main band, and then we continue with Seeed.” So that was it for now with Peter Fox, who then concluded his first and so far only solo tour in 2009. That changed abruptly in the year 2022 with his highly anticipated comeback single Zukunft Pink, which immediately went viral. Fox’s first solo album since 2008 was released in May 2023, and from the very first moment, we can hear that the number-one album Love Songs shows the dancehall giant in a new form — with clear Afrobeat influences, and significantly more optimistic: “Alle malen schwarz, ich seh‘ die Zukunft pink / Wenn du mich fragst, wird alles gut, mein Kind.” At the same time, he processes the Corona pandemic on tracks like Vergessen Wie, while examining a society that is increasingly dividing on the pulsating bassline of Gegengift. Peter Fox is finally back — 2023 marks the second solo tour for the pop star, with a clear message: “Liebe für alle und für mich selbst.”