Gentleman: Serenity and Gratitude

Two old white men start talk­ing about one of their new albums and, before long, find them­selves going off on tan­gents about the grow­ing sense of calm that comes with a reced­ing hair­line, the weath­er, lap­dogs, fam­i­ly, Mal­lor­ca, cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion, racist inci­dents at Ger­man fes­ti­vals and scan­dal sur­round­ing a roast chick­en.

Text: Pete Lil­ly /// Pho­tos: Christi­na Gotz

He has been on stage for 33 years and has been releas­ing records on major labels for 27. By now, his cat­a­logue com­pris­es eleven stu­dio albums, three live albums – includ­ing an “MTV Unplugged” – as well as a “Best Of” com­pi­la­tion. He sells out venues and head­lines fes­ti­vals. In Ger­many, when­ev­er reg­gae is men­tioned, his name is guar­an­teed to come up first. And then no one else for quite some time. He is also held in the high­est regard abroad – in South Amer­i­ca, West Africa or even in reggae’s home­land, Jamaica itself, where he was some­thing of a celebri­ty for a while, fol­low­ing the suc­cess of “Intox­i­ca­tion”, his con­tri­bu­tion to Don Corleon’s “Drop Leaf” rid­dim, and his live DVD that was a fix­ture on the music chan­nel RETV dur­ing the 2000s.

When he start­ed out, cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion wasn’t a thing, yet. There was only cul­tur­al appre­ci­a­tion, some­thing he has nur­tured with love and pas­sion ever since he first set foot on the shores of his favourite island at the age of 18. Wher­ev­er he went, peo­ple were delight­ed to see a tall, skin­ny white guy speak­ing almost flaw­less Patois and dee­jay­ing in the lat­est styles over the hottest rid­dims. This was long before social media and YouTube. There was still some­thing roman­tic about dis­cov­er­ing a kind of music and its cul­ture for your­self, work­ing your way into it through mix­tapes and 45s.

A lot has hap­pened since then. Gen­tle­man has become a Ger­man super­star. Expec­ta­tions from record com­pa­nies and the pub­lic have risen. Between album releas­es and exten­sive tours, he appeared on TV shows such as “Sing meinen Song” and sat on the judg­ing pan­el of a tal­ent show. Com­mit­ments like these can take their toll on cre­ativ­i­ty. He com­pen­sat­ed for it with col­lab­o­ra­tions with Ger­man rap­pers and pop stars, exper­i­ment­ed with singing in Ger­man and devel­oped a reli­able, if pre­dictable, for­mu­la for his take on mod­ern roots. And the pub­lic became more crit­i­cal. Is it even okay for a white Cen­tral Euro­pean to play music from anoth­er cul­ture? And make mon­ey from it?

Gen­tle­man has nev­er denied where his music comes from. He has repeat­ed­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Jamaican artists and pro­duc­ers, brought them along on tour as guests and con­tin­u­al­ly returned to Jamaica to keep him­self up to date with what was hap­pen­ing on the ground. And yet these days, hard­ly an inter­view goes by with­out him hav­ing to address the sub­ject of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion. When real­ly, Gen­tle­man only wants one thing: to bring peo­ple togeth­er, bridge divides, over­come polar­iza­tion and spread love.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve inter­viewed Gen­tle­man since his sec­ond album, “Jour­ney To Jah”. We come from the same city, know each oth­er, dis­cov­ered reg­gae and dance­hall at almost exact­ly the same time and cel­e­brat­ed them in the same clubs – he usu­al­ly on stage or behind the decks as an MC or dee­jay, me in the audi­ence or on the dance­floor. We like each oth­er, fol­low and appre­ci­ate each other’s work. Which is why I’m all the more pleased that, with his new album “Grat­i­tude”, he seems to have found his way back to him­self.

What fol­lows is an almost unabridged con­ver­sa­tion from a video call four weeks before the album’s release.

Where am I catching you right now? That looks like a studio.

This is my stu­dio here in Mal­lor­ca.

Okay, nice. Is it that hot there as well?

Yeah, I think next week it’s sup­posed to get up to 42 degrees again or some­thing. We live up on the moun­tain and we always have a breeze. So you can han­dle the heat pret­ty well. But it’s pret­ty crazy. Although it’s the same in Cologne, isn’t it.

It’s 35, 36 degrees here at the moment, but it’s supposed to get even hotter again.

But cli­mate change doesn’t exist, right? It’s all a lie. Just a fig­ment of our imag­i­na­tion!

(Laughs) “Gratitude”! How does it feel to be just about to release another album? Especially compared to your previous albums, of which there have already been quite a few.

Actu­al­ly, it feels dif­fer­ent from the last few albums because… I mean, I wouldn’t say I didn’t put my heart and soul into my pre­vi­ous albums. But there’s a lot in “Grat­i­tude”. It’s the first album in a long time that I actu­al­ly enjoy lis­ten­ing to myself. And that’s always a good sign. So I’m very, very hap­py with the result and I just think every song is cool. That’s why I’m in a real­ly good mood about it. I don’t have any expec­ta­tions in terms of charts or any­thing like that. I think that train has left the sta­tion. But the impor­tant thing is that you put some­thing out there and feel like, okay, I gave it every­thing and it’s good the way it is. What­ev­er hap­pens with it after that. So I’m pret­ty relaxed, but obvi­ous­ly also kind of… pos­i­tive­ly ner­vous.

I get the impression – and that fits with what you just said – that you approached this album with a bit more calm than you did the last ones. I wouldn’t compare it to your first albums. When you’re doing it for the first time, you obviously approach things differently. But that was my impression this time: Gentleman sounds more relaxed, more at peace with himself…

Before I start­ed work­ing on the album, there was a phase when I gen­uine­ly thought, maybe I’ve done Gen­tle­man to death. Maybe enough is enough at some point.

I’m always going to make music, and I’ll always drop a song here and there, but this whole music busi­ness, these 100,000 songs being released on Spo­ti­fy every day, all the social media bull­shit – all the stuff you need to do to stay vis­i­ble… I feel like I can’t keep up any­more.

There was this moment when, for the first time, I thought, maybe now is the right time to say, okay, I’m step­ping back and maybe I’ll start a label. We also kicked around the idea of open­ing a cock­tail bar or a lit­tle guest house… What else is there besides music?

I don’t want to sound bit­ter, but there was this moment when, for the first time, I thought, maybe now is the right time to say, okay, I’m step­ping back and maybe I’ll start a label. We also kicked around the idea of open­ing a cock­tail bar or a lit­tle guest house… What else is there besides music?

The dan­ger of repeat­ing your­self was always there. And when I start­ed mak­ing music again, I real­ized, no, none of this is real­ly doing it for me any­more. I allowed myself to enter­tain the thought that maybe the time had come to stop hang­ing out in smoky back­stage rooms.

And the moment I allowed myself to have that thought, sud­den­ly I had this feel­ing: I’ve got this beau­ti­ful stu­dio, I always feel like mak­ing music, so I’m just going to make some­thing with­out hav­ing this ulte­ri­or motive of releas­ing it.

And that’s basi­cal­ly how all the songs came about. Always with this feel­ing of: I don’t have to play this to any­body. And mov­ing away from: How is this song going to go down with peo­ple, where, and what are you doing wrong here and so on – and just mak­ing music, you know, the way it actu­al­ly start­ed in the first place, because that’s what brings you into har­mo­ny with your­self.

It’s about that goose­bump feel­ing you get when you’ve writ­ten and record­ed a song. Not about: Can I still keep up? That was the begin­ning of “Grat­i­tude”. And grat­i­tude in the sense of: Wow, there’s still so much I want to express musi­cal­ly. With­out hav­ing this thought in the back of my mind about whether the thing is going to chart high or whether peo­ple are going to rec­og­nize it. Just doing it for myself.

I think that’s what you mean. That’s why there was this sense of calm, in the sense of: There’s noth­ing to prove. I could nev­er imag­ine not mak­ing songs any­more. But this whole cir­cus, this pres­sure to keep up and all that – at some point, that just fell away. I loos­ened up and said, it is how it is, so…

In the press release for the album, which is written in the first person, you hint at a kind of turning point, a moment when you questioned your career. What brought that on? Was it simply a case of getting fed up with certain structures you find yourself caught up in? Or were there personal things involved as well? I remember you had some health issues at some point. Something like that can put you in a situation where you stop, take a step back and start questioning things.

I already men­tioned the dan­ger of rep­e­ti­tion. After twelve albums and 30 years in the music busi­ness, you start think­ing: Okay, we’ve been here before. We know this already.

Health-wise, what hap­pened was that I want­ed to go on a South Amer­i­can tour with Alborosie, and I’d been hav­ing this ongo­ing back hus­tle. And then at some point it got to a lev­el where I want­ed to get up to go to the bath­room in the morn­ing and my legs just gave way because I couldn’t feel them any­more. The pain was so intense that I had to cry. It was lit­er­al­ly emer­gency-doc­tor lev­el. It was clear that I need­ed surgery. An infec­tion was press­ing against the low­er ver­te­brae and the nerve cord was already almost sev­ered. I could have end­ed up par­a­lyzed from the waist down.

After the surgery, the pain was gone. And that was anoth­er moment of grat­i­tude, real­iz­ing that the things we always take for grant­ed real­ly aren’t a giv­en. When we’re sick, we have only one wish. When we’re healthy, we have a thou­sand. But that wasn’t real­ly the answer to your ques­tion.

The question was what that kind of reflection triggers that follows problems like that, where you say, I’m going to free myself from expectations, from…

I think it’s a dynam­ic process. It’s not some­thing you decide on, it just hap­pens. At some point you real­ize you can’t keep fight­ing against your inner voice all the time. You just real­ize: the thing has run out of steam.

Basi­cal­ly, it was Claye who came up with the defin­ing sen­tence: “Let’s have fun again!” Let’s just go into the stu­dio and make music – with­out a release date. And then some real­ly cool things came out of it.

With the idea in the back of your mind that you don’t have to prove any­thing to any­one. Going into the vocal booth and record­ing a song with­out hav­ing that feel­ing of: Can I say it like this? How is this going to come across, to whom, where, when, how? That helped enor­mous­ly. Real­iz­ing that there’s noth­ing to prove. I’m hap­py with myself. With the last 30 years.

I don’t have to keep up with all the youths any­more. I can just make music because it feels good and because there are still things I want to man­i­fest musi­cal­ly and lyri­cal­ly. You know what I mean?

Yeah, totally. Listening to the 17 tracks on “Gratitude”, I also noticed that your songwriting has really grown again.

Yeah, I think so too.

I felt like there used to be a kind of Gentleman formula, where you’d say, okay, that’s a typical Gentleman song. But now there are a lot of songs that break away from that formula and sound fresher because of it. “Lion”, “Unity”, “Nah Worry” on the “Hill And Gully” riddim, “What If” with Queen Omega, or the final track, “When The Sun Goes Down”.

Oh yeah, “When The Sun Goes Down” is my favourite song. That one is very close to my heart. At some point I sud­den­ly got real­ly into coun­try! It actu­al­ly start­ed with Tra­cy Chap­man back in the ’80s, real­iz­ing how much coun­try has to offer, lyri­cal­ly and melod­i­cal­ly…

I had cer­tain ideas and knew exact­ly what I want­ed to say, and I went into the stu­dio with Claye. And sud­den­ly we were just play­ing these few chords on the gui­tar. It was just there. We should real­ly put that song out as a sin­gle.

No, but the whole album process, includ­ing writ­ing in this small team – with Claye and Kee­ley (Keely Ben­nett)… That feel­ing of sim­ply allow­ing things to hap­pen and not hav­ing to keep up with any­body runs like a red thread through the whole thing. Also allow­ing your­self to be vul­ner­a­ble to a cer­tain degree. That made it eas­i­er. It was often dif­fer­ent before. Back then, I often want­ed to please oth­er peo­ple.

Speaking of vulnerability. I had the feeling that the new songs are a little more personal than what you’ve done before. Songs like “Same Struggle”, maybe “What If”, “When The Sun Goes Down”…

It’s nice when you can still see some kind of devel­op­ment. But like I said, I stand behind every prod­uct I’ve made, every song. There’s noth­ing I should be ashamed of.

I real­ly, real­ly enjoy lis­ten­ing to these songs, my own songs, and that wasn’t always the case before. That was kind of the bench­mark we set our­selves: every song has to have some kind of con­nec­tion with me.

But it’s actu­al­ly true with this album. I real­ly, real­ly enjoy lis­ten­ing to these songs, my own songs, and that wasn’t always the case before. That was kind of the bench­mark we set our­selves: every song has to have some kind of con­nec­tion with me. There were 40 demos, and 17 of them made it onto the album. There was an incred­i­ble amount of input. With this feel­ing of light­ness, of just going, “Let’s do it.” There’s still so much to tell. There are still so many forms you can put a song into. This is nowhere near over. That was the vibe.

There were also albums where I felt like: The release date is in three months, I’ve only got six songs and now I have to squeeze some­thing out. And this time it was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. The whole way of work­ing was ultra relaxed. It felt real­ly healthy.

You’ve already mentioned a few names, Claye, Keeley… I know Don Corleon was involved. One song is by Di Genius. Jopez was involved. What was the production process like? Was it all done online, sending things back and forth, or were you actually together in the studio?

No, no, we were actu­al­ly here in the stu­dio. I’m not real­ly the type to send things back and forth. With Cor­leon, it was like this: one night he sent me more than 20 rid­dims, and I thought 17 of them were fuck­ing great. That was at a point when some­thing hap­pened in Claye’s pri­vate life and he had to step away. So I thought, okay, I’m gonna make the album with Cor­leon.

But then Claye came back and we start­ed build­ing rid­dims togeth­er here in the stu­dio, writ­ing songs… Jopez was, let’s say, the co-pro­duc­er when it came to vocal sounds and arrange­ments. He has incred­i­ble exper­tise.

At some point we had this lux­u­ry prob­lem: Every­thing is fuck­ing good, but we can’t put 30 songs on the album. Sud­den­ly there was this flow, this mag­ic moment where every­thing fel into place, every­thing we did was cool. Jopez did the “Uni­ty” song, the rest was pro­duced by Claye and Cor­leon.

The biggest surprise for me was “Nah Worry”, simply because “Hill & Gully” is such a hit riddim. Did you hear the riddim and think, I definitely have to get on this for the album?

No, it was like with the “WYFL” rid­dim. I thought: Okay, I’m feel­ing a vibe right now, I’m just gonna kick some­thing on it. It was more spon­ta­neous. But then I also want­ed to make a bit of an inter­na­tion­al push again. On “WYFL”, I just did 16 bars, and that already cre­at­ed a lit­tle wave, where sud­den­ly I was get­ting feed­back like I hadn’t had in a long time. And then “Hill & Gul­ly” came along and I felt it imme­di­ate­ly. The album was actu­al­ly already fin­ished by then. But I kicked about 16 bars on that one too. Stephen liked it and sent me a DM say­ing: “Let’s do the whole song.” It all hap­pened very nat­u­ral­ly and, yeah, I think it’s the cra­zi­est rid­dim in a long time.

It’s definitely a heavy one. Although I was at Reggae Jam last weekend and no matter who was playing, where or when, “Hill & Gully” was guaranteed to come on. You start getting a little tired of the riddim after a while, just like back then with “Diwali”.

Or “Punaany” and “Sleng Teng” before that. But that’s kind of the cul­ture, isn’t it? Did you see the chick­en at Reg­gae Jam? It was painful to see what that trig­gered.

After the open­ing par­ty in the festival’s Dance­hall area, a video went viral show­ing a four-metre-high papi­er-mâché instal­la­tion behind two white selec­tors: a face­less Black female dancer, upside down in a head­stand, with an over­sized bat­ty and wear­ing tiny den­im shorts. With her spindly, ridicu­lous­ly short legs, she looked more like a roast chick­en – hence the term “Chick­en­gate”. Strings attached to the figure’s legs could be pulled to make the but­tocks move. In front of the stage was a sign read­ing “Women At Twerk”, appar­ent­ly intend­ed to give the whole thing the air of a bit of harm­less Dance­hall fun.

Women in par­tic­u­lar began speak­ing out from around the world at a rapid pace. They object­ed to the sex­u­al­ized depic­tion of a Black female dancer, reduced to colo­nial-era stereo­types and pre­sent­ed pri­mar­i­ly for and by white men. The video, which has since been delet­ed, drew hun­dreds of com­ments by the fol­low­ing morn­ing. The fes­ti­val respond­ed with an apol­o­gy and had the ques­tion­able stage dec­o­ra­tion removed.

Yeah, I feel sorry for Sheriff (the organizer of Reggae Jam) that he had to go through such a shitstorm. But I also have to say, it could have been avoided.

I saw the video on Ins­ta before the Jamaican media jumped on it, and I was like: Whoa, that’s not cool. I don’t think the inten­tion behind it was mali­cious, but the way the video came across and every­thing… It wasn’t great. And then the reac­tions came the next day. If that had hap­pened at a dance in Kingston, it would have had a dif­fer­ent vibe.

As a white person, you just have to be careful about how you portray Black people.

What do you mean, care­ful? I think it’s about hav­ing some sense, com­mon sense – you either have it or you don’t. They took it down after­wards. But what it trig­gered, the debate that fol­lowed… Crazy divi­sion. That made me sad. This image of Ger­many, one of the biggest reg­gae fes­ti­vals… that’s the vibe. And in this social media age, some­thing like that has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent dynam­ic than it used to.

Yeah, of course. I wouldn’t have expected it to blow up like that either. But you could immediately feel that it wasn’t okay, and a lot of people there said the same thing. On Insta, though, there were also comments like, “It’s not even that bad”, “Why are they apologizing for this?”, “Why are they taking it down?” But that’s kind of the vibe at the moment, I feel – that anything perceived as “woke”, like not being racist, not being sexist, is a red flag for a lot of people. That Markus Söder, that AfD way of thinking: “I’m not gonna let anyone tell me what to do. They’re trying to ruin something for me, take something away from me that I’m used to, something that’s normal to me.” Instead of just questioning themselves for a moment.

But hey, I’d actually rather talk about “Gratitude” than Chickengate.

(A small dog jumps onto Gentleman’s lap.) That’s Bruno. (Laughs.) He’s a ter­ror­ist, but you can’t real­ly do any­thing but love him. He’s com­plete­ly obsessed with Tami­ka (Gentleman’s wife) and spends the whole time wait­ing for her to come back.

I thought he was your daughter’s dog.

Yeah, that was the lever­age we used to get her to move to Mal­lor­ca with us. (Sings) “Ooooh, it’s a lion!”

Exactly, let’s talk about “Lion”. The album opens with the song and the line, “What is life without purpose?” That really hits you straight away. You immediately start thinking: Purpose, where am I actually at? It does something to you right from the start.

That was exact­ly the idea, that peo­ple would see it the same way. With every song, I made sure the first line hits. With the short atten­tion spans we have today, that’s ultra impor­tant. If you’re pick­ing up on it like that, I guess it worked.

What is the pur­pose? What is the moti­va­tion? Why do we do the things we do? Those are real­ly essen­tial ques­tions that come togeth­er in “Lion”. At the end of the day, the song is about that sense of won­der, about real­iz­ing that there’s some­thing out there that’s much big­ger than us. So let’s loosen up a lit­tle, let’s be aware of our own imper­ma­nence.

Whether you believe in God or not, the fact is that at some point we’re gonna leave this place. I’m 52 now, and if I make it to 82, I’ve got 30 sum­mers left. Eighty years is rough­ly 4,000 weeks. The thought is kind of shock­ing at first, that it could all be over the day after tomor­row. But it makes you stop wast­ing your time with peo­ple you don’t want to be around. And stop doing things you don’t want to do.

That’s the essence of “Lion”: I’m hon­est with myself, and I can keep that sense of won­der. I don’t have to explain every­thing, and at 52 I don’t have to under­stand every­thing any­more. That actu­al­ly feels good.

I also find the Melekú collaboration, “I’ll Be There”, really interesting. I know you’re a big Sizzla fan. So to end up doing a combination with his son… Melekú sings so beautifully, like Sizzla in his prime. How did that collaboration come about? Did you think, this song really needs Melekú on it?

Yeah, that’s real­ly how it hap­pened. The “Final­ly” rid­dim is also on the album – “Watch Over Me”. That’s how I got back in touch with Cor­leon a few years ago. He was doing a rid­dim selec­tion and real­ly want­ed me to be part of it. Melekú was on the rid­dim as well. His tune is my favourite on there, the guy is so sick, man. So I asked Cor­leon: Hey, why don’t we do a col­lab­o­ra­tion? And Melekú was imme­di­ate­ly down. He’s got these incred­i­ble melodies, and the way he switch­es from his reg­u­lar voice to that kind of falset­to… I told him I’d love to do the song with him, and four hours lat­er he sent some­thing back and it was amaz­ing. His tim­bre alone, which he inher­it­ed from his father – it’s crazy how clear­ly you can hear it.

I think as I get old­er, I’m get­ting more and more of a grip on how to be laid-back. Either you become more laid-back or you become bit­ter. Your envi­ron­ment is real­ly impor­tant in that. I don’t define myself only through Gen­tle­man, you know? That’s just one area of my life. There are so many oth­er areas.

We already talked briefly about “Nah Worry”. I think you can also feel that sense of calmness in the song. It’s there in the title, too, in the way you deal with life and the challenges that come your way.

I think as I get old­er, I’m get­ting more and more of a grip on how to be laid-back. Either you become more laid-back or you become bit­ter. Your envi­ron­ment is real­ly impor­tant in that. I don’t define myself only through Gen­tle­man, you know? That’s just one area of my life. There are so many oth­er areas. I mean, the whole fam­i­ly-man thing – I’m com­plete­ly out­side of this music bub­ble there. That prob­a­bly makes up 80 per­cent of my life.

So it’s not that bad if some­thing in this one area doesn’t hap­pen the way you imag­ined it would. I’m def­i­nite­ly becom­ing more laid-back about that. Of course, there are always moments when I feel like I don’t under­stand shit any­more, like some­how I was much wis­er ten years ago. But that kind of calm­ness, in the sense of not hav­ing to prove any­thing any­more and real­ly lis­ten­ing to your inner voice, runs through the whole album. I’m glad you picked up on that too.

Another interesting thing about “Nah Worry” is that you’re the only one with a conscious song on the whole selection. Everything else is slackness galore.

“Nah Wor­ry” was goose­bump vibes from the very first verse. It’s the flow, the rid­dim does every­thing by itself, I just had to put my vibe on it. It hap­pened with­out think­ing, with­out ask­ing myself: Oh God, how can I say this? It was just… very easy, in a pos­i­tive sense.

I’ve got noth­ing against slack­ness, but I’ve nev­er made a slack song myself. And it was impor­tant to me that I wasn’t gonna get slack now either.

Another central song on “Gratitude” is the Queen Omega combination “What If”. I don’t have the lyrics in front of me, but lines like “What if wrong is the right and mediocre is great” seem to me to be pointing towards something political in the broadest sense, towards the general state of the world. Did I get that right?

With “What If”, every line stands on its own. It’s about imag­i­na­tion, about try­ing to think about things dif­fer­ent­ly, chang­ing your per­spec­tive. The inspi­ra­tion came from the movie “Dead Poets Soci­ety”, where Robin Williams climbs up onto the table to change his per­spec­tive: What if we just looked at things dif­fer­ent­ly for a moment? Some­thing like that old say­ing you used to see writ­ten on walls every­where: “Imag­ine there’s a war and nobody shows up.”

Another song where I feel there’s really something going on is “Same Struggle” with Richie Campbell. It describes your own situation and Richie’s situation as artists – that you’ve left the struggle of the early days behind, trying to somehow make it, but you still have your own battles to fight.

I think we come togeth­er much more when we real­ize that every­one has their own cross to bear and every­one has their own sto­ry.

I’m a mid­dle-class dude from Ger­many, but I still have my strug­gle. And some­body who grew up in Water­house has a dif­fer­ent strug­gle. “The same strug­gle, but dif­fer­ent streets.” The con­nect­ing ele­ment is the chal­lenge we have to over­come.

We can have com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ries, grow up in com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, and still every­one knows that feel­ing of strug­gle and doubt, of being lost. At the end of the day, the song is about the fact that what con­nects us is stronger than what sep­a­rates us.

A lot of the time, you make a song and only after­wards you start think­ing, what is this song actu­al­ly say­ing? That doesn’t hap­pen dur­ing the cre­ation process, it comes lat­er, like when you’re asked about it in inter­views. That’s often the first time you real­ly start think­ing about it: What is this song actu­al­ly about?

We make it out of a vibe, you know? We hear a rid­dim and start writ­ing and start bounc­ing, and sud­den­ly some­thing hap­pens. With­out think­ing about what we actu­al­ly want to com­mu­ni­cate. And yet, of course, the song has a mes­sage.

The sub­ject of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion comes up in almost every inter­view these days. Some­times I feel like, at this point, it’s been appro­pri­at­ed itself.

And then there are always peo­ple who inter­pret a song in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way, and it still con­tains a truth. “Dem Gone”, “Supe­ri­or” – how many peo­ple inter­pret­ed those songs com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent­ly? Maybe that’s not what was intend­ed, but it still makes sense. That’s the beau­ti­ful thing about music. It hap­pens on so many dif­fer­ent lev­els.

Yeah, when a song develops a life of its own in people’s heads. What also spontaneously comes to mind, because I know that Richie Campbell thinks a lot about his role as a European reggae artist – cultural appropriation being the keyword. So maybe the song is also a way of saying: We may have a different background, but like you just said, we’ve got our own burdens to carry, too. Am I reading too much into it?

But what is that the ques­tion now?

Whether “Same Struggle” is also an engagement with this whole tiresome issue of cultural appropriation.

Yeah, of course. Accu­sa­tions like that can com­plete­ly throw you off track. Like with the Reg­gae Jam thing. Or there are two white peo­ple, Pete Lil­ly and Ellen Köh­lings, and they run a reg­gae mag­a­zine and make mon­ey from it.

We don’t. (Laughs.)

Of course, I know that. But from the out­side, RIDDIM is the most suc­cess­ful reg­gae mag­a­zine and it’s run by two white peo­ple. Or there’s a fes­ti­val, Sum­mer­jam, Reg­gae Jam, that’s run by white peo­ple. At some point I stopped wor­ry­ing about it.

If it weren’t for the moti­va­tion com­ing from Jamaica and Africa and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and from so many places around the world, if peo­ple didn’t give me that feel­ing of: Hey, we love what you’re doing, we cel­e­brate it and it gives us strength, then I’d real­ly have a prob­lem with it.

The sub­ject of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion comes up in almost every inter­view these days. Some­times I feel like, at this point, it’s been appro­pri­at­ed itself. I always come back to the exam­ple of “Intox­i­ca­tion”, that the song became a huge hit in Jamaica with­out any­body even know­ing who this guy was.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not accusing you of cultural appropriation. I’ve known you for long enough and I know how you approach the culture…

No, that’s not what I mean either. But since you were ask­ing about Richie Camp­bell and how it affects him – it affects me, too, again and again. Right now as well, with this whole Reg­gae Jam sto­ry. That real­ly hurt me, because once again it’s cre­at­ing this ultra-divi­sion around the whole Black-and-White issue.

But I actu­al­ly don’t let it get to me too much. I know when I feel a song and when I go on stage and I real­ly mean what I’m doing, then every­thing is good. Every­thing else is out of my hands. These debates come and go, you know?

But at the end of the day, I think either you mean what you’re doing or you don’t. Either you do it with love and pas­sion, or you have an ulte­ri­or motive behind it, like want­i­ng to make mon­ey from it and exploit some­body.

I think Richie hadn’t real­ly been through that before. I’ve been through it a few times. He was here with me in Mal­lor­ca for the doc­u­men­tary and we talked about it open­ly. For him, it was the first time he had real­ly been con­front­ed with it through this whole social media dynam­ic. And strange­ly enough, it was always com­ing from peo­ple who aren’t real­ly in touch with what’s hap­pen­ing or who aren’t in Jamaica. In Jamaica, he got an incred­i­ble amount of love, and then sud­den­ly this accu­sa­tion came up in his home coun­try, Por­tu­gal. That’s the para­dox, where this is actu­al­ly com­ing from. And there we are again, back to appre­ci­a­tion or appro­pri­a­tion. But a chick­en isn’t exact­ly help­ful in that dis­cus­sion. That chick­en, man!

To get back to “Gratitude”: Are there any songs that are particularly close to your heart?

You want to know which child is my favourite child? That’s a very dif­fi­cult ques­tion to answer. I’ll say this in gen­er­al: the album is very close to my heart. And every song… I real­ly meant every song. What’s the last song called again, the bal­lad?

“When The Sun Goes Down”.

Have we already talked about that, or was that in the inter­view before?

No, we talked about it briefly.

Oh, right, yeah, that one is very close to my heart. But also “Friends” with Col­lie Bud­dz. That’ll be the next sin­gle. I’ve also real­ized this with­in my clos­er cir­cle, that sud­den­ly you find your­self tak­ing a path that isn’t the same path as your bre­dren.

It’s a bit­ter real­iza­tion: We had a past togeth­er, but does that also mean we have a future if, in the present, every­thing is based sole­ly on the fact that we shared some­thing in the past? So, “Friends” with Col­lie Bud­dz, if you’re ask­ing me.

But I have a con­nec­tion to every song. I can stand behind every sin­gle one of them and per­form every sin­gle one – real­ly, every song.

You were talking earlier about the different aspects that define you. How do you keep those different aspects in balance? Your role as a family man and your role as an artist? With your wife Tamika being your backing vocalist, she’s always very close to your life as an artist.

We’re lucky, Tami­ka, Char­lie and I, that when­ev­er we go on tour, I always have my home with me. Every­one else in the band has kids, too, and they’re sep­a­rat­ed from them while they’re on tour. Hav­ing your home with you is an absolute gift. Um… what was the ques­tion again?

How you bring family life and being an artist together…

Right now, dur­ing fes­ti­val sea­son, we pack our stuff on Thurs­days, dri­ve some­where on Fri­day, con­certs on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, and then we’re back here on Mon­day or Tues­day. From Tues­day to Thurs­day, it’s not about Gen­tle­man, you know? We have our own rhythm here…

My cir­cle of friends, my social envi­ron­ment, is maybe only one or two per­cent peo­ple from the music busi­ness. It’s real­ly healthy not to be stuck in that world all the time and con­stant­ly com­par­ing your­self. It’s more like: How are the toma­toes grow­ing? Where are we get­ting the meat for the bar­be­cue? Sim­ple things.

I’m a seri­ous fam­i­ly man. That’s where I feel most com­fort­able. When I’m with my kids, with my wife, or when my par­ents come over or my sib­lings are here – that’s no place for Gen­tle­man. Maybe some­one will briefly ask how the last tour was, and that’s it.

And then I can dive back into that world again, and I enjoy doing it, and I do it with pas­sion. But if I were only in that world and con­stant­ly com­par­ing myself, then I don’t think I’d be able to han­dle it. I think that’s also what a lot of artists end up break­ing under.

Yeah, I can imagine that. One more, rather personal question: When I interviewed you about “Mad World” last time, you had only just established a base in Mallorca. Now you’ve been there for five years.

Five years ago was the Ahr Val­ley flood.

Yeah, I remember your place got flooded and…

Exact­ly, you guys came to see us in Cologne once, too. The entire ground floor was com­plete­ly under water. But luck­i­ly, the insur­ance cov­ered it. They told us it would take a year and a half to two years before the house would be hab­it­able again. They would have paid for a hotel, but I thought, two years in a hotel room? I’m gonna get depressed. We’d rather rent a house some­where.

Then we vis­it­ed some friends here in Mal­lor­ca and sud­den­ly we thought, wait a minute, I can fly from here to my shows. I get to see a sun­set every evening, a star­ry sky, we go out on the boat and go snor­kel­ing and I bring back a fish…

I still love the Chlod­wig­platz (square in Cologne), but not every sin­gle day. So we thought: Okay, we’re doing this now. We’re going to build some­thing here.

I used to not be able to go to the toi­let with­out my Walk­man, you know? And these days I need a lot of silence. I’m not the kind of guy who comes home and turns the music on. I lis­ten to music in the car.

Before, we had fall­en in love with Hawaii and even want­ed to move there. We spent three months there once and thought, okay, at some point Ger­many had run its course and we want­ed to go some­where else. Some­where with an ocean, moun­tains and nature.

But then it quick­ly became obvi­ous that with a twelve-hour time dif­fer­ence, I’d be com­plete­ly out of the loop. Fly­ing from Mal­lor­ca to Ger­many is like tak­ing the train from Cologne to Dort­mund.

What I actually wanted to ask is, what’s life like for you guys in Mallorca now? You’ve settled there, your daughter goes to school there. Can you describe what life is like for you?

It’s very qui­et, very agri­cul­tur­al. We have hors­es and chick­ens and two dogs and two cats. We’re real­ly out in nature. We live in a for­est on a moun­tain and look out over the sea.

And at the same time, I’m still in Cologne. One doesn’t exclude the oth­er. What’s get­ting more and more exhaust­ing, though, is the trav­el­ling, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the sum­mer hol­i­days, when you’re sit­ting on a plane with all the par­ty ani­mals head­ing to Mal­lor­ca. That’s tough.

But the beau­ti­ful thing is, just like with Jamaica and Negril, that you can reduce all of that to about a mile. Mal­lor­ca is basi­cal­ly zero Baller­mann. It’s a very peace­ful, qui­et island.

Sure, there are prob­lems with mass tourism. There are prob­lems with water. I’m glad there aren’t any wild­fires here yet and that cli­mate change isn’t as notice­able here as it is else­where. It’s peace­ful here.

At 25, Mal­lor­ca wouldn’t have been for me. But at 52, it’s the per­fect place. I think that sums it up.

Last question: What role does music play in your life when you’re not in the studio, recording, performing, doing promo – in your private life? Do you still spend a lot of time with music?

Well, Pete, no bull­shit, the oth­er day we came off stage and were in the tour bus, and Stahl (Flo­ri­an Münz­er), our gui­tarist, pulled out his boom­box and put on a mix­tape. And I was like: Whoa, Dig­gi, please turn that off. So yeah, I can def­i­nite­ly tell I need more peace and qui­et.

I used to not be able to go to the toi­let with­out my Walk­man, you know? And these days I need a lot of silence. I’m not the kind of guy who comes home and turns the music on. I lis­ten to music in the car. That’s where I real­ly pump it. Then I lis­ten to mix­tapes from Jamaica, because I still find them inspir­ing.

But for the most part, it’s still Den­nis Brown, Bob Mar­ley, Gar­nett Silk, Jacob Miller, Tra­cy Chap­man, Sade, old Motown stuff and things like that. With the 100,000 releas­es and all the artists who sud­den­ly get hyped up, I can’t keep up any­more. But I don’t have to.

I think the best thing about get­ting old­er is that you don’t have to under­stand every­thing any­more. But no, real­ly, I just real­ly like hav­ing some peace and qui­et.

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