‘Ich leb’, was ihr rappt’: Confronting Racism through Consumption in OG Keemo’s Otello

A rise in activist work and social media, such as the #MeToo movement, has drawn critical attention to the daily microaggressions, hostilities, and systemic inequalities faced by immigrants and their families in Germany today, which include the experiences of second- and third-generation German born citizens. This chapter explores the tensions between appropriation and audience reception conveyed in Otello, a five-song album released in May 2019 by Sudanese-German rapper OG Keemo. In this album, OG Keemo explicitly parallels his image as a black rapper with Othello—the most iconic and damaging portrayal of a black man produced by and for Europeans—to convey his sense of entrapment living in a country that associates blackness with violence while fetishizing black men, sex, and black (self-) destruction. Like Othello, a character derived from the fantasy of white people, OG Keemo recognizes that his hip hop and public identity are shaped by his fans, revealing appropriation to be a shifting and fraught dynamic between OG Keemo and his European rap audiences.