The first thing I thought about when I met Jivar Hadjabi up close in Thessaloniki was that he should probably play himself in his biography of Fatih Akin. He definitely looked much more convincing as a gangster than main character Emilio Sacraia. Maybe because it really was…

“Fortunately, Fatih is too professional to let me play. I was supposed to have a small role at the beginning of the film, but that didn’t happen either because I was sick when it was filmed.” Kurd Hadjabi, better known today in German rap music circles under the pseudonym Xatar, was born in 1981 in Iran, literally among the bombs, and his family soon immigrated to neighboring Iraq. And so it was until the Gulf War broke out, when he and his mother finally left for Germany. There, in the immigrant neighborhoods of Bonn, Jaguar quickly falls into an illegal position, and as he grows up, his activities spread to other European countries. Until he manages to pull off a big stunt by robbing a shipment of gold bars. Rheingold Gold, out in theaters this week, is the story of his life, a story somewhere between oriental tales and… Marked.

“Before Fatih, I was approached by others to make my biography into a film, even when I was in prison. But he is one of the greatest directors in Germany, I knew his work, I knew that it would be about art and not just about numbers. Fatih told me from the beginning that it would be his film, not mine. That it will show things about me and my family that won’t be positive. I told him that this is exactly what I expect. I’ve seen movies about people I admire that make them look like Superman, I hate that. What you see in the movie is 100% real, and the only thing that has changed a bit is that it actually was even worse,” Xatar tells me, citing a scene where he works as a doorman in an Amsterdam club as an example. ; a car drives by and rips up a signboard directly above him and a queue of customers with Kalashnikovs. “In fact, they did not fall over us, but into the world,” he clarifies today.

He managed to convey these horrific experiences and other different ones in poems that he began to write in prison. Soon his first album was ready. “I rap about everything that happened in my life. When I “pushed” drugs, I wrote about it. I came from this world. People who are also from there appreciate it, but not only them. Fatih wanted to know where rap came from. Rap is a matter of perception and emotion. Music in general had its own historical development. It started only with melodies, then a voice appeared (for example, in opera) and gradually it became more and more real, with jazz, rock, blues, and began to talk about everyday problems. Rap is as realistic as a documentary. The advantage over other genres is that you can say a lot more words and thus tell stories with more information. It’s also the most honest genre because real rappers don’t care if they’re going to upset someone with their words. For ten years in Germany, we were not accepted by the official music industry, record companies, radio stations, etc. Now we are the owners and operators of the stations,” concludes Xatar with a slight smile.

His English is fast, his tone of voice exudes undeniable confidence. As for music, it has probably always been in his blood since his father, a pianist and music teacher, introduced him to it at an early age before leaving the family and being the first major loss for the young Jaguar. “I grew up with nothing but knowing anything is possible when I saw my dad doing all those gigs at home. He didn’t really care about us, which is bad, but he was totally dedicated to something. I knew I had to take the risk. My mentality has always been “I have nothing to lose” and that’s why I named my first record label All or Nothing.

I rap about everything that happened in my life. When I “pushed” drugs, I wrote about it. I came from this world.

In Akin’s film, we see all these “risks” in a series of episodes that move from intense action to the edge of surreal comedy. However, the main character himself prefers to talk about his music: “Obviously, we started listening to American rap. It was strange in Germany in the 1990s. There was a rap scene, but it wasn’t marginal. They were mostly white rich kids imitating the Americans. A little later, the guys from the ghetto, older than us, started rapping, and the scene changed, became more authentic. When we went out and approached the major labels, they were a little scared at first because we were real gangsters. We went with our jewelry and a Ferrari. We were rich from the ghetto (were rich from the ghetto),” my interlocutor says in a voice that does not betray arrogance, but rather apathy, as if describing a completely natural development of things.

However, the real explosion of his popularity came after 5-6 years, mainly thanks to the Spotify platform, which made him a German-speaking rap star. As we have recently seen in our country, artists from the wider hip-hop field do not need traditional forms of discography or marketing as much to promote their work and concerts. Kurd Khatar (in the language of his native country, the nickname means “Danger”), of course, had to deal with the suspicion of an immigrant, a black, foreigner in a country full of such people.

“Over the years, I have come to understand that this is all a complex business. I understand that every government, left or right, has its own four years and makes decisions accordingly. Also, people in the big city and in the villages do not have the same personal experience. They hear someone on TV say “immigrants will eat your wives” and believe him. In any case, the game is political, it is not about East and West. When you’re on the road it’s the same shit everywhere. If there were no oil and gas on our land, who knows, we could live better.”

As for modern Europeans, he does not seem to be held in high esteem: “The problem with the industrialized countries of the West is that they have given all production to immigrants, and no one is interested in actually working. Most people say, “Let’s build a startup.” They don’t even want to do good “educated” work. That’s why they welcome trained immigrants from Syria or Ukraine.”

Now, of course, Hadjabi himself has something to lose: family, children and property that he created himself. “Now things have definitely changed. I don’t claim to know a specific formula for life. I fail and get up every day. But I want to create things for the next generation, my vision is to leave behind something like a legacy. As a child, I saw how the Germans got ready-made things from their parents, and this makes sense. If this does not happen, then, obviously, some kind of injustice has been committed.