New album from Yung FSK18: Cravings for Life

“Hey guys, it’s nice here with you, but why is some guy booked as the evening’s headliner again?” With these words, Yung FSK18 reports from the stage of the Sensus Festival. The artist from Halle spits her anger into the audience. Mind you, the 31-year-old isn't on stage to settle for the ordinary. You can also tell from her new album “1000 Little Deaths” that she immediately opens her mouth when she doesn’t like something.

The album title is based on the French expression “La petite mort”, slang for orgasm. And yes, it's about coming. “After every orgasm I say thank you for contraception and feminism,” rhymes the rapper. “No man in this world and no God in heaven / Will ever stop me from not finding the clit”.

But YungFSK 18's lyrics are also about more complex themes: "Change, regret, pain and new beginnings," as the artist announces her album on Instagram. There are 15 songs, produced by Rattenjunge, with whom YungFSK18 has been working for many years.

There are danceable, bass-heavy numbers like “Fun Damental Human Rights”, which you immediately want to stand in the club with your friends and shake your ass to. But there are also more melancholic moments like “Little Freak B2B”, which is about the unconscious: “My past haunts me/Now I can’t sleep”. “OK Boom”, the only track with a guest rapper, also needs to be mentioned: Eyya comes into action, giving the overall sound a different dynamic with her feature and the driving beat of the track.

With songs like “Nightliner,” Yung FSK18 showed right from the start that she also has pop moves. On the new album the beats are sometimes reminiscent of gangsta like Sido and Raf Camora. She was impressed by its characteristic mix of German rap and trap sound. But Yung FSK18 is totally unique in her rhyme style. With her unmistakable voice she creates a singsong in the Halle dialect, which leads to a snotty flow that she herself describes as “assisexual”.

Yung FSK18: “1000 Little Deaths” (Audiolith/Broken Silence); the tour starts at the end of January 2027

Many hip-hop artists are automatically classified as “pussy rap” or “feminist rap”. But actually everything from Yung FSK18 is much more diverse and needs its own category. In one song she can completely give in to hedonism and celebrate life, then in the next she raps, "Things happened that I wouldn't even tell my therapist/But I'm no longer ashamed because only the perpetrators deserve shame." She openly raps about being in love with a 30-year-old when she was 16, and the next moment she was walking through her hometown of Halle with the political influencer Marcant and talking about culture and politics.

Her origins from Halle an der Saale, as a child with eight siblings, experiences with drugs, both good and bad, she incorporates all of this into the rhymes on her new album. Despite, or perhaps because of, all the experiences she has had, the “Big Ass Hungry” artist remains, to put it in her words.

She appears self-confident, without false shame in her language, but also vulnerable. It is precisely such contradictions that make “1000 Little Deaths” sound interesting and independent. Although Yung FSK18 demands her place on stage, she doesn't just stand for herself there. She always shows solidarity. “Goldie 333, who played before me, could have been the headliner,” she shouts into the microphone. And then the bass booms. YungFSK 18 is best listened to outside and with friends anyway.