Archival Notes

1999 is a six-part autobiographical rap series released over six years, with music videos shot in Germany and Turkey. The title marks the year Haftbefehl’s father died by suicide – an event that deeply traumatised him at the age of fourteen. The six songs function as a fragmented narrative of his life from 1999 onwards, tracing key moments that shaped him, including dropping out of school, becoming involved in drug trafficking and struggling with addiction.

Throughout the series, Haftbefehl describes deprivation in Offenbach am Main, the city bordering Frankfurt where he grew up, with repeated imagery of balconies overlooking tower blocks and worn clothing. Drug dealing appears in these narratives as routine survival within the neighbourhood economy, and with school dismissed as meaningless, the streets become his primary site of learning – offering protection but also direct exposure to violence, criminalisation and addiction from an early age.

Running alongside these themes, Haftbefehl presents his fragile moral world, with the death of his father marking the collapse of the family unit and the premature end of childhood. Although Islamic faith surfaces repeatedly throughout the series, it remains constantly strained by the realities of street survival. Faith appears as a moral language through which guilt and longing are expressed, particularly in an environment where daily life is shaped by illicit survival.

In a poignant end to the series, Haftbefehl describes himself intoxicated, pleading, “Forgive me, God”. Sitting on the edge of a rooftop, counting the stars, he drifts between thought and emotional numbness, questioning his ability to survive. The closing line –“Dear God, is this the night I die?” – which he screams as loud as he can, points directly to his fragile mental state, intensified by exhaustion, intoxication and the memories of his “cursed” childhood.