With a background in beatboxing and street art, there’s a seam of grounded authenticity running through Azad’s hip-hop. That goes for whether his songs explore the toxicity of street life or expound upon America’s influence on European rap. From Kurdish roots, he became one of the first German street rappers to enjoy mainstream success—his “Prison Break Anthem (Ich glaub an Dich)” found ubiquity as the title song for that TV show in Germany. More recent albums have Azad returning to old-school hip-hop beats and themes, illuminating and reinterpreting them with contemporary production.