Fler

Born on Berlin's western outskirts, Patrick Losensky grew up without any father figure present and soon encountered repeated difficulties at school, leading him to move out on his own and begin an apprenticeship as a painter. Only after reaching the age of twenty did he develop an interest in hip-hop, having never rapped previously. Choosing music over crime, he first appeared as a featured artist on Bushido recordings in 2002, credited under the name Frank White. One year later he joined Aggro Berlin, the leading German gangsta rap imprint at the time. As Fler he issued his debut single "Aggroberlina" in 2004, which entered the national charts inside the Top 100. His first full-length project, Neue Deutsche Welle, arrived in May 2005. The title-track single drew intense criticism for its perceived right-wing nationalist content, placing both the artist and Aggro Berlin executives at the center of a nationwide controversy over rap lyrics and neo-Nazi ideology. Although he consistently denied any support for radical right-wing views, the album still reached Billboard's European Top 100. His follow-up, Trendsetter, matched that chart performance in 2006 while pivoting his themes toward conventional gangster narratives; the single "Çüs Junge" even celebrated the appeal of Turkish/German women in an apparent effort to distance himself from earlier associations. The 2007 mixtape Airmax Muzik preceded an international tour alongside several labelmates. Late that year, after taping an MTV segment, three masked assailants tried to stab him outside the studio; his bodyguard repelled the attack and the men escaped. Fler dismissed the incident as "a cowardly action which had nothing to do with rap." Far from deterring him, the event preceded a five-year period of intense productivity that included multiple albums, guest spots, mixtapes, and compilations, establishing him among the most active and commercially successful figures in German hip-hop as each studio release outperformed the last. After returning to nationalist imagery on 2008's Fremd im Eigenen Land, he adopted a more introspective stance on the 2009 self-titled album, recounting his childhood and time spent in a psychiatric unit. He then moved from Aggro Berlin to Ersguterjunge for the punningly titled Flersguterjunge before founding his own imprint, Maskulin, in 2011. That same year he delivered two projects—Airmax Musik II and Im Bus Ganz Hinten—and followed them with his eighth album, Hinter Blauen Augen, in 2012. Although some listeners faulted its Americanized sound, the record achieved his strongest chart position up to that point. The ensuing three years proved equally active: his ninth album, Blaues Blut, surfaced on Maskulin in 2013, while Neue Deutsche Welle, Vol. 2 arrived in 2014 and peaked just shy of the top spot. His first number-one album, Keiner Kommt Klar Mit Mir, topped the German charts in 2015 and reached the Top Ten in both Austria and Switzerland. Later that year a Frank White project appeared, after which Weil die Straße Nicht Vergisst entered at number two. Vibe, issued in 2016, claimed the summit in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland alike.