Die Fantastischen Vier, also known as Fanta 4, is a Germanpop-rap group from Stuttgart, Germany, named after the German title of Marvel's Fantastic Four. The members are Smudo, And.Ypsilon, Thomas D, also dubbed "Hausmeister", and Dee Jot Hausmarke. They were, together with Advanced Chemistry, among the first groups to rap in the German language.
History
In the middle of the 1980s, Rieke and Schmidt formed the Terminal Team, Dürr and Beck joined in 1989. Under the new name Die Fantastischen Vier, they made German hip hop, or Deutschen Sprechgesang' as they called it, popular in Germany. Although there were German hip-hop artists prior to them it was Die Fantastischen Vier who registered the first chart hit with their 1992 single "Die da?!" from the album 4 Gewinnt, hitting #2 in Germany and #1 in Austria and Switzerland. After traveling to Los Angeles in the late 1980s, the group realized the lack of connection between the struggles of "the poor Blacks in the United States and middle-class Whites in Germany," and made a conscious effort to move away from the typical and cliché American gangster rap. The group never got involved with US-Americangangsta rap clichés, reacting with tongue-in-cheek humor to verbal attacks of alleged German gangsta rappers. In the albums following 4 Gewinnt, the band matured and progressed to a more serious and philosophic style. The band was extremely successful in the 1990s, when they released their hit single Die Da?! in 1992. It was arguably the first German hip hop hit and also the breakthrough for Fanta 4. In addition to the group's works, Thomas D, Hausmarke and Ypsilon also produced successful solo albums and the four had their own weekly show Die 4. Dimension, named after their third album, which aired on the German pay TV channel Premiere in 1993/1994. At the 1996 Popkomm in Cologne, Die Fantastischen Vier announced the establishment of their label, Four Music. Headquarters were in Stuttgart, but were later moved to Berlin-Kreuzberg. Three years later, the group's 7th album ' was released on their own label, with 4 singles from the album following. After the #2 hit "MfG", three singles were released at the same time, a first in German music business. Each one can be associated with one of the rappers: "Le Smou", "Michi Beck in Hell" and "Buenos Dias Messias". In late September 2004, Die Fantastischen Vier released the album Viel, the following tour being their most successful and best-attended to date. In 2005, Fanta 4's first greatest hits album was published. It includes all singles, as well as several other songs and rare footage from the band's early days, when they were still called "Terminal Team" and rapped in English. On 7 April 2007, the number-one album Fornika was released, preceded by the single "Ernten was wir säen" '. Their song "Ernten was wir säen" was released as a download for ' in December 2007 and was covered by Oomph! in 2009. They are also the German voices of the Penguins in the Madagascar film series. In 2010, Für Dich Immer Noch Fanta Sie peaked again at number one of the German charts. The 2014 release of the album Rekord marked the 25th anniversary of the band. It also topped the charts in Germany. In 2018, the single "Zusammen", featuring Clueso, from the album Captain Fantastic was chosen as the official song for the 2018 FIFA World Cup by German public broadcasterDas Erste.
