Top Ten Songs from Bushido's "Black Friday"

“Black Friday” is a 2017 album by German rapper and producer Bushido. It is his twelfth solo studio album.

The album topped the German, Austrian and Swiss charts. It also broke the record for the most streamed album on Spotify by a German artist (streaming isn’t very common in Germany, physical copies are much prefered). There was also a small sales competition between “Black Friday” and SpongeBozz’s anticipated second album “Started From the Bottom / Krabbenkoke Tape”. The latter peaked at number two in Germany and Austria, and number three in Switzerland.

The album received positive critical reviews, highly praising the production and sinister atmosphere, and also complementing that the album also contains personal songs next to Bushido’s trademark dark gangsta style. It was also commented on how the album manages to add a depth to his persona that hasn’t been there since the beginning of his massive career in the early 2000s, and it was generally felt that it was a return back to form after his last albums started to become repetitive. Many critics felt it features Bushido’s best beat work to date.

Musically, the album is pure traditional hip hop based around atmospherically dark samples, including violins, strings and echoing synthesizers. Occasionally, a trap drum kit is used for the beats, but none of the songs are in the trap genre. Lyrically, the songs are reminiscent of battle rap with dominant interpolations of gangsta rap that stylize Bushido as a dangerous street criminal. Despite that, the album is less provocative and controversial than its predecessors, which often attacked celebrities and even politicians and used images of extreme violence. While still far from being clean, “Black Friday” doesn’t try to shock as much, it just delivers street centered topics found in other gangsta rap songs as well. The songs “Papa” and “Oma Lise” are noted for being unusually personal and emotional for Bushido.

In the 2010s, it became a trend for artists to release a limited deluxe box set of their album in Germany. This usually contains the album, all instrumental versions and different kinds of merchandising, sometimes also new music. Bushido’s “Black Friday” box contained the album, instrumental versions and a bonus CD with 10 new tracks (one intro and 9 full songs, also included are the instrumentals of this bonus disc), the vinyl of his classic collaboration album “Carlo Cokxxx Nutten” with Fler, and a T-Shirt. In 200 of these boxes, there was also a golden ticket that allowed the owner and company to visit all concerts of the Black Friday tour for for free. There was also one bonus ticket for a private concert (Before you ask, in my box was no ticket, but the bonus CD and vinyl is good enough to justify having bought the box).
Guest rappers on the album are Shindy, Ali Bumaye, Fler, AK Ausserkontrolle, M.O.030 and Laas Unltd.
The Top Ten
1 Sodom und Gomorrha
2 Black Friday
3 Geschlossene Gesellschaft
4 Fallout
5 Oma Lise
6 Echte Berliner
7 Papa
8 Angst
9 CCNDNA
10 Gehen wir rein
The Contenders
11 Moonwalk
12 Ground Zero
13 Switch Stance
14 So Lange
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