Photo Gallery Bad Boy or Poster Boy?
Over the last decade, Bushido, the 34-year-old son of a single German mother and a Tunisian father, has come to be viewed by many as an example of successful integration in Germany.
A number of rappers with foreign roots in Germany are criticized for lyrics that glorify violence and are misogynistic, homophobic and sometimes even racist. But they are credited with having lent a voice to a multicultural German underclass and gained popularity across the social spectrum.
Bushido is now one of the heroes of a social class that captured cultural hegemony in the 2000s, found its audience with television channels like RTL II and defined its freedom with tattoos. It's also a group that responds roughly to the harsh way in which it feels treated by society. In November 2011, Bushido won an Bambi media award in the integration category.
Bushido is married to Anna-Maria Lagerblom, a former girlfriend of Mesut Özil, a football star with Turkish roots who plays on Germany's national squad. Here, the couple appears in Nov. 2011 at the Bambi awards ceremony.
In June 2012, he completed an internship in the office of Christian von Stetten, a member of the German parliament, the Bundestag, and chairman of the parliamentary panel on small and medium-sized businesses for Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). Here, Bushido follows a debate in parliament.
An article published by the German magazine Stern in mid-April has muddled this picture of successful integration. The report uncovered close ties between Bushido and the Abou-Chaker Clan, a Berlin-based organized crime group with Palestinian-Lebanese roots. "Bushido is the Bambi of the Abou-Chakers, their singing cash cow," the Stern article said. "What the Italian mafia families once were for Chicago, the Abou-Chakers are for Berlin. And Bushido is their Sinatra. A Frank Sinatra in track pants."
