What It Means to Be Good Enough, As Told by Blumengarten

Algorithms often function like shamanic forces, as they are elusive and entirely removed from our ability to pin down their machinations. Due to this cunning phenomenon, someone always gets lucky, including BLUMENGARTEN, the band reigning over the German charts and causing a massive furor on the world wide web.

The lives of Samuel “Sammy” Eickmann and Rayan Djima revolve around a microcosm of friends in Cologne, Germany, whom they share a zipcode and lore with. The whimsical way in which they talk about this suggests a compound secluded from the real world.

Recently, the Blumengarten compound has erupted into something grander: the duo’s song “Gut Genug,” in collaboration with producer group KitschKrieg and rapper Shirin David, is making waves on TikTok. Translated verbatim to “good enough,” their catchy chorus got rapidly entangled into the social media centrifuge and everted into something closer to “Doobie Scoot Canoe,” as dubbed by the international crowd. The song not only traversed as musical backrest to short-form content, but generated a prolific amount of online discourse: celebrities such as Wiz Khalifa and Lizzo posted themselves listening to it, Heidi Klum cast aspersions over an online podcast, and Steve Lacy (staggeringly) covered it.

Being rapidly swept into this online avalanche, however, is not instantly synonymous with standing the tests of time. What does it even mean to be gut genug in this age? Now that their music is crooned in online nooks, hometown cafés, and other inconspicuous crevices, we let the duo intuit the answer.

LS: How did you guys meet?

Rayan: We met in high school, where we spent the last three years at the same school. We became really close friends and started making music.

LS: How did that evolve into Blumengarten?

Sammy: Rayan always said he wanted to write something, he didn't want to sing. But around the first session, when he came to my basement, he was like, "Yeah, I got this text, who will sing it?” And I told him, "You sing it!” I will sing it. It was 2020-2021, around about five years ago now, and we instantly clicked. And from the first day, we started going to the studio every day, and ever since we've been Blumengarten. It worked out very organically.

LS: Was that specific text ever translated into a released song?

Rayan: Yeah, it's out. There are definitely a lot of horrible songs that never came out from that time, and that will also never come out, but the main one is called “paris syndrom.” It’s the one that put us on the map.

LS: Can you give me a short description of Blumengarten’s universe, especially for people that may not be familiar with you?

Sammy: [To Rayan] Maybe you should try.

Rayan: I'd say our universe is defined by a lot of vulnerability, but also love, acceptance, friendship, like #positivevibesonly. We are not gatekeeping, we are not acting cool. We are very chalant, and we always try to be open for mistakes.

Sammy: We understand we won't make perfect music. We are not musicians, we are just people for whom music is just a way for feelings to come out. We don't polish anything.

LS: How would you describe each other?

Rayan: I would describe Sammy as insane. I’m not the only person that would do that. Part of that is that he's also a genius, super talented, super motivated, extremely hard working. He’s a big inspiration to me, to my work. Obviously, without him, I couldn't do it. But I want to make sure that insane comes first, all caps.

Sammy: I've never seen somebody who can look into his feelings like Rayan. He thinks about his feelings a lot, and I've learned so much about sharing my own feelings. I've learned that through him; he’s always there for everybody, literally, because we all live in the same complex… He is mentally very strong, especially because I know where he’s coming from. I know where I am from. It's not typical for us to be here, and that we came this far, and that we made something out of ourselves, and that's why I respected him so much.

LS: Do you have a fun story regarding your band?

Sammy: [Looking at Rayan] We have so many fun stories we can’t tell. Maybe we can talk about our bus driver.

Rayan: We had a tour bus driver and one night we had to cancel the show because I was sick. And then we had to basically drive back home on a super gloomy evening. Out of nowhere, a very disheveled person appeared outside of the bus and started to knock on the window and tried to get in.

Sammy: It was like two in the morning and everybody was kind of scared. So we asked our bus driver, "You have a gun, right?,” And in a very serious tone he said, "Of course.” We were more scared of him because we aren’t sure if he was serious.

Sammy: We never found out either, and it's maybe better that way. I remember the next day at breakfast, he looked at the food, and he was like, “I need meat, I get angry.”

LS: In what ways would you say that your music inscribes itself in the current pop/hip hop-ish spectrum of German music? What about internationally?

Rayan: We draw a lot of inspiration from hip hop music from Germany. That’s a sound we grew up on, so it felt natural to incorporate some of those elements, like the writing style and certain drum patterns. That’s also what landed us a lot of respect. In Germany, we have an emergent young rap scene at the moment, and we received a lot of love and respect from that scene, as they recognized a lot of the things we did sonically on this project. It was a super cool acknowledgement for us, because we come from the indie/guitar music bubble. The cool kids usually don't listen to this type of music.

The percentage of German music we listen to in comparison to the international market is so marginal; we pretty much only listen to international music. It's so cool to see international artists giving us props and to now have this moment with one of our songs popping internationally.

LS: What do you think constitutes fame in these times? What propels the circulation of a song?

Rayan: I think people just have like a sixth sense (or seventh sense, I actually don't know how many senses there are) when it comes to figuring out what's authentic or not, and so many people are performing as whatever. It’s so easy to fit into a model, especially within this indie space, where you write this type of song about this type of topic, you use these types of buzzwords, you go on these types of tours. It's so pre-planned, so it loses so much of its individual authenticity. What we want to prioritize for the next few projects is to be as real and as purely ourselves as we can be, and I think this video and this song do that. It's also the way that I sing is just so weird and how I look, how I sing, and how I dance don’t really fit together. It transmits so many different things, but I think that's exactly what people gravitate to.

Sammy: Because we're in Germany, I see so many cases of people we know, and when I see how they act in front of a camera, I'm like, “it’s not you, bro. What are you doing?” People, more or less, see this behavior, and maybe that's why our new stuff resonates with so many people, because we tried so hard to be ourselves, to not accept any compromise. We don't listen to our label anymore, we're only listening to our manager. I think this really played a role when we did the rollout for “radio.” I don't want to shade anybody here, but people on our label were like, "Are you sure, about the new videos, the new style? Is it really that good? Does it truly connect with the people?” But we were so sure about it, and that's everything that came out.

LS: With “Gut Genug” going viral now, I wonder about what's effectively changed once you've passed into this sphere of international recognition?

Rayan: We were already pretty well known in Germany, we're not complete newcomers. We also have made songs that are fairly big for German standards, so I definitely have a good comparison. Now when I go out, it's just like getting recognized on the streets, people singing the song in my face in passing, I think in a day I would say I hear somebody sing it just to get my attention approximately 10 to 16 times. It’s super fun as well, we enjoy this moment. It’s a cool point in our career. It's also nice that it has come now, because we have been making music for five years as a duo. We went on three or four tours at this point. So we are ready for whatever's coming on our way.

Sammy: Rayan gets recognized more often than I do, but I was sitting at this bar yesterday, and the girl next to me, she just started singing the chorus out of nowhere, without even knowing it was my song. I didn't say anything, I just looked at her and smiled. It is literally taking over the streets, and we are here for it. It’s perfect timing, since we just dropped our new mixtape radio, so everybody go listen to that!

LS: What's your favorite thing that happened since the song went viral?

Rayan: Steve Lacy made a TikTok singing the chorus, which is still so crazy, it doesn't make sense, the video is at over 20 million views...

LS: Speaking of him singing it, how do you feel about people on TikTok abusively mispronouncing the title?

Rayan: I mean, I grew up in an immigrant household, I know how hard it is to learn the German language if you've never spoken before, so I have a lot of compassion for people not being able to figure out how to say “Du bist gut genug.” I think in many languages it also just sounds super strange, I don't mind it. I think it's funny, all the different ways people are saying it, and there are a lot of translations: I’ve seen a Finnish one, a Spanish one, an Italian one, an English one. It’s so cool, because it's such a positive message. I like how people are making it their own.

LS: What are each of your music tastes?

Sammy: They are very different. Ryan showed me yesterday some good Afrobeat songs that I've listened to this whole morning, and a lot of old Pashanim songs. But on regular, I would say my music taste is all over the place.

Rayan: I'd say for me it's more classic hip hop, a lot of old German rap. There’s some new German rap that I like to listen to. I grew up speaking French, so I also like a lot of French music, there’s this new wave of underground, African-sounding artists from Paris that I enjoy a lot.

I have one big recommendation, which is luzyqv. He's one of my favorite artists at the moment.

LS: What's your favorite personal project so far within BLUMENGARTEN?

Rayan: I’d say this one hit, because we worked all these years to be able to make a project like this. All the others were more like stacking stones.

Sammy: I’m really, really proud of our debut album. Yeah, every work we put out is probably the best at the given moment. I think this should always be the goal. This is very dramatic, but I always think if I die tomorrow, this will be the thing everybody will remember us for, and everybody will listen to it, and I couldn't die in peace if I wouldn't put everything in it.

LS: What's your dream collab?

Rayan: Man, it may happen soon. In Germany, there's this band called AnnenMayKantereit. Its singer, Henning May, is also known around the world for his super deep voice, he's legendary. He's from Cologne, so that would be great to work with him. He's also a friend of ours. It hasn't worked out just yet, but we will just keep annoying him about it.

Sammy: I really want to work with Lil Yachty.

LS: What's coming next?

Rayan: We don’t even really know. This whole thing is so crazy, we're just riding the wave and seeing what's next. I think what we're definitely going to do soon is fly to the US and do all the media out there, hear the people singing the song in German, and, just have fun.

Sammy: It’s such an interesting time right now, because we really don't know what's happening next. When we started, everything was new for us. For everybody, for our manager, for everybody in our circuit….

Rayan: …it is new, also by far the biggest success. We just don't know…

Sammy: … we are open for everything, and we want to think and talk about everything, and we want to take everything with us. Oliver Tree (rest in peace) actually wrote us two days ago this message, like "Guys, I'm so proud of you. Take everything, enjoy the moment, take everything you can from it.”

LS: It’s truly mind-boggling how much momentum the internet can render. How do you feel about that?

Rayan: It's so scary. It's obviously in our favor now, like in a big way, but it's so scary how something can spread so fast and you just lose control over it. The song is now getting so many streams every day, you completely just lose any relation to the numbers, it's just so absurd, and it's just crazy to see how something can get that big within a span of five days, we went on a short little tour through Germany that was exactly five days; in the beginning, the song had a little bit of motion, but nothing crazy. Five days later we were almost at a million TikToks using our sound.

Steve Lacy's TikTok @steve.lacy https://www.tiktok.com/@steve.lacy/video/7649958831040040222

Listen to Blumengarten's new EP here.