Die Fantastischen Vier

Die Fantastischen Vier
Die Fantastischen Vier in 1999
Background information
Origin	Stuttgart, Germany
Genres	German hip hop, Pop rap
Years active	1986 (1989) – present
Labels	Four Music, Sony BMG
Website	Official website
Members	Michael Beck Thomas Dürr Michael B. Schmidt Andreas Rieke

Die Fantastischen Vier (German pronun­cia­tion: [diː fanˈtastɪʃən ˈfiːɐ̯]), also known as Fanta 4, is a German hip hop group from Stuttgart, Germany, named after the German title of Marvel's Fantastic Four. The members are Smudo (Michael Bernd Schmidt), And.Ypsilon (Andreas Rieke), Thomas D (Thomas Dürr), also dubbed "Hausmeister" (janitor), and Dee Jot Hausmarke (Michi Beck). They were, together with Advanced CHemistry, among the first groups to rap in the German language.

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 (literally: "The Fantastic Four"), they made German hip hop, or Deutschen Sprechgesang (German spoken-song) as they called it, popular in Germany. Although there were German hip-hop artists prior to them (such as Advanced Chemistry from Heidelberg) 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 U.S. 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-American gangsta 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.