Aziza A.

Aziza A. — Biography

Aziza A. is a Berlin-born artist who raps in both German and Turkish and is known as the first woman to rap in Turkish. Born Alev Azize Yıldırım, she is also known as a DJ, actress and presenter, and is counted among the pioneers of Turkish-German hip-hop culture.

Born in Berlin in 1971 to a Turkish family that had emigrated to Germany in 1968, she gave many concerts in the mid-to-late 1990s, was played on the radio and appeared in the German press. From April to July 1996 she presented the ZDF youth programme Dr. Mag. Her debut album Es ist Zeit came out in 1997 and climbed to number two on the European world music chart; after its success the German magazine Zitty named her one of the hundred important people of the year.

In the following years she kept presenting, hosting her own radio programme Haydi Pop on Radio Multikulti, part of RBB, and also working in theatre and film. On screen she is credited in Lola and Billy the Kid (1999) and Offside (2005), and her music was used in the films of directors such as Kutluğ Ataman and Buket Alakuş. She went on to release the albums Kendi Dünyam (2001) and Kulak Misafiri (2009).