Rapper RAF Camora once again wins two Amadeus Awards. Wanda and Melissa Naschenweng also picked up their usual prizes. There are so many other good things. Austria’s “Grammy” needs reform.
Every year, rapper RAF Camora wins the Austrian music award in the hip-hop/urban category. This year for the seventh time. Only the artist Mavi Phoenix challenged him for the podium once in 2021. But last night at the awards gala it was again: Raphael Ragucci, RAF Camora’s real name.
The category would have offered quite a good selection, with four young women in the male-dominated genre: Donna Savage, Bex, Eli Preiss, and Spilif. With other rappers (Verified, Ebow and Esrap) they are currently shaking up the Viennese scene. Most of them are no less good at the defiant threatening gestures than the seven-time winner, who also won the race for album of the year this time. His record “Zukunft” reached number one in 2022.
This time he wins with “XV”, his eighth studio album, the 15th overall (hence the title, and the rapper also comes from Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus). Of course, it’s not a bad work, but it doesn’t offer anything new: the typically galloping beat, the typically unadorned lyrics. But top-class features with the German rappers Cro and Luciano as well as singer Mathea.
Here too: There would have been other worthy contenders for the album prize. The band My Ugly Clementine with their latest record “The Good Life”, for example. A successful balancing act between loudness and melody, perhaps between Blink-182 and the US sister trio Haim. The band was able to win the alternative category for the third time; here the nominee Uche Yara would have been the more exciting choice. She makes a sound that is difficult to define, at least one for the big stage.
Newcomer Bibiza was also nominated for best album with “Wiener Schickeria”. With six Amadeus nominations, he was even considered the clear favorite. The young musician, who can be placed somewhere between Falco and Yung Hurn, has been the talk of the town for almost a year. It is the striking Viennese style that captures the zeitgeist so well. A bit of self-irony, a good flick of the tongue, danceable music, that works really well, especially live. So it was only logical that Bibiza was also nominated as Live Act of the Year.
Bibiza was a breath of fresh air
But Wanda won, for the third time in this category. Overall, they will bag their seventh and eighth Amadeus Awards in 2024, the other one for Ö3 Song of the Year with “Bei Nobody Else”. Bibiza emerged as songwriter of the year with his “Ode to Vienna” and was also awarded for the best sound. So he was able to bring a bit of fresh air into the event alongside Bipolar Feminin (winner of the FM4 Award). In the Schlager/Folk Music category you would expect that less anyway: Melissa Naschenweng won there for the fifth time. The pop/rock winners Aut of Orda may seem new at first – but with Paul Pizzera, Christopher Seiler and Daniel Fellner, the trio consists of tried and tested award hunters.
A look at the procedure explains the leaderboard. The winners are determined based on a third of the jury’s evaluation (here 150 experts cast their votes), audience voting and sales figures. The latter are undoubtedly correlated: those who sell more titles have more fans, therefore more votes. This means that the awards are inevitably similar to the usual sales charts. As supposedly the most relevant music award in Austria, the Amadeus fails to recognize a diverse music scene. A reform would be good for him.
Winners at a glance
Album of the Year: „XV“ – RAF Camora
Ö3 song of the year: “Nobody else’s” – Wanda
FM4-Award: Bipolar Feminine
Live act of the year: Wanda
Songwriter of the Year: “An Ode to Vienna” – Bibiza (Music & Lyrics: Bibiza & Filous)
Hip Hop/Urban: RAF Camora
Alternative: My Ugly Clementine
Pop/ Rock: OUT of ORDER
Electronic/Dance: Toby Romeo
Hard & Heavy: Leftovers
Jazz/World/Blues: Molden, Seiler & the women’s orchestra
Pop/folk music: Melissa Naschenweng
Best Sound: “Viennese chic” – Bibiza (Artistic production and recording: Bibiza, Matthias Oldofredi, Johannes Madl, Johannes Römer, Enzo Gaier, Demian Pengg-Bührlen, Nikolai Potthoff, Patrick Denis Kowalewski, Philipp Rosenow; Mix: Johannes Madl, Nikodem Milewski; Mastering: Nikodem Milewski)
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