How rapper Anoki involuntarily became a poster boy

"Just don't look," the musician Anoki tells himself when he encounters his own oversized face, smiling down at him from an even larger advertising poster on Rosenthaler Platz. Contrary to its name, Rosenthaler Platz is not a square at all, but a noisy Berlin intersection that never sleeps, where kebabs are still on sale at 5 a.m. There you will find impatiently honking cabs, overturned e-scooters and intersecting streetcar lines.

For Anoki, Rosenthaler Platz is a stopover on his way to the music studio. Down by the train tracks, he walks past huge billboards every day. The 29-year-old rapper has had more than enough of the boards that show him. A student job is to blame.

Anoki: From Bavaria to Berlin

Anoki's real name is Florian Griessmann and he is the son of a German and an Indonesian. He grew up in the southern German state of Bavaria — one of few non-white people there.

As a child and teenager, Florian Griessmann had to endure everyday discrimination. On his way to parties, he has often been stopped by the police.

"Once a policeman said to me, 'If you look like a criminal, don't be surprised,'" he tells DW. Sometimes, he says, he filed charges against police officers, which were always met with counter-charges. "Everyone with an immigrant background knows this and has tried to take action against it."

Musician at any price

For Florian Griessmann, music is everything — even though for many years it didn't look as if he would ever be able to make a living from it. He first had to earn his money in another way.

"Name a job, I've probably done it before," laughs Anoki, who, as the child of a single mother, started working as a teenager. "I worked in a movie theater, planted plants at a wholesale nursery. I loaded trucks, polished shock absorbers on a factory line, tapped beer at a brewery. I worked in a notary's office for three years, even hosted a radio show at one point and wrote advertising copy." The only constant: his music. He taught himself to play the guitar and he writes his own songs.

"As Anoki, I work through a lot of things that have been on my mind for a long time. My own history, where I come from. But also questions about what the future can look like despite all the gloomy forecasts," says Florian Griessmann. "For me, music is not just entertainment, but has the ambition to discuss things that are important to me."

A fateful student job

It was his immigrant background that made Anoki a well-known advertising face. As a student, he took part in a photoshoot. For three hours of posing, he received €60 ($66).

"That was a lot of money for me at the time. And it all happened very, very quickly." It was, "Here you go, sign up, it'll be cool," he says.

In the picture that has since made his face famous, Griessmann smiles at the camera. The young man with the dark complexion gives a warm, authentic laugh. In the photo, he is wearing a bomber jacket and a wool cap.

The man in his early 20s did not read the fine print. Nor did he suspect that his portrait would end up in a pool of so-called stock photos — royalty-free images that companies can use for their own purposes. Florian Griessmann has ceded all image rights to his portrait.

Large companies advertise with Griessmann's portrait

Nothing happened for a long time. Then a friend got in touch: She had discovered him in an advertisement on social media.

"That was for dentures. I thought it was funny at the time because I have very crooked teeth — we didn't have money for an orthodontist in my youth," Griessmann recalls. But shortly after, a major telecommunications company also advertised with the likeable-looking young man. "And then it started: Suddenly I was on huge poster campaigns. For insurance companies, for large car manufacturers and for electronics groups."

He thinks the photo itself is okay, he says. But the fact that he is not asked what his picture is for and that he does not receive any further fee for it makes the 29-year-old furious.

"Countless friends have sent me photos of commercials, and also bands I work with," he says. Even a bank uses the picture, which has been quite a pain in the neck for him. As a musician his lyrics stand for an alternative, non-capitalist view of things.

Filed under 'urban man'

"I'm generally annoyed that it's huge brands of billion-dollar corporations. They advertise to further increase their sales. Why do they have to resort to stock photos?" Anoki has already tried to take legal action against this — so far unsuccessfully.

Time and again, he has been assured that the photo would be removed. But if you enter the keywords "urban man" in an internationally used stock photo bank, Griessmann still appears in first place out of around 500,000 search results.

Another click reveals that the customer pays €50 for a low-resolution photo and €475 for a large one. So unlike Anoki, the photo agency continues to earn money from his portrait. The term "urban man" also upsets him.

"I don't feel like an 'urban man,' I'm just me and I make my music — that's what I stand for." The term "urban" was once used by the US music industry to refer to "Black music" like R'n'B, rap and soul — an image with racist connotations: "Urban" stands for those having a migration background, for music by non-white people.

Great-grandson of a slave

Three years ago, Anoki decided to stop fighting his otherness and identify with it. "It made it easier," he says.

The musician delves into his family history, exploring his roots. One of his great-grandmothers came from Ghana. During colonial times, she was sold as a slave to Indonesia, where she presumably worked on tea plantations.

His father was born in Jakarta and emigrated with his parents to the Netherlands, the former colonial power of Indonesia. Here his father met Griessmann's mother, a German. But the relationship did not last and his mother moved to Germany with the then three-year-old Florian.

Now, at the age of 29, Florian Griessmann, who lives in Berlin, is doing what he loves: He is currently producing his first record and has been signed to record label BMG. He has already accompanied bands like "OK KID" on tour — and next year, with the debut album, his own tour is coming up.

This article was originally written in German.