The literary club of three Danish rappers

You know the story of the three rappers from Aarhus [a city on the east coast of Denmark] who one day walk into a recording studio to talk about Hemingway? It's not a bad joke. There's a podcast called Rappers' Book Club .

Aalen, Sean Lightfoot, and Soren Karim have already recorded thirteen episodes [on great classics of Nordic and, more broadly, Western literature]. They read The Fall by Albert Camus, The Pastor of Vejlby by Steen Steensen Blicher, and The Hunger by Knut Hamsun. Not to mention Karen Blixen and Tom Kristensen. Their project, as they present it to their followers on Instagram, is to “destigmatize the rapper in our society and, quite simply, to democratize the reading of works of fiction.”

The idea of ​​a book club had been on their minds for a long time. “It wasn’t a given to start a book club, because we have quite a few friends who don’t like to read,” admits Soren Karim Bech, 34. “The ones we usually hang out with mostly talk about football or rap.” But with his childhood friend Christian Molgaard, nicknamed “Aalen,” also 34, he’s been discussing literature ever since they started exploring their parents’ libraries when they were young.

Aalen isn't just an underground rapper and an avid reader: he also has a bachelor's degree in Nordic Languages ​​and Literature and has started—twice!—a master's degree in literary history at university. So he embraced the book club idea. And when Soren Karim Bech, over dinner on Vestergade [a street in downtown Aarhus], pitched the idea to a third friend, 39-year-old rapper Sean-Poul de Fré Gress, nicknamed “Sean Lightfoot,” he suggested turning it into a podcast: the Rappers' Book Club . After all, as rappers, they're supposed to know how to communicate in a different, fun, and original way.

Since then, they've received 50,000 Danish kroner [6,700 euros] from the Danish Arts Foundation, purchased recording equipment, and created a test episode to find the right format. The podcasts are now being recorded. And not just in the studio, as they've also created the first live versions. Next summer, they'll even travel to Bornholm [a Danish island in the Baltic Sea] to share their love of literature. It's become an addiction.

I ask them if they gloss over their interest in books when they're with their rapper friends. “Since they don't all come from a bourgeois family, literature is unfamiliar to them. But rappers have a healthy curiosity about language, so it's not necessarily a taboo subject — although it might be really old-fashioned for some of them,” Soren Karim Bech tells me. “Books aren't really their thing ,” Molgaard adds. “Most people find books boring, even a bit mystical, or even esoteric. It can be difficult to broach the subject,” Bech says.

So when they meet at the podcast studio on Friday evenings, it's with a glass of wine and a relaxed, weekend-before atmosphere. Listeners need to feel a sense of conviviality, they explain. "If we're a little tipsy, our tongues loosen," observes Sean-Poul of Fré Gress with a smile.

They prepare conscientiously before each episode, finding out about possible controversies between the writer and his colleagues, the author's biography and the reception of con