It was no coincidence that MARIYBU released her new album on Fathers’ Day. “A good day to educate people a bit,” she says. “Perhaps to provoke them, too.” The album is called FRECH (“sassy”) and the title stems from an observation that is also a diagnosis: Mariybu is called sassy for things she considers perfectly normal. That she sent two men out of the front row during a gig because they were filming up her skirt, thereby crossing a line that applies also on stage. That she produces and writes her own music and releases it on her own label, Tan- gaTunes. That she has a clear opinion.
Since moving to Berlin, the Hamburg native has remapped the hyperpop scene – between techno bangers, hardstyle and rap, between escapism and feminist rage, between club an- them and manifesto. The fact that she doesn’t let anyone she hasn’t personally chosen profit from her art is not an attitude for her, but a consequence of experience. “80 per cent of men in the music industry are rubbish,” she says, without raising her voice. Those in her team have her trust. Most of them are women. That, too, is a structural decision. In keeping with this stance, Mariybu has been part of Spotify’s EQUAL, programme since May 2026, which aims to make female artists more visible worldwide. In German-speaking countries, 58 female artists have so far been selected as ambassadors, from Zoe Wees to Ellen Allien. For Mariybu, what matters is the concrete out- come: reach that she can pass on.
Photography by Jana Abel.
The boost from EQUAL has changed that, she says not just in terms of streams, but also in that she was able to include friends in the playlist. She in- cluded smaller female artists, who all cried with joy. “It’s like a snowball rolling downhill.” FRECH is her third album and the most direct: it tackles patriarchal structures in the music industry, body stereotypes, and the exhaustion of having to explain the same things over and over again. Musikexpress wrote that it’s feminist hyperpop that would make a splash at the Bierkönig like a submarine. Mariybu finds that apt and would go there in a heartbeat: “You can really educate a lot of people there.” Her stance on the term ‘empowerment’ is also clear: if it’s meant seriously, she considers it important. If not, it makes her angry.
Mariybu counts Spotify’s EQUAL programme among the former. She knows the difference from experience: festivals that book women to quell a backlash, but then have them play as the opening act whilst the stage is still being set up. Mariybu de- scribes her creative process as a state of hyperfocus: she sits down, listens to sounds, waits until something grabs her. Then she stops drinking, eating and moving until the song is finished. She doesn’t know beforehand what will come of it. “It comes from the subconscious. Like writing a diary.”
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