Issa

About the song

«Issa» is a 2026 single by the Berlin rapper Sido, whose real name is Paul Würdig. It came out on the evening of 20 August 2026 on Urban, a label of Universal Music, together with an official video, and it is the first single from his tenth studio album, «Frieden» — "peace" — announced for 27 November 2026. According to the label's announcement, as reported by the music sites Diffus and Pop-Himmel, Sido produced the track together with Yanek Stärk, who had already worked with him on his previous album, «Paul». The song is planned as the closing track of the new record, so the first thing fans heard from «Frieden» is also meant to be its final word.

The title is a piece of spoken Berlin German. In the chorus Sido talks about himself in the third person, and "ist er" — "he is" — melts into a single word, the way it sounds in a fast, relaxed conversation on a Berlin street. Written down as a title, that sound becomes «Issa». The chorus is a list of what this man is: modest, satisfied, sick in his own way, a Berliner, sane, at peace with himself and easy to love. It is a self-portrait, but one drawn from the outside, as if he were describing a friend he knows very well.

The verses move between two times. One is the past: the courtyard of a housing estate where a young boy hung around with the older kids, the dream of owning a house and a boat, the constant question of how to get money, small-time dealing and the cold of a flat where even the stove was not enough. The other is the present: a man with a long career, a life he compares with that of a rock star, a bank account and a daughter he can support. Between both times, Sido places small signs of doubt — a rosary he wears because success feels strange, the sense that someone around him is always pretending, and a body that still carries the marks of the hard years.

This mix of pride and self-examination is not new for him. Sido grew up first in Prenzlauer Berg, in East Berlin, and from the late 1980s in the Märkisches Viertel, a large housing estate in the north of West Berlin. He became famous in the 2000s with the label Aggro Berlin and a chrome skull mask shaped like a microphone, which he wore on stage from the end of 2003 and took off in public for the first time in 2005. His album «Paul» (2022), named after his birth name, dealt openly with addiction, therapy, a separation and his childhood, and went to number one in Germany.