The musician Jan Delay in portrait: A portrait on ARD

At the beginning of the 1990s, a few seemingly irrefutable certainties existed: Instead of the promised flourishing landscapes, refugee homes burned in deindustrialized zones. The silent majority protested with glowing candlelight vigils and little resistance. And the singing minority lacked the right words simply because the chanting was in English. Even the apolitical middle-class children from Stuttgart known as Die Fantastischen Vier couldn't and didn't want to change that.

In stark contrast to four highly political, middle-class kids from Hamburg, whose band Absolute Beginner rapped its way through basement clubs under the radar of the attention-seeking industry. One of the four band members was Jan Philipp Eißfeldt. And in case that doesn't ring a bell: The young musician's stage name is now Jan Delay – a superstar of classless party pop.

"A complex, complicated, cheerful, cool guy," director Fatih Akin calls him. "A great personality," judges comedian Oli Dittrich. "Often copied, never equaled," seconded singer Udo Lindenberg. "Icon," enthuses presenter Nikeata Thompson. When so much show expertise is concentrated right at the beginning of an ARD profile, there must be something to the person being portrayed. Director Eric Friedler, a sleuth for cultural-historical treasures, brilliantly summarizes how much.

"Forever Jan" is the title of the three half-hour life episodes, in the genre's usual wordplay style. Clever album titles like "Mercedes Dance" or "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Soul" don't, however, do half as much justice to the career of this born-and-bred spotlight-slinger as the subtitle of Friedler's third chapter: "Radical Entertainer with Attitude."

Delay grew up in the Hamburg district of Eppendorf. Today, this pristine Wilhelminian-era neighborhood for corporate lawyers and up was a seedy, trendy neighborhood at the end of the 1970s. Influenced by the smoky Onkel Pö jazz club—where Udo Lindenberg and Oli Dittrich once performed—young Jan lived in an old squat. His father was a filmmaker, his mother an artist, both activists: the cultured couple raised their son with plenty of music and politics to become a "young soul rebel."

Two decades later, his first solo album would have a similar title. Fatih Akin, a former student at the Academy of Fine Arts like Eißfeldt's parents, describes the artist behind it as a "mixture of Dean Martin, Prince, Justin Timberlake, and the Beasty Boys," especially the latter.

Why this mixture is called "Hippiekind" in the title of the opening episode remains a secret for ARD. But the "Goes Rap" that follows is made clear by grainy images from his private archive. From the 1981 anti-nuclear demonstration with his father's hand to the hip-hop collective Absolute Beginner ten years later, Jan Delay's career path could hardly be more straightforward. The same applies to his track record. Eizi Eiz, Platin Martin, DJ Mad, and Denyo hadn't even priced success in for a long time.

Until his chart entry in 1998, the future perfectionist rapped in the left-wing alternative muddle of opinionated but unprofitable art unleashed on small stage concerts, impressively demonstrating that popular music can simply happen. Not everything has to be calculated from a business perspective. Beer instead of a fee, smoking weed on principle, community as a driving force: "Because no one wanted to make money from it," Jan Delay explains, "it was pure energy."

This energy steadily made its way through the hated major label (Motor Music) to MTViva, until the Hamburg school of ironically playful hip-hop (Fettes Brot) faded. It briefly resurfaced as a thoughtful counterpoint to the misogynistic exhaust-pipe rap of Aggro Berlin. In the new millennium, however, the Beginners also sank into the mainstream of the Fantastischen Vier.

But then none other than Herbert Grönemeyer asked Jan Eißfeldt for a track for his sampler "Pop 2000." When he contributed a reggae version of Nena's "Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendein," the uncommercial rapper's metamorphosis into the German Robbie Williams began. At this point, the three-part series "Forever Jan" could follow the unfortunate path of the similarly famous "Viva Story." A year and a half ago, German broadcaster Das Erste described the rise, triumph, and fall of the music channel that also helped make local hip-hop famous.

For Jan Delay, as Jan Eißfeld calls himself from now on, the step from the underground to the spotlight is a real breath of fresh air. With his big band Disko No. 1, he not only hoards gold records. He also succeeds in what his lifelong companion Klaas Heufer-Umlauf describes: Nothing is more difficult "than going mainstream while still staying true to himself." Jan Delay scours everything from reggae to funk & soul to rock, which appeals to the masses and thus fills every stadium.

But even if the lyrics occasionally denounce racism, the shift to the right, and the obsession with masculinity, like the Beginners once did, he does so with a solid stance. What creative artists convey to their audience is more a question of character than composition.

"Looking away doesn't work, and muting doesn't work either," Delay says, summing up his credo. "Just as I've always worried, I've always spoken up." Eleven years ago, he even went so far as to accuse Heino of being a Nazi and landed him with a cease-and-desist order and a veritable shitstorm from the right.

Because he celebrated his Nike shoes as the headline act at the 25th anniversary of the occupied Hamburg autonomous stronghold Rote Flora, there was also a shitstorm from the left (albeit without an injunction). Jan Delay polarizes. He does it with dedication. And so, director Friedler also tells the story of a community that is becoming increasingly irritable, more rigorous, more identity-political, but in which, precisely because of this, something is gaining importance that is in danger of being lost in a self-optimizing society: authenticity.

Hardly anyone mines this raw material more than Jan Philipp Eißfeldt alias Eizi Eiz alias Jan Delay – even if he is always in danger of an overdose of the sweet poison of success plus commerce and applause on his solo career.

In a film made by his parents, the ten-year-old is asked about his three wishes. He answers: "That I stay healthy. That I stay the way I am. And that I have three more wishes." Anyone who watches his career in the documentary might think that all three wishes have come true.

When the Beginner band reunited between two number one albums by Jan Delay nine years ago, Advanced Chemistry immediately shot to the top and delivered “Ahnma,” an iconic work of consensus-based subculture that only this radical entertainer with attitude can currently achieve.

Whatever Delay tackles, it turns to gold. No wonder only one negative word is spoken about him. Bjarne Mädel calls him a traitor because, as a Hamburg native, he sings Bremen's stadium anthem. Well, then.

“Forever Jan”, 3 x 30 minutes, from May 21 in the ARD media library, from May 24 on Das Erste and on May 30 on SWR