This human rights lawyer is also a rapper: ‘I’m not the dopest MC ever, but I have roughly mastered the technique’

You’re also a rapper?

“I used to rap a lot. We performed a lot with a number of boys from secondary school and sometimes won a regional competition. After that we made a number of albums under the name Verbal Punishment, and I released a solo album.”

And now there is the album Always End Up Home.

“Those were the last recordings we made as a group, in 2009. The idea was: we’ll make one more album and then we’ll start serious adult life. In the end we never did anything with those songs again. Recently we decided: we’ll freshen it up and throw it on Spotify.

There has even been a performance.

“We really wanted to do that again, but it never happened. We were busy. So when I was approaching forty recently, I thought: I’ll throw a big party and just perform those songs. That was very nice. Delic, the producer of Opgezwolle, had remixed one of those songs for me without my knowledge. So my life is actually complete now.”

Are there similarities between the legal profession and hip hop?

“The social involvement, the denouncing of social abuses, that is what I recognize from rappers. And I also feel that commitment in my work.”

How do people from your work environment react to your rap career?

“They sometimes think: yes, this 40-year-old guy, whatever. But when they hear me rapping, for example during a karaoke night, they say: oh, you can really do this. I’m not the dopest MC ever, but I have pretty much mastered the technique.”