You need money? Just get me drunk and challenge me to a round of arm wrestling. Or easier: Just beat me up and steal the money. Even my 14-year-old brother is starting to really kick my ass during our regular fights. That’s why I decided to get fit, to work out and build up some muscle. But I didn’t want to explore that unknown world on my own. That unknown world full of strange training methods, muscle growth, dumbbells and those strange devices that look like twisted gynecology chairs with weights on them. To get the whole thing straight right away and avoid doing something wrong, I contacted the best guides into the world of pumping a reasonable person could come up with: Seyfu and Brutos Brutaloz.

Two years ago those two muscle-bound Berlin rappers, also known as “The Pharmacist” and “The Dopinghustler” set off a considerable hype when they released their “Dopingbusiness” video, which was entirely filmed on a small mobile phone camera.

I bought some really cheap tracksuit bottoms and met Seyfu and Brutos in the parking lot of a 24-hour gym called McFit somewhere in the industrial outskirts of Berlin to be guided into training, listen to motivating techno remixes of recent chart hits in an endless loop, and have a little chat about rap music and anabolic steroids.

Vice: OK Brutos, now be honest: how far am I away of becoming a prototype? Brutos Brutaloz: Ha ha… I’ll say two months.

Only two months? Two months of intensive training, if you know what I mean… Otherwise two years of normal training.

To loosen up the conversation, I let them laugh at me, while I delivered two miserable pull-ups. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any photos of the training. Good.

You are pumpers. What defines a pumper, what does it take? Seyfu: You know, when I go to the gym, I look for an incentive, for motivation, competition. I seek competition with the other guys in here…

Brutos: Pumping iron is a lifestyle. The clothes, the attitude, the fitness… It’s the same as with rappers. You know there are rappers and there are pumpers. We brought those two together and started a small revolution that way. Some day there will probably be karate-rap… Those guys will rap with a black belt on and get 100,000 clicks on Youtube.

How long ago did you guys have that hype going on with your “Dopingbusiness” video? About two years.

What’s happened since? What do you do now? Seyfu: I’m doing an apprenticeship. Where, that I can’t tell you.

Brutos: I work as a security guard. This way the muscles are good for something, you know… It’s better this way, you know, just imagine that some guy who knows me for my rap suddenly saw me in some Burger King kitchen or an office somewhere…

And the music? What’s up with that? Ah, I just want get rid of what’s on my heart… It’s about the fun. I’m glad when I get back my production costs… If I want money, I just sell some steroids, you know, a little extra…

So you are pretty free of ambitions? Seyfu: Listen man, no label, no manager and we got 180,000 clicks on Youtube. We had some well-paid gigs. At the carnival of cultures I got 400 Euros. But you always need a second option. If you only rely on rap, that’s ridiculous man, I’m serious…

Brutos: This way you don’t lose the fun.

Seyfu: If I feel like doing a love song, I do a love song, if I feel like doing a testo song, I do a testo song…

Didn’t you have some problems because of the video? Just the normal stuff, being watched closely at night, stuff like that…

Ah, the normal stuff… They stood in front of your house, or what? Brutos: Yeah, and followed us in their car. But that’s OK. You have to expect that, when you make a video like that. We wanted to provoke, you know… Some guy even called me and told me my story, like things he couldn’t even know, as an outsider. He said he would keep an eye on us… I called him motherfucker, then he hung up…

While I desperately try to lift up a big weight and keep my back straight and my stomach calm (I had eaten too much beforehand) at the same time, Seyfu tells me about their influence on the German rap scene.

Seyfu: By now, when you look at the other artists… Kollegah, Bushido, [who are famous German rappers] everybody is rapping about steroids now. They rapped about coke before, doing lines, and smoking weed. I don’t want say they stole from us. But, man, we were in the same Bravo [a famous German teen magazine] as Bushido and Fler. They have read our interview. And the people dig that stuff.

You started a trend. Anabolics have become a trend. And the other stuff, nobody wants to hear about that anymore… Coke, this and that… all that gangsta stuff.

But isn’t it gangsta to say that you sell steroids? No, what we do ain’t gangsta. It’s just about the business for us. We just want make money.

Ah, OK… I never rapped about killing somebody, or robbing somebody. I’m rapping about steroids, because we really do that.

You still consume? No, no. We just sell it.

Brutos: Selling and consulting. We explained to a lot of people how testosterone really works. They just wanted to shoot anabolic steroids like crazy and we kind of stopped them a bit.

And you openly talk about that in the gym? Seyfu: They come to you, in the gym, on the street. First question is “How old are you?” If they are under 18, they get nothing. If he’s 18, I’m cool with it. And if he doesn’t know how to use that stuff, I say, listen man, come over to my place, I’ll inject it for you. You know, before people shoot up themselves and risk getting abscesses, I do it for them. You can visit a doctor, too. There are a bunch of doctors in Berlin that are known in the underground. A doctor wants to make money, too.

Real doctors? Brutos: Yeah, no shit. You visit them and they inject you the stuff. One of them even sells it. I can’t give names, of course. I visited him before I took steroids for the first time. Then I got my own connections and later I sold steroids to him.

What would you say if I approached you and said I want to take steroids? Seyfu: I would tell you to do five years of training first.

Ha ha ha. You do that stuff when you’ve reached your natural limits. You know, a guy, he goes to the gym every day and still he doesn’t lift as much as his neighbor. Well, he takes some steroids, has his experience of success, and feels good.

But isn’t that twisted? That’s how it is, you can’t change it. Women do plastic surgery, men do steroids.

But don’t you come to the point, where you say, That’s enough! You know, look at Donatella Versace, she looks like shit. Of course, we say she looks like shit. This woman sees it from a whole different perspective.

OK, there’s something in that… So if somebody has reached his peak and wants more, then I say, OK, just have your experiences. Other guys smoke weed or do coke, where’s the difference?

Of course. But you sell the stuff. There’s a difference between consuming and selling. Why? Without demand, I couldn’t sell. It’s two sides to the same medal.

Brutos: Steroids are not the same as heroin or coke. I would never say I sell heroin or coke.

But what’s the difference between coke and steroids? Steroids are a medicine. You give it to little children, too. No shit, I can show you the package, it says “age 6 and above. You know, when they don’t get into puberty, you shoot them up with testosterone, for one or two years. I even know people who take steroids as a feel-good drug.

A feel-good drug?! Yeah, you never see them in the gym; they just take it because they feel better with it. No problem.

Seyfu: Coke has serious side effects. Coke kills.

But steroids kill, too. Yeah, but only the ignorant. If you do it right, you have no problem.

Brutos: Of course, you can’t exaggerate. If you drink too much water, you’ll burst, too.

That sounds reasonable.

Back in the locker room Brutos takes a big bottle full with white pills out of his bag.

Brutos: Don’t worry, all legal. Amino acids. Clean.

Really? Can I have some? Of course. Take four. I always take six.

The owner of the gym enters the room right when I stuff four white pills into my mouth that I got from Brutos Brutaloz. He lifts an eyebrow and walks by.

Brutos: If you wake up tomorrow and you are ten pounds heavier, then you know I lied to you, haha…

Ha ha. How did you actually start pumping? I watched all the Rocky flicks and then I started to do push-ups, pull-ups…

You’re a Rocky fan? Ivan Drago.

Oh, what Rocky is that again? Rocky 4. The guy that killed Apollo. That Russian guy, that got shot up with shitloads of steroids and never said a thing but let his fists do the talking. A very funny person.

A role model? A real role model, yeah.