In 2009, Cro released his first
mixtape,
Trash. On 11 February 2011, his second mixtape
Meine Musik was released. It was available for free download. Cro produced the entire mixtape by himself. Through the mixtape German hip-hop musician Kaas took notice of Cro. Through Kaas, Cro met Sebastian Andrej Schweizer, founder of the independent-label, Chimperator Productions, and Kodimey Awokou. At the end of September 2011, a "Making of" video for a new artist was published by the label leading to speculations about which artist had been actually signed. In October 2011, Schweizer announced that he had signed Cro. During the concert and also for photos, Cro wore a
panda-mask. Psaiko.Dino, producer at Chimperator Productions, adopted the role as a spokesperson for Cro, especially for the video-blogs. A few days later, the video was released on
YouTube, where it gained more than 500,000 views in the first two weeks. The American blog hypetrak.com also reported about the video and Cro. German hip hop and funk musician
Jan Delay posted the video on his
Facebook page and said, Cro was the "future of German rap". Besides "Easy", "Hi Kids" and "Kein Benz" were also released prior to the release of the mixtape. On 1 December 2011, Cro was a guest on the show
NeoParadise by the channel ZDFneo, where he performed snippets of three songs from his mixtapes
Meine Musik and
Easy. One day later, Chimperator Productions released the mixtape
Easy which is available for free download on their website. In the beginning of 2012, Cro signed an author's contract with
Universal Music Publishing Group. On 27 January 2012, he embarked on a concert tour named "Pandas Gone Wild!", on which he was accompanied by Psaiko.Dino. In mid February 2012, the music video for "Easy" gained 1,000,000 views on
YouTube. In mid May the number of the views rose to 3,000,000. On 23 March 2012, the song "Easy" was released as a single. Besides the Standard version, the Limited Edition version included the songs "Hi Kids", "Lieblingssong", as well as "Konfetti", a collaboration with Ahzumjot and Rockstah. "Easy" entered the
German Single Charts on second place. In June 2012, Cro's single "Easy" was certified gold in Germany. The music video for the single gained 20,000,000 views on YouTube. From 29 June until 1 July, Cro released one single each day, "Du", "
King of Raop", and "
Meine Zeit". Music videos were also filmed for every single. On 6 July, Cro released his debut album,
Raop. Mid-July, "Easy", "Hi Kids", "
Du", "King of Raop", and "Meine Zeit", all of his five released singles were placed in the Top 100 in the German Single Charts. On 7 September 2012, Cro released a free mixtape called
Raop which included 16 remixes of songs from his album
Raop. On 28 September, Cro competed in the
Bundesvision Song Contest with his and Die Orsons' song "Horst & Monika" and took the fifth place. On 19 October 2012, Cro released the track "1 Millionen" through the
iTunes and made it available for free download. He dedicated this track to having more than 1 million fans on
Facebook. On 21 October, he released a music video to accompany the track. On 27 October 2012, Cro released the music video for his fifth single "
Einmal um die Welt" which was released on 2 November. In November, Cro's debut album,
Raop and single "Easy" reached platinum status in Germany whereas "Du" was certified gold. In Austria,
Raop and "Easy" and in Switzerland, "Easy" were also certified gold. He also won the
Bambi award in the category "Pop National". On 6 December, he won the 1LIVE Krone for "Beste Single" for his debut single, "Easy". He was also named Newcomer of the Year 2012 by
iTunes. His debut album,
Raop was named "Album of the Year" by MTV. In March 2013, Cro won a Swiss Music Award in the category "Best Album Urban - International" for his album
Raop. Cro has cooperated with
H&M and has designed a collection of clothes for men and women which was released on 4 April 2013. On 11 March, H&M and Cro released additional behind-the-scenes images plus an interview. ==Other ventures==