MC Solaar, author, composer and performer is an essential rapper and a precursor: he was one of the first artists to popularize rap in France in the early 90s. With his pen, his voice, his flow and his smile , time does not seem to have any hold on him. He is spending this week on franceinfo and talks about his more than 30-year career.
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Since his first album released in 1991, Who sows the wind reaps the temposold more than 5 million copies and awarded five Victoires de la Musique until his eighth album Geopoetics (2017) which marked his return after ten years of absence, MC Solar sees its audience, now intergenerational, always respond. MC Solaar is, finally, at work since he is preparing a new album whose release is scheduled for 2022 or 2023 and to keep us waiting, he is performing, this summer and this autumn, with The big band project in festivals. .
franceinfo: Is this audience, so receptive and so present, the greatest reward?
McSolaar: It’s the best reward because it’s an audience that will rediscover songs with a big band. And then it’s quite curious, when you sing live, people don’t come alone. A young person will invite the person who bought them their first stuff and it’s a superb mix.
In festivals, there are several generations that meet, finally! What will unite all of this will be the brass, the strings and the big band project.
It is true that after the success of Get out of here, you are going to collaborate with the American band De La Soul. At that time, it’s something huge. You open for them at the Olympia, you go on tour in Poland, Russia, West Africa. You are also going to commit to freeing the South Korean political prisoner Kim Song-Man with Costa Gavras and the Saï Saï group. You don’t like to talk politics, but yet you have always positioned yourself at times when you considered that there were injustices.
I remember that when we rapped, we had to denounce things. When we talk about prisoners of conscience, we say to ourselves: “Yes, we will go, we will bring our stone“And then, for me, it’s simple, I have an imposed figure code: Is it good or is it not? And in general, when there is a real injustice, if I’m called to participate artistically in something, yes that’s fine, we do it. It seems natural in reality.
In 1994 you will go out prose fight, your second album. The title clip new western will be filmed in the United States, in Texas, in New York and in Paris. It’s a nod to what made you want to make music, to Serge Gainsbourg. We inevitably think of Bonnie and Clyde with this sampled title. We have the feeling that what keeps you grounded is knowing where you come from who you are.
Yes. And Serge Gainsbourg… I was less than ten years old and I already listened a lot. There is the sequence of words, the way of being able to sing without being a singer. When Hubert Blanc-Francard decides to wear Serge Gainsbourg, he knows that I like him. In fact, they have thoughts of real artists, musicians. They see what your character is, what you like and then he goes home and he brings you another version which is related to the title the new western. It reminded him of Bonnie and Clyde. And in our defense thing and illustration of French rap, we didn’t want to look like the American rapper and we thought we’d have French references.
When Hubert Blanc-Francard brought us some Serge Gainsbourg in ‘Nouveau western’, it was the right moment in combat prose.
Your writing is the basis of everything, but there is also this notion of music. When do you realize that music is going to be one of the definitive ingredients of your daily life?
I realize this the first time I go to a studio with Hubert Blanc-Francard and Jimmy Jay. They meet and something is created, an alchemy. They opted for the jazz side so as not to do what the others were doing in the area. Music is super important. Me, I rap, I adapt. We had a team of people doing it like it was the last thing and in all sonic aspects they were sound engineers rather than musicians in their way.
prose fight with new western going to be one of the biggest sales in twenty countries. Did that reassure you?
Me, I was not afraid, whereas the producers, the composers, wanted to prove. Because they had been successful in the first, they did the complete opposite in the second. We had brought a lot of things, violins, everything we wanted to do, what they wanted to do! And there, they did the opposite excess, they will do it 100% with the hip-hop technique of the time, that is to say sampling, voices… And even in excess Conversely, they were much more attentive. Me, I was not afraid of anyone because I was in the time when I always counted on re-enrolling in college. It was only a year after the release of this second album that I said to myself: I am a musician. Otherwise, each time, I said to myself: I register! I don’t register! Yes, next year, next year and next year.
MC Solaar is currently on tour, it will be July 29: Festival Grandes Marées in Jullouville, August 12 at the Festival Fête du Bruit dans Landerneau in Landerneau, September 11: Festival Foire en Scène de Châlons-en-Champagne or the 25 and October 26 at the Philharmonie de Paris.