One year after the release of Supremes, a feature film by Audrey Estrougo recounting the birth of the legendary French rap group NTM, the story of its founders, Joey Starr and Kool Shen, is once again brought to the screen, but from a different perspective. In The world of tomorrowminiseries presented on Netflix, “we tell the story through a few characters that we find emblematic of this movement — it’s not a total point of view on the whole history of rap, but a history of French rap “, warns Hélier Cisterne, director of the miniseries with his colleague Katell Quillévéré.
The strength of this series is that it feels authentic. This Paris of the early 1980s, with its social, economic and political tensions which are evoked as a backdrop, these first illegal rap parties, these rare nightclubs and amateur radio stations which broadcast this new music from the United States, we imagine as it is.
We believe in this reconstruction of a city and an era, an impression reinforced by the talent of the young actors recruited by the director duo, Laïka Blanc-Francard in the role of Lady V, an aspiring graffiti artist looking for her father, Anthony Bajon playing Bruno Lopes / Kool Shen and Melvin Boomer playing Didier Morville / Joey Starr, a revelation. “One of the things that surprised us the most in making this series, explains Hélier Cisterne, is finding ourselves face to face with these teenagers and discovering that they expressed a lot of themselves. We go back to the origins of rap, but since this music and its dance are still so present today, even if these actors were neither graffiti artists nor dancers, they expressed themselves naturally. Even they found themselves very much in the details of life at the time. »
As the director of Supremes, Katell Quillévéré and Hélier Cisterne were born in the early 1980s, when the foundations of rap were laid, a popular musical genre that dominates today in the United States, France and at home. The three directors therefore grew up with this new music, and it is through them that today we are told this same era, with the same actors: Kool Shen and Joey Starr, the two MCs of one of the greatest groups in the history of French rap, Suprême NTM. And, very precisely, the same moment in the history of the group, that of its beginnings, and with it those of a new French musical scene.
Coincidence? “We are convinced that the most exciting part of this story are the beginnings,” explains Katell Quillévéré. Tell how we start from nothing to create an identity, a culture, and make ourselves visible. The production of the two projects was born at the same time, Joey Starr having had the idea of a film and Kool Shen, that of a television series.
Multiple points of view
If Estrougo’s film told the story through the eyes of Joey Starr, his relationship with Kool Shen and the tumultuous one with his father, the miniseries widens the field of vision by encompassing the story of the members of the Assassin group, sometimes allies, sometimes rivals of NTM, and especially of the composer, director and DJ Dee Nasty, the first to have recorded a French rap album (Panama City Rappin’) in France.
“What we tried to describe, says Cisterne, is above all a movement, with people who join it, but for different reasons. Rap music reveals itself to Dee Nasty during a trip to California; for Shen and Starr (and Assassin’s Solo), it’s first dance, then graffiti, that pushes them towards music, a trajectory very well illustrated in the miniseries. “So, through these different characters, we tell the story of those [qui se joignaient au mouvement naissant] for fun than the story of those who staked their lives on it. »
In terms of the narrative, two distinct stories are told to us. That of Dee Nasty, through whom rap arrived in France – the importance given to his character, magnificently interpreted by Andranic Manet, is a deserved tribute! —, then that of the duo NTM. To a lesser extent, there is also that of the group Assassin, formed in 1985.
“The series really pays homage to Assassin,” says Quillévéré, who was able to count on the collaboration of rapper Solo (and Dee Nasty or members of NTM) to attest to the authenticity of the scenes brought to the screen.
“Solo, we tell how much he was a precursor of dance, how important he was for Didier [Joey Starr]. He hosted it, he supported it, and it was with Assassin that NTM made its first scenes. Assassin was a driving force, pioneers – it is clearly said that it was the first White-Black duo on stage”, before NTM, again.
The directors assure that they are not too concerned about the reception that will be reserved for the series from French hip-hop enthusiasts, because they “do not aim the series specifically at this audience”, says Cisterne. “We worked hard to make it represent an era in the fairest way possible, that is to say with the basic bias of listening to the people who lived through that era and romanticizing around all of them. the facts that we have been told. »
“We were still worried to see how the members of the rap scene at the time were going to see themselves in the series, admits Quillévéré. We showed them episodes well before the release to know their impressions, and we felt that it worked and that they thought it was right, so we are calm. What we hope is that this series goes beyond the circle of rap lovers. It was really written as a series about youth, youth, and we would like it to reach a wider audience. »