“Honestly, the first version of this album was great dark », reveals Calamine, commenting on the spirit inhabiting Personal decline, published Friday. “I wrote my lyrics on a lot of dark rhythms, like that of the intro”, entitled A sixteen, a collage of comments made publicly about him, placed on a rather lugubrious rhythmic loop. “I was in a bad mood at this moment. With this really terrible global climate on top of that, I said to myself: “It’s okay that my lyrics are so heavy, but we have to find a way to give these songs a positive impulse, otherwise we won’t survive this!” »
Calamine spinning bad cotton? The rapper who sketches intolerance, the extreme right and the all-car with a smile split from ear to ear sometimes wants to sacrifice everything there? Yes. It happens to him, as it happens to the best of us. “I was in a strange place when writing this album,” she continues. I wasn’t spinning too much — there are a lot of songs that talk about consumption”, on I tinkle And The hamster at the start of the album. “So I put all my junk on the table. I wrote them all down. When I reread it, I said to myself: “Woh”…” It lacks oxygen, this album inspired by the abyss, includes Calamine.
She then took out her guitar to imagine more airy music. She began to compose her own rhythms, discarding the most taciturn ones to return to this light jazzy hip-hop sound which has colored her universe since her first album, Proof dumpling, published independently in the fall of 2020, a few months before her participation (solo this time) in the Les Francouvertes showcase competition.
Personal decline “took the same path as me: I wanted to take another musical direction, I had ideas of grooves more catchy, explains Calamine. These songs had to make us want to mobilize, not to crush ourselves.”
All in good time
Example: on social networks, at the end of February, Calamine made public the list of songs from his new album. One of them is simply titled 34. “Those who know, know,” she says with a smirk, in a falsely surly tone. “All of them went through my list of songs and said the same thing: “Oh, the shit from 34!” »
Bus route 34 connects Papineau and Viau stations along Rue Sainte-Catherine; this road, according to this apostle of sustainable mobility, would be as treacherous as the one linking Rivendell, sanctuary of the Elves of Middle-earth by JR Tolkien, to Mordor. “I felt so much about this song! I wrote the first verse in one go, one day when the metro broke down, when I missed my transfer, and the bus didn’t come as planned. And then it starts to rain… I was in tabarnak! »
“In my ears, I had a really dark rhythm from Kèthe Magané, a beat à la Griselda”, label New York rap adored for its minimalist, old-school and thoughtful aesthetic. “I started writing suddenly in my notebook, on the damp pages that were curling in the rain. You know when you start your day in a good mood and everything goes to hell? ” Yes. It happens to the best of us.
So, we dry off and continue on our way, as the rapper did, who launched a fourth album on Friday, in continuity with her previous ones on an aesthetic level, but more refined. The same tone, the same soft prosody, the voice that prefers to say rather than scream, however harsh its words may be. Hence the felt need to make these texts more digestible by combining them with welcoming productions, as on Backlash“the most feminist song which addresses feminicides and the men who have been denounced — the text is darkall the same,” she warns, but elongated to an electro-funk rhythm that makes you want to nod your head.
“When I listen to my previous ones again [albums, en comparaison avec Décroissance personnelle], I say to myself: “It seems that we have given a lot of concerts”, she and her accomplice, composer and DJ Kèthe Magané, who co-produced the album with her. “I have gained confidence on the microphone, it seems. » Her pen has also been refined: full of wit in this first half of the album on which the rapper revisits themes previously discussed, acerbic on the second which begins with The secret of youth, powerful collaboration with colleagues Senseï H and Sloan Lucas. “We don’t hear enough collaborations with female rappers,” Calamine notes.
It is on the B side that we hear the song 34. Then Gentrifornication, a delicious text that dissects the urgent housing crisis that has hit us — “The title is a sort of slip of the tongue that my girlfriend made, meaning “gentrification”! I looked at her, “Wow, what did you just say?” From the moment she said that word, I knew there was a song behind it,” on which Calamine alludes, in the melody of the chorus, to the classic California Love of 2 Pac.
Grafigne
Immediately afterwards, the slap in the face: a text entitled I’m not racist but. Calamine, as we begin to know, has never held her tongue in her pocket; this song, nuanced but grating, is sure to spark debate. She explains that she has been cooking up a song that addresses the issue of racism for a long time, “but it’s a very delicate subject,” she admits straight away.
“How would I tell you that? It’s a bit like when guys try to make a feminist tone, but they miss the mark? I was looking for a way not to speak for people [racisées] to share how I feel about racism. I think I found the twist to say how I, as a white person, am embarrassed by certain so-called “native” Quebecers. The song is direct, there is almost nothing other than rhythm in the musical production. I wanted to leave plenty of room for the text. »
“I feel like people are waiting for me with this album, I’m probably going to take a beating,” predicts the rapper, ready to receive criticism which, she believes, doesn’t happen that often, given what she dares to say out loud and rhythmically: “I think you can find lots of things to criticize about my work and honestly, in terms of my intellectual approach, I would like to hear these criticisms because thanks to them, I could go further. Well, sometimes people challenge me a little on my principles, for example on my position regarding racism or feminism. I think I write more about queer or gender identity issues — in fact, I’m like a gender identity punk because I don’t care about pronouns. My fight is not to be called “iel”, for example, but I fight alongside trans people who, sometimes, explain to me that they are reclaiming their pronouns. »
“I feel a bit like a satellite on this issue, because I’m not in tune with the dominant discourse, but I don’t want to harm the cause. There’s nothing worse than feminists or queers hitting each other, but I still get a few jabs on occasion, less because of my songs than for what I post on my social networks. I’m being challenged, and I find that healthy. This is how we move forward” in his conception of Personal decline. The important thing is to move forward, even when the 34 is not on time.