Revealed during the 2021 edition of the Francouvertes, Calamine blew a new wind on the Quebec rap scene with her clever rhymes, her outspokenness and her hitherto unheard of themes. Now rooted in Montreal, the rapper will return to her hometown on Friday, July 15, through the front door of the Festival d’été de Québec to present new songs from Lesbian woke on auto tune, his delicious second solo album, released on July 8. “My first FEQ, in front of family and friends! And on a free stage as well, for me, that was really important. »
The musician made an appointment at To have to in a café on rue Ontario Est, in the heart of the theater of several of her raps, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, where this girl from the ” no man’s land in Sainte-Foy, near Cap-Rouge, has found a living environment in its image.
“People come back to me a lot with this question about how I represent Hochelag. Someone from the neighborhood once said to me: “Yeah, it’s a bit chauvinistic to claim to be from a neighborhood you’ve been living in for a while.” And I agree with [cette personne] says Calamine, acknowledging that claiming one’s geographical origins is a stereotype of hip-hop argument. “Except that I do landscapes like a painter: I talk about what I see, where I live. I would have a hard time writing about Sainte-Foy because I don’t like it and I don’t recognize myself in it. »
“When I arrived here, I felt that I could say I was proud to live here. In the neighborhood and in Montreal, more broadly, with the bike paths, lots of community organizations in the neighborhood, its social mix, compared to Quebec, it’s moving, it’s diversified. It’s the combination of all that that made me want to talk about where I live and the people around me. Well, afterwards, don’t expect pro-Hochelag manifestos on all my albums either. And then in a song like Hochelagirl [de son premier album, Boulette proof], there is, by extension, the desire to talk about my friends. I don’t want to represent the neighborhood so much as show it to others. »
It’s true that on his new album, Hochelag’ is only evoked this time through rhymes based on music that dares to move away from the boom bap-electro-jazz sound of his previous projects. “I felt the danger that [mon son] becomes systematic, with this habit of putting the saxophone everywhere. Finally, on the new album, there’s a lot less. Several beats without sax or Arthur’s keyboards [Evenard] — it’s rare to hear Kèthe Magané’s productions like this, just the rhythm. [Sur ce nouvel album,] I wanted us to wander from one style to another, with certain rawer rhythms”, as on the songs Bad B*tch and the excellent Dyke officialat the heart of the disc, and “other more boom bap, a little R&B” with the presence, in particular, of Magi Merlin, Shah Frank and Xela Edna, all superb on their respective collaborations.
It’s always been my best weapon, staying calm and smiling. Personally, it is also a means of defence: when you let it be seen that what is said to you reaches you, when you are shocked, impatient or shout, you let your vulnerability be seen.
Even the bicycle and the demand for its place in our transport and in our streets are less present than on the first album, Calamine this time addressing vegetarianism (on I don’t eat corpses) and, above all, love, in songs that reveal her in a more intimate way than she had dared to do before, on her first album or those of the parallel project Petite Papa, which she leads with her musical accomplice , the composer and co-director Kèthe Magané (Charles Gaudreau-Lerhe).
“Keep calm and smile”
That, and of course feminism in all its guises. The disc is called Lesbian woke on autotune. As an album title, admit that it has its effect. Calamine confirms our doubt that it wasn’t even his idea: “Exactly — it’s a comment left on Facebook, the first one I’ve received of this nature and, frankly, it’s the best ! “, she lets go with her eternal smile. “Looks like Mathieu Bock-Côté wrote it! A “lesbian woke on the autotune”, with the reference to hip-hop in addition, it is the perfect scarecrow of the current right. Everything she hates, put together. I thought the idea was so good, I even thought it would make great t-shirts to sell. Immediately after reading that, I started writing the lyrics to the song. It had made me laugh too much, I wanted to respond to it” with a song described as “a mocking and festive manifesto against the injunctions of the genre, patriarchy and media bulimia”.
What she does, as always, with a smirk, which has the effect of multiplying the impact of her replies: “It has always been my best weapon, staying calm and smiling. Personally, it is also a means of defence: when you let it be seen that what is said to you reaches you, when you are shocked, impatient or shout, you let your vulnerability be seen. Smiling and saying things with a smile makes me seem invulnerable, but also, people are more likely to agree [à mon message]because I look smatte. It’s like a trap, people don’t know what to do with me — my words fit in, but at the same time I look nice! »
“It’s true when I say [dans la chanson-titre] : “I have a couple of grams of pot, but yo, I don’t have an ounce of malice”, I really don’t! And that’s what makes Calamine’s work so unique: thematically different, militant, but at the same time so nice, full of wit and humor.
“Humour makes activism more festive,” she adds, “it makes you want to get involved more. Making people feel guilty does not help to mobilize them. And when you feel overwhelmed by the heaviness of things, it takes a dose of lightness to be able to grasp everything you experience and transform it into something positive. Often, when I write a song, there are ten pages of erasures. I tend to want to keep only what is brighter. I often write things really dark, then I say to myself: things are already bad enough in the world, if on top of that we have to listen to the music of the depressed… However, each time I write, I ask myself: is this something in the universe? »