A hoped-for reunion for some, an unexpected first date for others, Friday evening at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in the company of MC Solaar was in any case a rare and busy occasion.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
It only took a few strides for the French rap pioneer, who had an instrumental red carpet rolled out by a Montreal string orchestra, to trigger a standing ovation.
Suit and cap, Claude M’Barali, of his real name, entered by the front door with Who sows the wind reaps the tempo, title track of his inaugural album, both a slap and a lesson distributed to the French rap scene at the turn of the 1990s. Many spectators remained in an upright position to answer the MC: “Who sows the wind reaps the… ? “Time!” »
“In the name of the father, the son and Claude, MC Solaar invites you to rap parties. »
The veteran returned to offer a “rap party” in Montreal after nearly a quarter of a century of hermitage, professional hiatuses and contractual disputes – now resolved – with the Polydor record company. The most recent tickets he had sold in the metropolis for the Francos, at the Metropolis more precisely, were stamped June 22, 1998.
“The end justifies the means”, will explain the MC born in Dakar on this title taken from prose fight (1994), an erudite second album filled with alliteration, jazz and scholarly references as well as popular allegories.
Solaar will also draw from it the now cult Sequels, Obsolete – everyone is standing –, The concubine of hemoglobin or New Western. “Sometimes life looks like a stray bullet / In the modern system the individual drowns / To stay lucid he drank Brandy / Now we brandish, TV, shit and baby”, will drop the poet-rapper two kilometers away F1 festivities.
The flow is intact: musical, precise, fluid, embodied.
Photo Denis Germain, Special collaboration
MC Solar
Surprisingly, among the public: many young people who fidgeted on the changing tables of Quebec when the rapper gave birth to his greatest hits. Several sing alongside their elders, no doubt involved in the handover. This is particularly noticeable when the first notes of the hits resonate. Who sows the wind… : Fashion victim – the public does not need to be asked: “this is his code name! », – Armand is dead, Caroline… And what about Get out of here, which receives a particularly feverish reaction, and propels hundreds of iPhones in video mode into the air.
According to the classics, the seats in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier suffered very little wear on Friday evening. The most motivated even congregated in the aisles, on either side of the stage.
“Montreal, how are you? “I’m super happy to be in Montreal”: not very talkative, in a sober and warm staging, the ace of clubs has chosen to be generous in his music first. It will have offered nearly two hours of celebration broken down into more than 20 songs.
With his first three freshly reissued albums in his bag, the versifier did not want to sit on his reputation and rely on nostalgia. Instead, he chose to revisit his concert repertoire with the jazz band New Big Band Project, led by composer Issam Krimi. Enough to highlight the abundant musical experimentation – polished with the duo BoomBass/Zdar and the DJ Jimmy Jay – which nourish Solaar’s first albums.
Photo Denis Germain, Special Collaboration
Mc Solaar was accompanied by brass, strings and backing vocals on Friday.
Jazz, funk, old school hip-hop, French song… The MC, accompanied by his 3 “C”s – brass, strings, (excellent and energetic) choristers –, links the genres sometimes with phlegm, hand in the pocket, sometimes with passion, hand cutting the tempo. He floats on stage, has fun with his thirty singers and musicians, nods cheerfully.
When MC Solaar pointed out that “we were nearing the end”, the crowd spontaneously booed. Recriminations of love, of course. There were actually six songs left, four of which were offered as an encore, including the recent sonotone (Geopoetics2017) and the ultimate Timeouttaken from prose fight. “Pause, I need to rest, time out! »
After Friday’s concert, there will be plenty of them hoping that, this time, the warrior’s rest away from Montreal will not last a quarter of a century.