(Paris) A major figure in French rap in the 1990s, MC Solaar returns with a new lease of life and soundscapes far from his comfort zone, seven years after his last record.
Speeds
“It seems like it’s the first time I’ve really enjoyed going to the studio,” smiles the 55-year-old artist, met by AFP in Paris.
The rapper, who had not released an album since Geopoetics in 2017, published Friday Heavenly glowsfirst part of a triptych.
MC Solaar broke his routine with trips back and forth between concerts and stints behind the mixing consoles. Result, “incredible insurance”, according to him.
“I no longer see myself as I saw myself before, the “rapper who rocks the flow”, I give importance to music. I let my voice soar. I can relax, hum if it’s useful. What does Claude ask? », he blurted, speaking of himself in the third person, slipping in his real first name.
Illustration in the piece One runs where he goes into a three-speed position, between machine-gun delivery, spoken-sung and song.
Verb
MC Solaar always rhymes with encyclopedic and playful. In an interview, he emphasizes that “music is not “abscissa, ordered”, there is something alive”. Another way of saying that the compositions are not a mathematical formula, contrary to what part of the music industry thinks.
In the piece Modernitythe artist makes “prophylaxis” – avoiding or mitigating the number and severity of illnesses – sound with “protecting the groove of here and the galaxy”.
In the same title, he juggles with sounds and “OK boomer” bounces off “your marabout dies”.
In the punchline department, nothing to envy of the competition: “He loves footballers so much, his wife named him Zahia” bursts out in Big data.
Variations
In 2021, after the resolution of a legal imbroglio, young audiences were able to discover his first three albums on the platforms, Who sows the wind reaps the tempo (1991), Prose combat (1994) and Heavenly (1997). Classics.
But those who expect jazz samples or borrowings from Serge Gainsbourg – his hit New WesternIn Prose combatwas based on a loop of Bonnie and Clyde – as in these first records will be surprised.
Heavenly glows brings together musical influences from “the four corners of the world”, as he admits. “There are sounds from Brazil, oriental notes, French Touch, electro, house,” delights the singer, born in Dakar, Senegal, to Chadian parents.
Such a range is not surprising for someone who puts forward in an interview an “auditory pop-art” about the artists he mentions throughout his texts. Let them be clearly named, like Pop Smoke (American rapper), Ademo (PNL), the Sparks, Maria Callas or Étienne Daho. Or suggested by winks, like Annie Cordy or Le Grand Orchester du Splendid. For these last names, he smiles at the thought of “those born in 2007 who will go and see on their smartphone” who it is.
Vision
“You still have to have fun,” repeats MC Solaar. But some more serious remarks surface in his texts. “Even during recess, I make sense,” he agrees.
The Gestapo raided thus arises at the beginning of Big data. “I open windows, I pull out drawers so that people are interested in history or the lessons of history,” explains the artist.
Lessons too often ignored, since in the piece Sonotonegoing back to his previous album GeopoeticsMC Solaar already deplored that the Ku Klux Klan had “the luxury of being permanent”.
Heavenly glows ends with a Nursery rhyme dark and a depressing observation on climate change.
For the rest of the triptych, the rapper gives an appointment: “In less than three months, in my opinion”.