CM Solarauthor, composer and performer is a rapper essential and a precursor: he was one of the first artists to popularize the rap in France from the beginning of the 90s. With his pen, his voice, his flow and his smile, time doesn’t seem to have a hold on him. He spends this week on franceinfo and evokes his more than 30 years of career.
>> Find the chronicles of Elodie’s World
Since his first album released in 1991, Who sows the wind reaps the temposold more than 5 million copies and awarded five Victoires de la Musique until his eighth album Geopoetics (2017) which marked his return after ten years of absence, CM Solar sees its audience, now intergenerational, answer always present. CM Solar is, finally, at work since he is preparing a new album whose release is planned for 2022 or 2023 and to keep us waiting, he is performing, this summer and this autumn, with the The big band project at festivals.
franceinfo: carolina is already 32 years old, it’s crazy when you think about it!
MC Solar: 32 years, it’s still! But as I sing it, I believe it was made yesterday. 32 years means that time has passed, but I haven’t seen it pass. 32 years, a song written 32 years ago, it’s extremely serious!
In 1995, you won the prize for male performer at the Victoires de la Musique. You will be adopted by theintelligentsia and the cultured medium on one side, and Conversely, in the middle of rap you will be taxed, accused of compromise. How did you experience these attacks?
They touched me all the same because I started to write, to put back flows, whereas me, what I liked, it was precisely to leave the place to the others. So I was looking for other paths, jazz paths, totally eccentric stories. Then, well, the composers, the producers, returned to the discipline of combat prose. There too, it had worked. The IAM group who even told me: “There is competition and emulation.“
“I always look at things as emulation. I’m not in competition. I do everything not to offend anyone.”
In 1997, released Heavenly resulting from great collaborations with Hubert Blanc-Francard and Philippe Zdar. It was in 1998 that the coronation took place with the French Academy which awarded you the great medal of French song for all of your poetic songs. What does this medal and this coronation represent?
When I heard, it was quite surprising. But above all, I learned that people have fought to say that: “Yes, it’s writing, it’s words, it’s poetry“well, just for that, I’m very happy about it. I was in Germany, in Austria during all this period, we had done about ten concerts and when I came back, people I like well said to me:You are at the Academy“, but no, it was a medal. Today, I give it to Big Flo & Oli, to Orelsan, Oxmo Puccino, to all the rappers on some of their songs where they let themselves go. And then these are extra words. The people who are contributing the most words these days are musicians.
It’s funny because you rarely get angry. But there is one thing you have never accepted, it is that we touch on your choices. It gave rise to a clash with your label on two albums that will be released, not at all as planned. You will win the case. Unfortunately, this will lead to your first albums not being released anymore. How did you experience that moment?
At first it was obviously a choice, but I also had in my head: cool, I’m going back to college, so I had my time.
You did not accept that we touch on your intellectual freedom?
Yes indeed. And then, I said to myself that if in the first years when you do something, you have a problem, that means you will have problems all your life.
You recently picked up your first albums.
It went super fast to get them out. I remember that on the first appointments I was asked if we could put them back. Obviously ! We are all happy. All the energy that each other, Zdar, Hubert, Jimmy Jay, Jean-François Delfour and the 50 people who were in the studio, we had to be able to listen to them again.
Ever since my first albums came out, I’ve had an eternal smile.
I would like to come back to the title Hasta la vistafrom the album Fifth Acein 2001. It’s a huge success, one of the greatest successes of French rap and it’s your first title ranked number one in France!
Yes, we were told that. We didn’t have the old titles anymore and then I didn’t do anything for a little while, just wandering around. So I said to myself that it was a wonderful space of freedom. We really did a lot of beautiful titles without wanting to, we worked a little in the evening, at night. And then it came out and people joined. There was : Solar cries and Hasta la vista and I guess we had a good pen, the right people. I remember, we did a tour afterwards, everyone knew everything. Wow!
Hasta la vista is still a smile to life!
Hasta la vista, it was the desire to do other things. I will rap in Spanish. “Do you speak Spanish?“Yeah, so I thought of Mrs. Marie-Françoise Isle de Beauchesne and all that she was able to teach me from sixth to third year. , but he also marked people. I don’t know why.
Because people love you and because there’s this flow.
Yeah, but the third verse:”I was a pizza delivery man near the hacienda where the chica, named Esmeralda, was partying as if by chance, she orders me a pan-chorizo“, it was such a challenge! I said to myself: well, come on, I’m going to do something with the Spaniard and I’m still going to tell a story.
MC Solaar is currently on tour, it will be July 29: Festival Grandes Marées in Jullouville, August 12 at the Festival Fête du Bruit dans Landerneau in Landerneau, September 11: Festival Foire en Scène de Châlons-en-Champagne or the 25 and October 26 at the Philharmonie de Paris.