If there is an idea to retain from Soul Urgethe album launched today by Modlee — the very first musician to join Discs 7th Ciel in almost 20 years of history — is that of a quest for identity. “I find the desire to share what I am and show my vulnerabilities,” she says. I have the right to be who I am. A Quebecer born in Montreal to a Jamaican father and a “native” mother who spent her childhood in the Queens district of New York before the family moved to the capital. A rap and R&B addict, a bit foreign in this country which has long turned its nose up at these musical styles. Above all, both a mother and an artist.
In the mouth of Modlee, the expression “nothing happens for nothing” becomes much less banal, precisely because the path of the singer-songwriter is anything but banal. In 2010, in the confidence of the few Quebec music lovers interested in modern R&B, she launched a first album entitled AnalogoG Love, followed by two microalbums (EP), in 2012 and 2017. And that’s it. Until delicious Soul Urge, on which his vision of soul and R&B is expressed on restrained music by Vlooper, the sound architect of Alaclair Ensemble, his partner for almost 20 years and the father of his nine-year-old daughter.
The family and Alaclair Together
“You know, sometimes things happen funny,” Modlee replies when we are surprised at the time it took her to release what she considers to be her first real album (and the first conceived with the support from a record company). “As an artist, I consider myself a late bloomer, but it was a choice. I could have invested myself more in my musical career, I chose family life instead”, at a time when, to the surprise even of the members of Alaclair Ensemble, the collective project achieved popular and commercial success.
This is also the little secret of the success of Alaclair Ensemble: behind the members of the group, the support of the women of the “family”, Caro Dupont, singer and spouse of KNLO, and Modlee. Without them, Alaclair would not have reached the heights they know. “We form a big family, abounds Modlee. We’re all good friends, our kids play together, and creatively we connect. It’s easy, you feel at home when you work together. We speak the same musical language, if you will. »
A language that comes to her first from her late dad, “a free spirit”, she recalls. In the house played gospel records, reggae, “Leonard Cohen too, he was a great music lover”. “During my adolescence, a day of activities meant going to a record store and buying myself the new Missy Elliott CD, telling myself that it was the best gift I could give myself. I have been in symbiosis with music for a very long time, […] and it ends up growing, these youthful dreams that we have of imagining ourselves performing for an audience, without necessarily taking it seriously, ”she confides.
She knew Vlooper in high school, and the two never left each other. the beatmaker has done all his previous projects, and puts his electronic touch to the rhythms of this album in which Modlee sings with sensitivity and a lot of maturity, with this bit of pinched voice which has often been compared to that of Erykah Badu. “My voice has changed a lot over time,” says Modlee, who recorded her vocal tracks herself in the home studio she set up with her boyfriend. ” On Soul Urge, I feel that I have distanced myself from Erykah Badu. I finally have my own flavor, my own musical identity. I sing in a more relaxed way, because I took control of my creative process by becoming more independent in terms of recording. It allowed me to enter exploratory mode and better define my musical universe”, inherited from the glorious era of American R&B of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but with a modern and intimate breath.
Soul Urge is a little gem that we discover at a time when R&B finally seems to hold the attention of the public and of a new generation of musicians claiming to claim its influence. It was about time, but as Modlee said, nothing happens for nothing: “This time, I feel that I can find a balance between the two [identités], being a mother and a musician. Previously, I was not ready to live the two so intensely, which is why I chose to live my life as an artist in the shadows, appearing in collaborations”, on the projects of KNLO or even of Eman X Vlooper.
For the family, the musician admits having made sacrifices, “but Vlooper also made some — it happened to him that he did not want to go on tour… But we had to ensure sustainability [d’Alaclair Ensemble] while supporting the family. I made sacrifices, but today they pay off, I believe — nothing happens for nothing! I’ve watched what’s happening in the music industry for a long time, I’ve seen my friends go through things that aren’t always easy. I come out of it today grown, more mature, with the knowledge necessary to navigate well in this world and offer a project knowing that, musically, I have something different to offer than others do. says Modlee, who is delighted to be invited to give a concert on July 6 at the Festival international de jazz de Montréal.