Soprano, singer, rapper and composer, has become in a few years a staple of the urban scene and French variety. The symbol that everything is possible if you keep passion and desire as the only engines.
He is spending this week on franceinfo and talks about his childhood in the northern districts of Marseille, his group Psy 4 de la rime, his meeting with Akhenaton from IAM or his solo career without ever losing his smile and his benevolent gaze on the world around him.
More than three million records sold, more than a million spectators during his last tour. A series has even been dedicated to him on Disney + since June 15. Six episodes to better understand who Soprano is, how he grew up and perceive his unfailing link with the city of Marseille, which played a major role in his creative and writing process.
His last album, star huntercame out increased by three new titles.
franceinfo: A more than popular rapper, who has become an everyday hero yourself, if we refer to your song: To our everyday heroes, a symbol. Finally, no matter where we come from, can we get there?
Soprano: If we give ourselves the means, yes, it is possible. Afterwards, you also need a little luck and I had that of meeting people like Akhenaton who made that…
I wanted to come back to 2016 with an album that was very important in this journey, it’s Everest. We felt that you needed to experience an ascent, that other things are happening.
Yes, we had to give ourselves new challenges. We had to move forward with all that we have experienced as magnificent successes before. Our goal was to make the Stade Vélodrome. We said to ourselves: “This will be our Everest“. At the beginning, we had a good laugh, we said to ourselves: “we are crazy“. Afterwards, little by little, we said to ourselves: “We will begin“. And suddenly, when we did it, we said to ourselves: “Ah yeah, it really was Everest“. So it’s a very important album for us.
53 000 people came to the Vélodrome stadium. You are the first rapper to fill a stadium. Is it also a symbol of success? Are we looking in retro? Do we realize how far we’ve come?
Yes. We can’t close our eyes. There is a colleague of mine who says to me: “But you don’t realize it, you“. I’m still working. I’m still watching. Yes, I realize, but I mustn’t focus on that, we must move forward, create new things again! Good Of course, you have to slow down and enjoy life, but still, you have to move forward.
I feel like you’ve never had a hard time since you started, when it started working.
We will say in my career! Each time, I tried to renew myself. For example, a song like Has a well, I said to myself that the next one must be totally different. A piece like Clown Do not look like Fresh Prince which does not look like To our everyday heroeswhich itself does not resemble Crazy or even to In fire.
“All of my songs have to be unique so that I can keep exploring and trying to be inspired to keep doing what I love the most, making music.”
The song Clown stuck with you very quickly. There is a circus side to your way of being. Does that mean that you have this artisanal side, this mountebank side in you?
Yes, because everything I’ve done so far, I’ve done with bits of string. I remember when we made the first records with my friends, we say so in the documentary, we explain well, we even see! We took CDs, had them burned and put up the posters. We went to the snacks, we put them down: “Do you buy them from us to sell them?“All my life, it’s been like that, even not long ago, the promotion, we did it ourselves in a somewhat crazy way, whereas today, we may have a little more means, so it sticks to my skin.
How do you define yourself?
Sincere.
Is the little boy you were proud of the man you have become over time?
In my opinion, he must be hallucinating! He must validate some of my choices, others he must not understand because at the beginning, as Muhammad Ali said: “If you have the same ideas at 20 as at 40, that means you haven’t lived“. But he must be hallucinating about the path, the journey and what we are continuing to do.
star hunter is the title of the last album which came out a very short time ago with an unreleased version. Star hunter, you have always been one at heart. Isn’t that what allowed you to move forward?
Yes, I think that the fact of being able to continue to look for the stars on the right, on the left, it allowed me to continue living, to say to myself: come on, tomorrow, I should manage to catch this star, this star, this star, but always, and that, I learned with age, to become aware of the essentials, to come back and live with my loved ones.
A word about the song Peacekeeper?
It’s a song I wrote during the arrival of the war and precisely the so-called “end” of the Covid. I needed to write because I wasn’t very well. I say it at the beginning of the song. We were all going through a period with a bit of a lump in our stomachs. People said to me:Sopra, it would be important for you to speak“And I’m apolitical, so I don’t talk. I said to myself: the only thing I know how to do is sing peace in the trenches. That means we’re in the middle of a war, guys , we’ll get there, even if sometimes it’s not easy, that’s it.
Soprano, soldier of peace through and through?
I did my best !
Soprano will be in concert in 2023: 13 February 2023 in Epernay, 24 in Toulon, 25 in Montpellier, 4 March in Amnéville, 11 and 12 in Nantes, 17 in Châteauroux, 18 and 19 in Dijon or even May 6 at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis.