With pink ink, are we witnessing the return of Corneille? The truth is that he has never left us since the release of his first album, Because we come from far awayreleased in the fall of 2002. Ninth career album, the latter was released on March 25, the day after his 45and birthday. pink ink falls, however, when the artist is recognized as the veteran of a musical genre, R&B, traditionally shunned in Quebec, but embraced today by a new generation of singer-songwriters, such as Les Louanges. In a lengthy interview with Homeworkthe musician looks back on twenty years of career and on the ripe fruits of this one.
Twenty years since the release of the mark Because we come from far away – already ! — is this an opportunity for an assessment? “No choice, everyone reminds me that it’s been twenty years since it came out, this disc”, retorts Corneille, undermined as during a gala evening for a conversation on Tuesday afternoon.
“When I started, my idols all had fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years of career. I wondered how you get there, how you manage to do the same thing for twenty years. At the same time, I don’t feel like I already have twenty years of career, because I believe I’m still young in my approach to music and because the zeitgeist culture has since changed. He joins me better today, that proves me right. African pop music has never been so trendy, R&B is experiencing a resurgence, especially on the side of women, like SZA or Jazmine Sullivan. Women are strong today and that inspires me. »
Musical style in decline
Since the popular success of Because we come from far away, in France first before being truly recognized here, Corneille’s path has had its ups and downs, he admits. “My most important creative trough, and at the same time of public presence, coincided with the decline of American R&B, he believes. That moment when even Usher started dancing. I was wondering: is that what you have to do now to be recognized in my style of music? Drake single-handedly killed R&B. He said: you don’t need to know how to sing to do it. We rappers collect all your codes, we also sing about love… With hindsight, that explains my lack of inspiration: my colleagues in the United States were doing something completely different. »
Curiously, pink ink specifically avoids looking trendy. Corneille could have claimed the neo-R&B trend in his turn, he could have done like the pop of the hour and sucked rap into his orbit, he could have made a whole album in the image of the song Stars, released last January, a wonderful duet he recorded with rapper LOST (from the 5Sang14 collective) for the compilation Royalties. “It’s my battle with each album: I resist going where all the others are going”, slice Corneille.
The artist recorded with his longtime collaborators, Marco Volcy, Daniel Cinelli and, when writing the lyrics, his wife Sofia de Medeiros. What can she say about Corneille that Corneille can’t say better himself? “Already, she knows how to get me out of myself. It’s my ninth album, I release it every two years, the temptation to stay comfortable, to repeat what has already worked, is very great. Sofia knows better how to take me elsewhere, while reassuring me. And then, my hobby in life is music, not so much lyrics, “adds Corneille, who produced this album on which he updates and molds with his amber voice the funk, soul and synthetic house sounds of the 1980s.
He then underlines that he felt “trapped” by the lyrics of his first album: “I was doing neo-soul/R&B songs, but I was not singing love songs — my references were Luther Vandross, Al Green, Marvin Gaye. I had no reference related to what I needed to say. “We remember his songs which tell where he comes from: born in Germany when his parents were finishing their studies, he grew up in Kigali, Rwanda, a city he had to flee in 1994 at the time of the genocide of the Tutsi .
The smallest kingdom in the world!
The images from Ukraine particularly affect him, first of all because of the media’s treatment of this conflict, “the editorial choices, it’s all just economic, financial, political interest. There is nothing in the treatment of this war that finds its raison d’être simply in compassion for one’s neighbour”, lamenting in the same breath that the continent on which he grew up “has never ceased to know war. , even today, but no African country has experienced the media deployment that the situation in Ukraine is experiencing, that said with all my compassion for the Ukrainian people. The only concern these people have in life is to have peace. And peace must go through diplomacy”.
Bursting into the home in the middle of the night, soldiers killed his family, forcing Corneille to take a road that would take him to Zaire, Germany, and then to Quebec, where he joined the artistic community. “I arrived in Quebec in 1997, in the golden age of hip-hop, with Sans Pressure, Muzion, Rainmen, Dubmatique. Things were happening — these artists weren’t playing on the radio any more than they are today, but we felt a momentum, something new, and a musical expression rooted in something very Quebecois, with its own identity. »
The first golden age of Quebec rap was followed by a dearth, not creative, but media. Rap is now taking its revenge, “but it’s still hard,” comments Corneille. I have the impression that there are like two worlds that move forward in parallel in Quebec music. There is the younger generation, that of my twelve-year-old son, who lives in Quebec and around the world at the same time, culture lovers who know everything about French rap, Afrobeat and American R&B. They’re going to listen to Daniel Caesar, Burna Boy, and PNL, and Ninho, SCH, all that, new pop. Afterwards, you have the Quebec music industry”.
“At the time, I was presented as the king of soul and R&B in Quebec, but it was the smallest kingdom in the world! he laughs. There, I see that it grows. This wind of change, generational, musical, Corneille feels it to the point of predicting that the next great star of the Francophonie to emerge from Quebec will be an R&B voice – a genre that the musician says he promotes with ADISQ so that it creates a new soul/R&B category.
“It may be a hybrid, a kind of Zach Zoya singing and rapping in French. I insist: in French, because it is important to me. This next star will come from here because we have an advantage. Me, my first album, it had the bill it had because I created it here, because I created it an hour by plane from New York, because I lived in Longueuil and I I was hanging out with Haitians who were trippin’ on Wyclef [Jean] and his album The Carnival [1997]. They allowed me to reconnect with my musical roots. My album found its identity in the fact that I live in a North American Francophonie, and that’s unique. »