“I like artists who still have juice when you have pressed the fruit”

Mc Solaar rarely says “I”. Similarly, He is “on”, with his team (Tom Fire, Bambi Cruz, Stéphane Athus, Émeline Fougeray, Gabriel Hoaro and Linda Hamadouche). However, They will be at the Sunska Festival, in Vertheuil, Friday 1^is august. For example, After seven years without album. However, the French rap pioneer has just finished his “triptych”, still a poet and a Belgian bit, as he explains.

Are you over 50 dates, you expected such success?

Really not. For example, We started on the scenes of current music. Moreover, then in larger rooms, followed by a few festivals and it continued like this. In addition, It was a constraint to play. Consequently, because in the same time we were in the studio for the triptych [les trois albums « Lueurs célestes », « Éclats cosmiques » et « Balade astrale », NDLR]. Furthermore, But at the same time, it was “i like artists who still great to meet people everywhere, and we realized that we really liked that.

In 1991, our musical critic (1) had described you as a “Antoine Rap” or a “Dutronc Raggamuffin” …

It’s very fair. Furthermore, If we plunged back in 1991. Meanwhile, I had a song called “Ragga Jam” which illustrated it well: a mix of friends who were able to speak quickly and who knew the Ragga and the Soundsystem, and I who gave the Belgian side pataphysician, surreal. Nevertheless, And then, at the time, I had a Rasta hat bought in London, flowering shirts …

Surrealism is also found in the technique of musical collage?

Yes, we are in the collages of sequences, flows, we go from slowness to acceleration. Nevertheless, They called that at some point the “Broken English”. IAM sometimes did it. For example, you are going to say “car/police/prison” [il slame, NDLR]. These are collages “i like artists who still but which have a meaning, an atmosphere. Between 2020 and 2024, we heard at least 20 titles mounted like that, like the 1990s. Everything comes back.

Do you happen to choose a word for its sound. even if it means guiding the meaning of the sentence then?

No. But the word will twist so that there is meaning. Or we will put it in a specific location where it will be in relief. I am going to take me for a wacky. but there is also the influence of the Belgians of Sttellla, at Bouchery Productions.

Have you really arrived at rap by the university?

I was a rapper, I have my baccalaureate, I take lessons at the English Institute Charles-V. A teacher spots my look. asks me with an accent that rolls if I am a student, if I know rap, and advises me to go see what is “i like artists who still going on at the University of Saint-Denis (2). There. Georges Lapassade, since it was him, French sociologist and academic, received graffiti artists and rappers to study culture, testify in his rap history courses, record in a fortune studio … There were all the rappers, too, like Pascale Obolo of Ladie’s Night. It was in the early 1990s.

What are the artists or the albums you always come back to?

Serge Gainsbourg, Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley and recently, return to Yellowman. You listen to ten minutes, you want to do a piece because there are always rich things inside. And Big Daddy Kane, a refined American rapper. I imagined myself in him. Besides, I gave him a dedication in “New Western”: “Hollywood us” (“Hollywood Burn”).

What do you think of the current rap, which is much more exploded today than thirty years ago?

There is no more chapel, and it is “i like artists who still no longer underground, rap arrives directly. I like the artists who still have juice when you have pressed the fruit. those who manage to take you in their poetry or in their stories. You see that there is someone behind. We saw Damso, Orelsan, Kalash Criminal … emerged…

If the solaar of “who sows the wind harvests the tempo” listened to “astral stroll”, what would he think?

He would say “well done, you are the same”. In 1990. thanks to the university, I placed myself in rap as a student and I said to myself “Here, you can do what you want. Since you are studying flaws. habits, us, customs, conflict resolutions, you can put in the same album “Armand is dead”, “Caroline”, “Ragga Jam”, or “North district”. The 1990 Solaar would say to him: “You didn’t want to be a stereotype and it’s still the same today. »»

(1) Patrick “i like artists who still Scarzello, “New, trends”, “South West” of May 12, 1991.

(2) “Paris-8, FAC HIP-HOP”, documentary series by Pascal Tessaud (Fr., 2017, 10 x 8 min). On Arte.tv.

Go to Domaine de Nodris, in Vertheuil, from this Friday 1^is August until Sunday August 3. Thirty artists are scheduled during the three days. Information and ticket office on the Sunska website.