Wandering Stars (2019) - full transcript
Ken, let's go?
-Did they tell you?
-Yes.
-Come on, I'm going.
-We don't have time!
Is everyone equipped with sound?
-What did you decide?
-That, we change it with that.
-Okay.
-That way, it makes sense.
-Do you remind me?
-Sure.
-Where is Doums?
-I don't know.
Fuck!
-Doums!
-Yes!
Hey, great!
We're up in five minutes,
we have to hurry.
-You have my mic?
-Let's go.
Let's go!
I tell you all the time!
Fuck!
Is everyone following?
-Yes.
-How long do we have?
Three and a half minutes.
Okay, thanks.
Three minutes.
We're in the elevator.
We're leaving.
Yeah, I hear you.
Two and a half minutes.
Hey, guys, let's go!
Don't forget the change.
Here we go!
Today,
I played in front of 80 000 people
and I've never felt so alone.
MYTILENE, GREECE
I'm going out for a while.
Again?
I'll be back.
Sometimes you have to run away
from the frenzy of the big cities
to realize how much
we get used to that daily madness.
Paleokipos,
my grandfather's village, in Greece.
It's said that it's the birth place
of Barbarossa.
Here, in Mytilini,
I'm far from the pressure,
I see my family, I take my time.
Yet, me, the Parisian,
I've never lived there.
But my father calls it
"the mythical country",
the one who sticks to their shoes,
where you are in exile.
And it's in exile that I speak
the best of my life in Paris,
in the shadow of distance.
You're okay? You hear me?
Yeah, I'm good. Where are you?
-I'm in Greece.
-What are you doing there?
I've come to see my grandmother
and work a little.
I couldn't go to Paris to work.
To be honest.
-When do you come back?
-In a few days.
But I'll let you know.
There, bro, everybody is calling me.
Everybody...
-Everyone is asking me: "Where is he?"
-Yeah, I know.
"Do you have any news? Is he replying?"
I'm neither your manager,
neither your secretary.
Yeah, I know, brother. But I don't know
what's happening, I can't...
-I couldn't work.
-Come on, we lock ourselves in the studio.
-Yeah.
-...and we try to work, right?
Yeah. When I come home, I have to settle
two, three things with the label,
I'll recruit others
and after that...
After that, straight to the studio.
I'm waiting for that, man.
I'm waiting for that.
It's been over a year
that I was supposed
to record my third album.
The whole team was counting on me.
But I couldn't get used to it...
So I did what I do best:
to run away...
The most difficult part of creating
a new work,
is the first line.
The one who disturbs the balance
of a blank page.
The one who, by choosing to be,
assassinates an infinity
of other realities.
CHAPTER I
PREMIER PAS
I want to live abroad
All my life, I moved
I lived in the suburbs
I lived in Paris
I've thrown away my phone
So I don't get bothered
So don't come to question me
Send your requests by e-mail
I think you're not listening
When things are not right,
I eat like crazy
And lately, I gained a lot of weight
It's depressing when you're a pacifist
It's been a while since I'm not
up to date with the news
I hated success,
but must believe that it was not enough
And if I was 100% myself
I wouldn't even do this movie
I've been on the road
for more than ten years now.
Sleeping carelessly,
not thinking about the next day.
I have so many concerts
that my private life
has become an intermission.
And I ended up alone.
I can't stay inactive
for more than a day or two.
Because it's the moment that chooses
when the dark thoughts
infiltrate my mind.
Sometimes I let some in, slowly.
Just to dissect them.
Check if I can look them in the face
and use them in my work.
But I don't let it go for too long
because if we're forced
to contemplate the dark,
we end up getting lost.
I don't know if I'm fleeing Paris
or if I need to run away
from my artist routine
when it becomes too heavy.
Plus, being almost a...
public personality...
I became almost a stranger in my own city.
In fact, since it's been too long
since I've released anything,
I've put a stupid pressure on myself.
So, I have to come back with an album.
Not just a song, not a thing...
Well, man, I'm telling you,
you can do whatever you want.
Lately, my life,
it's managing a box, managing good times,
managing a breakdown... It's shit.
Anyway, a breakdown, again,
it can inspire you, but...
-Yeah, but it's...
-I'm aiming for something bigger.
That's why I want to move.
Greece made me feel good.
We must continue to travel,
to see other places.
It's what I'm gonna do,
if we stay in Paris, we'll be depressed.
Sure.
This is the first time in my life
that I'm in front of a blank sheet.
-I tell myself...
-Oh yeah?
-Yeah.
-But that's everyday life to me!
Come on! Come to my school, you'll see!
-I don't want to.
-We'll give you an A!
-I don't want to!
-No, but I understand,
but don't overthink it, man. It'll pass.
It's true, you'll see...
Because in the end,
in rap, we have to release our emotions,
we must release what we feel.
That's the lease.
It's super shameless, brother.
-But it's a therapy.
-Yeah.
Because when I tell personal stuff,
I take it back
and I put it in my shelf, you see.
It becomes an object that I put away,
that's no longer there,
trying to ruin my day.
-It doesn't exist anymore.
-It does...
-You've materialized and frozen it.
-Yeah.
It's pretty selfish.
-But it's not selfish...
-It's therapy.
-But what is generous...
-You offer it to others.
That's it, everyone can...
My goal is that even if I speak...
For example, I have a broken heart,
I want to find what is universal
in there, you see?
And often, the most universal,
it's super-precise and personal stuff.
Today, I cried in my brother's arms.
It happened like that, without warning.
Between two innocuous jokes
that we said to fill the void.
First, he cried.
Suddenly. Silently.
It sounded like a sigh
of an old football ball if we step on it.
Maybe, today, the void was too big.
Who knows?
The day was like so many others.
It was even beautiful.
And it's not his kind of whine.
Specially because he met others today,
a lot more troubled, no doubt.
But, well, he cried.
And I cried because I saw him crying.
It was like a dam that gave way in him.
A magma of distorted feelings
from being repressed
which was breaking on me.
A fucking wave of burning vomit
that paralyzes your throat,
and relieve you
when you finally spit it out.
Today, I cried in my brother's arms.
And it was better than laughing.
ALBUM: DAY 1
Elite, do you have a lighter?
That can be very hot
with the arrangements.
The thing you did,
it may well finish the loop.
I think, the chorus,
I'll improvise it.
Because...
It was hot, the thing you whispered.
Yeah.
In college, I was hideous
But determined like a gangsta
I used to steal PlayStations,
I'd resell them and buy myself games
In college, I was hideous
But determined like a gangsta
I used to steal PlayStations,
I'd resell them and buy myself games
What do youngsters know?
I used to roam the whole of Paris
I'd give myself a spiky hairdo with gel
I had the hairstyle of Reese
-That's the shit!
-That's hot.
That's the shit!
In college, I was hideous
But determined like a gangsta
I used to steal PlayStations,
I'd resell them and buy myself games
What do youngsters know?
I used to roam the whole of Paris
I'd give myself a spiky hairdo with gel
I had the hairstyle of Reese
It's not that much like Feu
and company, you see?
You didn't want to change the stuff?
It stays the same color.
After you've won, she's okay, you know.
-That's the one, it's the banger.
-I know.
-Don't say that shit.
-You know him...
You know, anyway...
-It's his comfort in there.
-Do you like... fast food?
-You always go back!
-Yeah...
Actually, it's easy for me.
-To only create sounds where I get...
-Yeah.
-You know.
-This is what you want?
No, this is not what I want.
It's too easy.
To entice things,
start with one sound, then...
In the middle, change the mood
with orchestral delirium
or stuff like that, I'd love that.
We need people who excel at what they do
and kind of bring them to our world,
you see?
To have other musical styles.
I felt that there were too many things
who kept us in Paris
and that were preventing us
from dedicating truly to it.
Suddenly, we were stuck.
There was a country
which I had been thinking for a while.
So, I got tickets for everyone,
I rented a house and we left.
CHAPTER II
TAKOTSUBO
I took some guys who have talent
and I like everything
that they do.
I asked them to work together.
Everyone has their specialty, that's
what is cool.
Lo is in his own world,
has the madness that few people have.
You have Diabi, who oversees everything.
Hugz, whatever happens, is going to bang.
Loubenski and Selman
are training musicians.
I knew they were the dream team.
-That one?
-No.
Victory!
Ah, that's good!
Calm down, Diabi! Calm down!
It's not the time to clap!
Calm down.
Calm down!
I'm changing.
What do you want to do? You want...
This will be the door to enter my studio.
This one is coming out.
Basically, I wanted to do it here,
but it's too noisy.
Yeah, it's a little bad.
Actually, it's small, but you know,
I can really fill it with...
You know, futons, pillows...
So, when you do it there,
it'll absorb the sound.
That's good, Diabi. Yeah.
Like that, yeah...
-But you have to fill it better.
-I will.
I'm actually gonna do that.
Bring me the futon.
That's okay?
Yeah. Okay, that's staying, it absorbs.
But it absorbs a little.
If I cover it all, it'll absorb fully.
If you put the bar here, it'll hold it.
In any case,
we'll have to remove the door.
In any case?
There, that does it.
There's a peculiarity, but I like it.
-You like it?
-It's cool.
Travel light, come back heavily loaded
My girlfriend is heavily loaded
My team is doubling Charo
She rolled the joints heavily loaded
The keufs have heavily loaded us
The flashball is heavily loaded
My hotel charged me heavily
It's my turn to take care of it
Kilos of hashish in the Jeep
And at the graveyard of dreams
Lie our jackal's hopes
No more storage in the RAM
Stories on bandages
A kind of morbid boredom
Which makes you hope for a drama
And then this desire will disappear
With the first missing
When I realized I was a coward
Of those who romanticize the street
A mic in his wallet is shining
An ill-mannered brought it to us
My brother told me: "Look at the price!"
Not a dime, but we took it
At least we will have tried
That's it, here's the future
Try to prove that you're real
Becoming it by stopping to try
A little coffee and we're going.
I have to go there.
After that, you'll just use...
Ah!
You see? Ah!
But like the last chord,
it doesn't arrive on the fifth,
it must shift to... You see?
Gentlemen.
-We're hammering on Head.
-Ah...
-It's not good?
-I like it, but nothing more.
Get up, brother. There's football!
Even I will play!
Ouch, it cracked!
I swear, this piece,
it's useless to do too much...
too much...
Actual changes, because, really...
Yes, but at the base,
it sounds a little, like light.
-It sounds light.
-Doesn't need edits.
-Agreed.
-It sounds light,
but you get lost by doing that stuff.
We don't get lost! We make music,
we don't make yogurt.
We have to try 15 000 things
to come up with something we like.
Generally, good ideas
come from bullshit.
It's certain.
In my life, I'm just a spectator
You're falsely right and falsely wrong.
But I like it.
They don't want me to slip away
I need to be alone
To be condemned to that.
I feel adrift these days
We say the infinite universe
They're not the same chords, are they?
-I know they're not.
-You're crazy!
-It's them!
-How do I sing after that?
Space.
I don't want to put it back.
-What do you want to do?
-I dunno.
-Take a break.
-Go ahead, take a break.
I can't do it anymore.
In the end, I didn't do anything.
Sometimes I wonder if I really exit
In my life, I'm just a spectator
Then I hurt myself, but discreetly
The psychiatrist told me:
"It's just one aspect of your fear"
And when I hurt,
I feel like living a little
It's dark when the lights come out
We almost forget that we are sad
They don't see that I'm in the moon
They don't want me to slip away
I need to be alone
The lights of the city dribble
On the stage
You were the only one
But your eyes are black
The ink replaced the sap
I don't need you
I feel adrift these days
We say the infinite universe
It's also said that it extends
So where does it extend to?
I don't have my feet on the ground
I need space
I'm afraid of your hidden face
I don't have my feet on the ground
The elements composing the universe:
galaxies, the heaps of dust, the stars,
move away from each other, inexorably.
A little like us.
When two stars are too close
and then one of them explodes,
she condemns the other stars to wander
astray in the universe.
We call them "Wandering Stars."
insomnia is her curse
Her eyes on a screen
Until she becomes bleary-eyed
I look out of the window
The moon is green
Viewing it from the confluence
I never wanted to get used to it
She’s everywhere
You make me defy all the laws of sleep
Coming back to me at night to the point
Of dislodging the planks of the bed base
The noise of dead leaves
Scratch the pavement
My reflection in this puddle
In which I can no longer see myself
It reminds me very much of you
Needs structure.
-Cool.
-It'll be cool.
Eleven o'clock.
In Tokyo.
I'm alone.
It's another energy
that I perceive.
Is that why I love this city so much?
Or is it because here I'm nobody?
Hello, Ken? It's Tiga.
Are you in Tokyo?
Tomorrow I'll be with some friends.
Come join us!
Small, I was in a world apart,
populated by monsters, unexplored lands,
flamboyant samurais.
I gave shapes to the shadows.
I interpreted the breath of the wind
in the trees
like imaginary melodies.
I turned on myself, head in the air
until the buildings are overturned
and the clouds are falling.
I was convinced that everyone
had this fantastic vision
of what surrounds us.
Growing up, I realized that no,
that most accepted
a cold interpretation of reality
and they were waiting
for me to come back
in this narrow mold,
leaving me to miss a part of me.
It was only through art that I could
express my distortion of reality,
and make it a strength.
Escaped from a Tim Burton film
I'm in my delirium
Is there death for man?
I'm just running away
May God forgive me
The love for my team
That my team gives me back
And the full moon
Turned this man into wolf
Tomorrow,
I'll have changed mood at dawn
You thought you saw a simple handshake
But the bag in the hand
Passed from one hand to another
That the concrete in the panorama
Paris will always have many dead rats
Traffic restrains of the Panamera
We'll erase the evidence
Yeah, but not our remorse
And the coward is out, the fellow is rare
You were so proud of the mercy stroke
And now, you're less proud
You're not afraid of hell
But the head upside down,
you have like a taste of dirt
And before God
I try to do my best
I don't feel so good
I don't want to show anything
In front of them
The sequences of the pieces,
I begin to see where they're going.
I was lost at first,
there was too much work.
We have to finish
at least 15 songs before...
-Yeah.
-At least 15...
Frankly, if you want to do that,
it's possible, huh,
but you have to be here
every day and sleep here.
-No more trips to the countryside?
-No more trips,
leaving to go to the restaurant
and coming back
the next day at 5h30 pm...
It never happened to me.
Okay. Anyway, that's what I planned.
I have the impression...
We're going too much... Actually,
we're going too much into the performance
and not much into the effectiveness.
That's what I thought too.
That's the thing
that really hit me yesterday.
We don't have a pretentious album yet,
but I'm afraid we will.
Frankly, we can do 15 titles in ten days.
You know it.
But, for that, you have to be here.
We already did, but you must be here.
No, but don't worry, go ahead, it's good.
We go into mode...
Even if we don't have 15 songs,
if we made ten songs, man,
it will be huge already.
Otherwise, in fact, after,
we will be rushing so much
that it will jeopardize a lot of things.
Well, let's go get refreshed.
I'll be coming back inspired
from the mountains.
I'll go see some great wise men.
There is something in the way
The wind blows
There's a few more pixels in the sky
As if in my life before, I was absent
I feel it
There's something
In the shadows buried in the hollows
There is something in dreams
By searching the essentials
As if in my life before, I was absent
I feel it
I feel it
Excuse me.
Do you know where Aooni temple is?
What is that?
Don't worry, it's nothing.
You're looking for the temple?
You have to go up there. I can take you.
Is it far?
We have to climb a little more.
In my family,
we are farmers for generations.
We've only ever worked in the fields.
There's no one here anymore.
Everybody's gone.
God left the mountain.
This country is deteriorating
more and more.
It's money that counts.
Everyone just talks about the money...
What is that?
This is my crew.
My team.
Do you like it?
It's been a long time
I've seen a young person like you.
Nice team.
Do you want to see?
Nice.
I put them like that.
Stylish.
In the past,
everyone considered nature a goddess.
They prayed to her. But now it's money.
What will become of this world?
I like everything that floats.
All that evaporates.
The movements that we see
from the corner of the eye.
It's too much to stare at.
Fragile ideas,
which one would kill to have.
Diffuse feelings,
which only appear when you lose them.
The ethereal.
When the writer probes
human thoughts to seize the body,
he is looking
to dispel the permanent fog
in which the spirits are ignored.
Yet this vagueness
of daily life dresses too,
in its way, human feelings.
Sometimes it's better to live
without understanding everything.
ARRIVAL OF S-CREW
Life is a whore
You're stupid if you think she loves you
After shooting you in the legs,
she shoots in the head
Yeah!
How are you, man?
Yeah!
How are you, guys?
-The trip went well?
-Yeah!
Yeah! It's good, uh?
-Did you see what they brought?
-A month
since they're there!
There were no dogs?
You know here it's straight to prison.
Ouch!
Here, the prison,
it's not like in the series.
Prison Break?
In prison,
they force you to get up at 6 am.
You don't get up,
you're fucked. You're gonna work.
12 hours of work.
What are you going to do?
-I can sleep.
-You don't do it.
-I sleep.
-You can't.
They put you in misery
until you're formatted.
-It's crazy.
-It's the army.
They force you to be a better man.
Can you imagine Doums there?
He'd go crazy!
I'm so happy.
I'm about to cycle in Japan.
-We'll have to go rent it.
-Damn!
Having my guys
closer
in the country we dreamed of
when we were kids,
it made me a...
I found the love
of when rapping in the room
of Mekra with his grandmother who
would send us out if we played too loud.
I loved that.
You've recorded songs
since you got there?
At first, I was depressed,
I couldn't record.
I started to... I don't know, brother...
Actually,
I was like that in Paris already.
It was cool here to tell me:
"I'm not going out, I'm still locked up"
now that we're here.
Yeah.
It's not that I had no inspiration,
but I didn't know...
I have too many texts
and I don't know how to organize them.
-That's okay.
-They were full of prods.
So, I didn't know where to turn to.
I was going around in circles.
So yeah, Loub. You can find us...
"A purple peanut"?
Okay, I'm going right now!
For my team, I would do anything.
Session number one.
We don't need to listen to it.
-Yes.
-Exactly, yes.
You see that?
Yeah.
Ah, yes!
Do you understand that? That's it, huh.
-Because, just ...
-He'll explain that to you.
As we said, it would be nice if there was
one or more themes coming back
in the "bumal".
-Yeah.
-The most identifiable, that's it.
Okay.
That's hot.
-Make several variations.
-From this theme.
It's the same thing, and tell it
every time in a different way.
-That's hot.
-And with that...
There's a great minor chord.
Yeah, we can also make it major.
-We can.
-Yeah.
It will be much sadder.
Movie stuff, that's it.
You have a theme with an accompaniment.
The chords from the beginning.
You're so cool!
Nickel, thanks. Thank you very much!
Come on, we'll work out a plan.
Diabi, I find you too...
-I find you careless.
-You do?
On the organization. Yes.
-Well, tell me.
-Too sad.
-Too sad?
-Yeah.
Like you let me ramble, actually.
Are you crazy or what?
I have to say, "We finish this piece."
But already, you had to come this morning.
-Well, I didn't have any...
-Sorry?
-I didn't have any...
-Do you want to do like F?
Do we look at the messages?
I'm guilty.
-There it is, thanks!
-I'm guilty.
-Well, there, then.
-I woke up at 2 pm.
I'll not rush it because I'm too insolent.
When I'm insolent,
it has to be hot,
the phases have to be hot.
All the relationships I have
give me some inspiration.
Besides, many more than me,
actually... In fact.
If you look, in my stuff,
I speak of myself,
but through others, in fact.
Because my life is not very interesting.
I'm right there in speaker mode,
in real life.
You know what I mean?
Ah, he got it, the bastard!
-More like...
-We have to play in a loop.
Selman! Just the...
The cello guy plays very well.
-That's what I thought.
-He plays well.
-He must think...
-A soft sound.
A sweet sound, you see?
Like a brioche.
Let's go!
-They'll stop in ten minutes.
-Huh?
They'll stop in ten minutes.
-They'll stop in ten minutes?
-Yeah.
Ten guys, huh.
-One more.
-One more?
I'll explain it to you.
-We have five minutes. Can we...
-Ten.
Ten? Okay. There is still the theme.
-The theme is not the priority.
-Okay.
-That's the priority.
-Okay.
We are doing both now. Let's go.
-As you wish.
-Don't worry.
-We do that and the theme.
-Go ahead. Playlist.
It's noon and they have to leave,
but they can stay another 15 minutes
and they are okay to stay
if you do what you have
to do in 15 minutes.
-They're the best.
-It will be done.
-Thank you.
-I love you.
Go ahead, Diabi, you tell me.
I need a little more compression
in the voice.
That's what I'm doing here.
I went there anyway.
They will stop me no more.
In the arms of another girl
I envy the love I have and I'm drowning
It's going too fast, like death
For a young black
It starts at daycare, this terrible gap
It's going very fast like the coming
From the cops in rich neighborhoods
Growing up with gold in bar,
Inherited from your family
And the grids of private schools
Become your ramparts
So, yeah, we can all get out, that's right
But we still have to do
A lot more effort there
There, you know what they will tell you
If you ever talk to them about it?
"Don't worry, go,
When there is a number at stake
We get strong in math"
The news will hurt
They scream at the TV
Still a seed full of beauty
That the street buries
You wanted to tear off the pain
Become insensitive
But you still have in your heart a bit
Of goodness you thought you'd lost
We must not atrophy
Catastrophic balance
Because often everything goes too fast
Except the suffering
-You killed me there.
-Sorry!
You want to kill me, Diabi
Dia-bye
Diabolo-bolo, yes
They talk about democracy
But nobody believes it
True anti-racists bother LICRA
States fill our rivers with nitrates
I'm waiting for love like Jenifer in 2003
They talk about democracy
But nobody believes it
True anti-racists bother LICRA
I'm waiting for love like Jenifer
-Shut up.
-Shut up.
Perfect. It's perfect like that.
-Shut up!
-Shut up!
No!
You have sushi, sashimi.
I'm not hungry.
Check the arrangements
of "Menteur, Menteur".
Have you done it yet?
- Estou farto.
- Diabi, louder!
They're not square
Like Jim in "Liar, liar"
They're not square like Jim
In "Liar, liar"
Give them ten opportunities
They choose slow, slow
First counter-attack, I score
I score like Landers, Landers
I have Hisoka's smile in Hunter x Hunter
They're not square like Jim
In "Liar, liar"
Give them ten opportunities
They choose slow, slow
Baby, I'm in the bus, bus
In the subway, subway
I have Hisoka's smile in Hunter x Hunter
I see Paris from above
Like Hauts-de-Seine
"Ken" for the first name
"Feu" for the stage name
Double demon like the Olsens
Smoke comes out of me like onsen
I dreamed that you spoke badly
It was strange like hell
I had been told that you spoke badly
But you're sweet as a Lu
Secret side like the moon
Nobody walks on me like the moon
Yeah! Don't tell your life
I will break your heart like a Lu, yeah
Take care of your sins
F.T.G B.T, yeah
If you're homophobic
It's because you judge
Force my LGBT
And I was really annoyed, yeah
I rub shoulders with top models
There is R
But in front of her, I bugged
In front of her, I bugged
She's creamy like Nivea
Easy as level one
When it's over, she erases her coms
It's easy like the phases in "like"
Softly
Okay, you're sweet, but gently
It's been less than two weeks
We know each other
Better do it gently in this world
You took me for a drink
You will not make me believe
That it's wine
Yeah, you're stone like Silver
The strike comes from
The Rif as Sylvain
As soon as we came back from Japan,
it had been so intense
and rich in emotions,
that Diabi and I,
we didn't call each other.
We gave each other time
to settle our affairs
and all the responsibilities we left
during the two months we had spent.
And by taking a step back,
I realized that...
I didn't even have a third of the album
and that even if it inspires me,
and I had found the right formula,
we had to go back.
CHAPTER III
VOYAGE LÉGER
This time, I told Diabi:
"Come on, we'll stand in the sun."
LOS ANGELES
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA
It's part of the arrangement.
Right, fuck it.
Right, I wanted to make a point
about what we have done and not done.
So, really finished,
we have "Menteur-Menteur".
Even "Menteur-Menteur",
there are things I would like to change.
The moods to the chorus...
Remove them, rather. It's tweaking.
-Yeah, tweaking.
-It's not good.
-Nothing to leave there.
-If it is to be fine-tuned,
it's almost finished.
After, it's retouching.
What else?
Well, there is...
The one we just did. "Y a Pire"?
We'll recheck that.
The harmonies on the chorus too.
We only have that?
-How many titles?
-Ten.
Ten. Finished, yeah.
-That's great.
-Just have them chained.
I was nothing
I will always represent my people
My people
For them, I was everything
When I was nothing
I was nothing
I will always represent my people
What a surprise.
Since earlier, did you film that?
A bunk bed?
I didn't really realize.
It makes me feel bad,
but I don't know if it's hot.
You make me listen
because it's useless if I don't like it,
and you'll have worked for nothing.
Like yesterday, you spent two hours on it.
Yeah, but like that, you listen well.
Listen to the catch, I can listen.
I don't really like it.
I'll do it again.
What don't you really like?
I don't know. I swear, I don't know.
-I did that on each piece?
-It was only two.
I will always represent my people
Ah, the voice, it's nice!
My people
It's good to work with pros.
How long did I stay?
I was everything when I was nothing
-15 minutes ?
-I had time to go to Insta,
like things and do everything.
For them, I was everything
When I was nothing
I like that.
I will always represent my people
My people
For them, I was everything...
-No! You're crazy!
-Fuck!
The end, shut up! Until the end!
That's how you do it! You neglect things!
What do I neglect?
You will listen to the end!
I will always represent my people
Yeah!
For them, I was everything
When I was nothing
I was nothing
I will always represent my people
-And now, you can do your selection.
-Oh fuck...
Okay, that's hot!
Sometimes there is magic,
ideas are linked together.
Are you trying to make me understand
that we will not record?
What?
Are you trying to make me understand
that we will not record?
I'm blown up.
You want to record,
we record, but I'm dead.
We don't really care about what they say
In a rap album,
collaborations are like a second layer.
Once the spine is done, this allows
to feed on all artistic encounters
and bring freshness.
BRUSSELS
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Soon, I'll stop it all, mama
Soon, my life will change
Difficult to tell
Between men, we guess
Soon, I'll stop it all, mama
Don't worry about my future
Soon, my life will change
Tomorrow, I'll move from this city
-Something like that, you see?
-It's stylish.
It's big, we say what we want.
-You like it?
-Yes.
I have to work on it.
In studio, it'll go well. Here, I'm shy.
Our success is for all the mother fuckers
Who looked at us badly
And when I was little,
I admit, sometimes I was jealous
Of the kids my mum took care of
Those who came to lift the furniture,
they were not the movers
Separation of households before
The child becomes a teen
Mouss spent four years in the closet
For him, it was big
And your rappers
What are they talking about?
It's rednecks, it's lifeguards
-He hears me?
-Yeah.
-The beginning, it was not bad.
-Yeah?
-You want to listen?
-Calmer.
Yeah, it was cool.
Want me to try something?
-Yeah, cool.
-Come on.
I wonder if it's vibes.
It's not the right note,
not the right range.
I am in the bendo, shut up
Hail not, I'm not courteous
Far from thugs and bourgeois
Between life and death on the armrest
I hear "Dirty Negro", oh yeah?
I turn dry, Glock, boom, boom
Bang, bang
Every day to be in main event
Just find the one that was the best.
And even there, I don't know if you had
to put the one you put in lead.
You know,
you should do a chorus, a little?
In the team, I have known everyone
for years. What we did,
is that we locked ourselves in Japan,
doing what we love, actually.
And you saw, like everything...
Diabi oversees everyone because
there are crazy musicians.
And so, that's what...
There is an alchemy
that is created, it's crazy.
-Mama, I was under gasolina
-Mama, I was under gasolina
But I want to be a solid guy
I don't want to see my guys under lean
No
That worries me
Yeah, I love it.
It's good not to have all the time
in mind what you will do.
You're right.
You put a little sketch
and after, the free space that there is,
it's the creation...
My texts are always a little...
I see colors.
So, I stay in that thing.
It's stronger than me.
I'm really in...
You see, like "Feu du bois"...
Bah, all songs,
in general, I'm in this stuff and...
-You're going to get it deep down.
-I'm going to the bottom of the thing.
Yeah, but you write fast.
You can do a billion things...
-I write all the time.
-Full of crash tests.
But I don't like crash tests.
I'm crazy,
I don't like it when it's not finished.
When it's just a little...
I have trouble with that.
Rap is the music of doing well.
You don't need anything.
Your voice, a notebook and imagination.
And you become the superhero
of your street.
-We killed it.
-Very hot.
-Dirty!
-I think that...
We started rapping on instruments
which didn't belong to us.
The sample is the art of diversion.
Some take it for looting,
but it's creation.
A Frankenstein monster composed
of a patchwork of sample sounds.
But when you get famous,
the copyright related to the sample
complicates everything.
The problem is the sample.
Yes!
This is the most famous group in Guinea.
That's not the problem.
If they come, they take everything.
-They take everything.
-Yeah, at worst...
-At worst, what?
-They take everything.
And I give them everything, even 200%.
On Jay-Z's album
or Isaac Hayes, he has 0% to him
and everything goes for Isaac Hayes.
It's the same for me.
It's Guineans. At worst, they are dead
or they will ask me for money,
I'll give them.
Take everything, even what I'll do next!
Take this money, I don't care!
I live for music.
Even though the use of samples
get lost in rap,
I wanted to have this hotter color
on the album.
We decided to audition new musicians
to sample them later.
Let's go!
Go ahead, next!
He has gone mad!
Hey, talk to people, brother!
Sorry, brother.
He's crazy, this guy.
Cool!
Thank you. It's cool.
We go on?
Okay, thank you!
-We'll think of someone else.
-It was a pleasure.
-It's not won, huh.
-No.
CHAPTER IV
CIEL NOIR
So this time,
we had to go back to the source.
NEW ORLEANS
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, USA
How are you? Hi, brother.
-Hi, brother.
-What's up?
-You're okay?
-Yeah.
You're good?
Cool?
This is hot!
I'm not trying to hide myself
behind metaphors.
But you have to go around some truths
to touch them better.
A real suffering is precious.
It's like a treasure.
It is protected from intrusive looks.
We admire it in secret,
possessive and shameful.
And we are proud to survive.
A real suffering is not exposed
in the harsh light
of the factual explanation.
It could be spoiled, desecrated.
Make it mundane and unattractive.
Make it heal, even.
No, a real suffering, it's sublime
and it is distilled slowly,
at the bend of words.
For the dead cats who hang up
these snatches of pain
to their own suffering.
For those who do not listen
with the ears.
In the universe, there is no sound.
Who cares about wandering stars
that rattle noiselessly?
It's on "state emergency".
You lie! When the neighbor came,
he said, "You know the hurricane
that's going to hit us?"
-Yeah.
-It's called Nate.
-Nate?
-Yeah.
Ah, it has a blaze?
-When they have names...
-He has a blaze!
Nate will strengthen
by getting closer to the American coast.
-What?
-It will become stronger as it approaches.
We're trying to finish an album
for the posthumous album...
-Are we on Tremé?
-Yeah, it's there.
They are ready for Halloween
since last Christmas.
I would like... Do you know what we do?
We write and compose at the barracks.
Yeah.
And after that, we...
We take a studio day,
or one night, and we record.
That's crazy.
Right, that's great.
But, man...
But, man... It's a monster.
It's a monster from hell!
Well, that's it.
-You just got that?
-Yeah.
Too bad.
There it is.
Go, there!
You didn't expect that, kid?
-Run under hurricanes.
-What a trap!
You're too hot!
Hydrate yourself while you run!
I think it's there.
He's Jeremy. He plays in the street.
We had met him the day before
on Bourbon St.
He was so talented that he was offered
to come to the studio.
Do we record that?
This meeting was pure destiny.
Jeremy was playing on the street
in Las Vegas,
when the killings of October 1, 2017
broke out.
He fled and took a ticket
to New Orleans.
That's where we met him.
The main reason
for our trip to New Orleans,
it was the meeting with a local legend,
the Trombone Shorty jazzman.
I tell him to go?
Thank you.
That's hot.
I think that was the best one.
That was good. We were doing well.
Hurricane Nate hit the United States.
After crossing the Gulf of Mexico,
this category 1 storm
swept the Mississippi delta.
In New Orleans, the authorities have
decided to lift the curfew.
The areas near the coast could be affected
by the floods.
And if cyclones were the sum
Of all the last sighs of the Earth?
And if the earthquakes were
The sum of all our first steps?
And if the cyclones were the sum
Of all the last sighs of the Earth?
And if the earthquakes were
The sum of all our first steps?
11 am, New Orleans
I'm walking solo
In the neighborhoods of Tremé
The news comes to announce the hurricane
The air is heavy, the sky is black
Forbidden to hang out
Curfew is scheduled for 7 pm
But the people here don't look too worried
They say they knew the worst with Katrina
And the crimes
To know who controls the rain-tee
They are partying and offer me to toast
Have a good mood in abundance
Musicians have fun improvising
All the neighbors get supplies
Crowded crowd, completely ready
Play the trumpet in a storm
And the newspaper might have been wrong
But I run soaked from head to toe
The hurricane has gone a few miles
The areas around the port are flooded
Far from my lands, sentimental mood
It's not just the fear I felt climbing
Far from my lands
I only thought about my people
I only have their memories
And their invocations
Strange as one feels impulses of love
In contact with death or its evocation
Europeans forget all too often
That they're nothing
Faced with the nature
That takes back their rights
Tornado of thoughts that turn in my head
I catch one in flight
And I think back to you
Okay, let's go, then?
-This is what you want, Ken?
-Yeah.
It's good, right?
-Let's go.
-Come one, let's go.
Writing is the first act
Writing is the first act of a man
Deprived of his freedom
I have the names of prisoners
As my witness
Engraved on the walls of jails
Pure as young love
The whispers grow louder
No sooner do we live that we die
It's the sound of caves going back up
And disturbing these fucking residents
Had to cheat the system to get away
Fuck the subway and its full rates
Street word is: "You’re hotheaded"
But the saddest part about life
Isn’t things happening to you
But rather nothing happening at all
When one of my people gets tired
We take turns
And if one of my people falls
We get them back up
But if one of my people leaves
I can’t get over it
Although I’m sure we leave behind
These grounds to better rise again
We’ll be there for his mama
One of my people falls
We get him back up
We’ll be there for his mama
We only leave to better rise again
Yeah, go ahead... I'm coming.
-You hear me ?
-Yeah, I hear you.
Ideally, we record the choruses.
-Yeah.
-But there's no time.
-Yeah.
-I'm afraid they'll leave before the end.
Okay.
Selman, if you want to go
on something else,
you choose.
It's serious beautiful, it's not bad.
Diabi?
It's good? You tell me when it's good?
Above the clouds, the sun shines
Back on earth, the sky is dark
A mother buries her dead
All in this together, but where do we go?
We’re all blind passengers
Passerbyes wear masks
And devour it all, like a mass
That looks like No-Face
From Spirited Away
Demons congregate
Around the body we pick up
And the blood look black
Under the revolving light
They only think about the money
So watch me grab them euros
I’m at the top and I’ve become a lion
Love is an essence, death is birth
One day, there won’t be anything left
Of these mouths that curse
Nothing left of these fading horizons
Nothing left of our mothers,
Of our sons, of my music
Only these spitting volcanoes
And no more lightning striking
No more flowers nor a grain of salt
And no more clouds falling onto us
When concrete golems rise up to the sky
There will only be trembling stars
Falling into these vanishing galaxies
No time, no dimension, no meaning
The universe will go back
To what it was before its birth
Dark sky.
CHAPTER V
COMPTE LES HOMMES
After the last studio session
with Trombone Shorty
and all the singers,
there, I knew that...
We couldn't push the album further
musically speaking.
We had gone super far in delirium,
we had tested a lot of stuff.
I had the number of pieces that I needed,
the atmosphere that I needed.
I just needed an end.
And since the beginning, I wanted
add a touch of Greek music,
I thought, "I'm going to leave here where
I started to think about the album..
MYTILENE, GREECE
On my island.
I'm going to take Selman with me
because he's a Turk and there's
a music called "rebetiko."
I told him: "I'll introduce you
to musicians from the island,
I would like you to compose
a whole bunch of curls
and use it to finish the album."
It turns out that my island, Mytilini,
is experiencing the biggest migration
crisis since the Second World War.
Whenever I go to see my family,
I witness this catastrophic situation.
And just like all the conversations
that I have, the people I meet inspire me,
indirectly, it's found in my texts.
They say we can't make up
for all the misery of the world.
Give them what was stolen from them.
These are my arguments.
It's been 25 years
that refugees arrive on our island.
The locals never had any trouble
with those who come
because they are people who need help.
The problem is not:
"Why are people coming?"
but: "Why are they fleeing their country?"
Some say:
"But why don't they stay
in their country?"
How can you stay in a country
where bombs kill your children?
Would you stay?
I went with a photographer at sea.
We found a boat with 15 people in it.
When we came in, there were babies.
There was also a woman
who kept crying.
We said: "We are here to save you."
She takes out her cell phone and shows me
a picture of three children.
She had one in her arms.
She had boarded the day before,
there was a shipwreck,
both babies drowned.
One of the bodies arrived here,
and the other in Turkey.
After, we hear: "The problem,
it's the refugees who are landing."
It's a problem
that the woman arrives with a baby
and it's not a problem
that two babies drowned.
Today, I think back
and I can't believe it was real.
Rebetiko is the music of the outlaws,
exiles, vagabonds.
In the 1920s, more than a million
of refugees from Asia Minor
have piled up in the slums of big cities,
where they developed this musical
current forbidden under dictatorship.
Today, refugees come from other countries,
but the uprooting sung
by the rebetiko is the same.
You want to know where I come from
Check the BPM
FINAL RECORDING
FINAL MIX
I have to stop complaining
There is so much worse in this world
Misfortunes, there are plenty
I took some blows, but I'm not dead
I have to stop complaining
Must take a chance, we are men
Intransigent with myself
And tolerant with others
I have to stop complaining
There is so much worse in this world
Misfortunes, there are plenty
I took some blows, but I'm not dead
I have to stop complaining
At home, everyone eats up
When I don’t feel well
I strengthen myself
Love, it’s nothing, it comes and goes
So now, I’m hanging on to the light
When the clouds come out
And I no longer even regret
The many nights we spent together
Even if our love was stained
With all sorts of somber nuances
You looked draped in your pride
But you were naked underneath
A young man from the Entourage is dead
I cried in a synagogue
And if our bodies perish
We’re only left with love, if not, what?
What? In my heart, a few signs still
Told me: “Launch into your dreams and
bring peace between all the MCs”
With us the point of music
Is to upset hearts
And dreams, it’s like the classics
Each to his own
Music makes me take off far away
But what a strange rocket
My girlfriend smiles at me
Although she’s been transfused
I have to stop complaining
There’s much worse in this world
Misfortunes, there are a lot
I’ve taken some blows, but I’m not dead
I have to stop complaining
I have to take my chance, we’re men
Intransigent with myself
And tolerant with others
I have to stop complaining
There’s much worse in this world
Misfortunes, there are a lot
I’ve taken some blows but I’m not dead
I have to stop complaining
At home, everyone eats their fill
When I don’t feel well
I strengthen myself
Love, it’s nothing, it comes and goes
The adrenaline on stage is so strong,
that one night, at a concert,
I broke my hand on a speaker
and I felt that the week after,
when I saw that
it had doubled in volume.
It's a metaphor for my life as an artist.
Once the exit door is noticed,
I was so afraid to return to the galley
that I threw myself
into this frenetic whirlwind of success,
without realizing
that I covered the shocks internally.
It reminds me
of the Looney Tunes cartoons
when the character is pursued
and continues running in the void
before realizing it
and falling.
In real life,
the shock can come years later.
When you feel calm,
it hits you even more violently.
Life is a test.
The essential is elsewhere,
so, I wandered into other universes.
But it was in me that I traveled the most.
It's not rap that will save me.
But I try to tear off
all my calcified feelings
to crush them and spread
the dust in a work,
to blow them on stage.
That's how I treated myself on this album.
Today, I play in front of 80 000 people
and I've never felt so surrounded.
Subtitle translation by Claudia Patricia
-Did they tell you?
-Yes.
-Come on, I'm going.
-We don't have time!
Is everyone equipped with sound?
-What did you decide?
-That, we change it with that.
-Okay.
-That way, it makes sense.
-Do you remind me?
-Sure.
-Where is Doums?
-I don't know.
Fuck!
-Doums!
-Yes!
Hey, great!
We're up in five minutes,
we have to hurry.
-You have my mic?
-Let's go.
Let's go!
I tell you all the time!
Fuck!
Is everyone following?
-Yes.
-How long do we have?
Three and a half minutes.
Okay, thanks.
Three minutes.
We're in the elevator.
We're leaving.
Yeah, I hear you.
Two and a half minutes.
Hey, guys, let's go!
Don't forget the change.
Here we go!
Today,
I played in front of 80 000 people
and I've never felt so alone.
MYTILENE, GREECE
I'm going out for a while.
Again?
I'll be back.
Sometimes you have to run away
from the frenzy of the big cities
to realize how much
we get used to that daily madness.
Paleokipos,
my grandfather's village, in Greece.
It's said that it's the birth place
of Barbarossa.
Here, in Mytilini,
I'm far from the pressure,
I see my family, I take my time.
Yet, me, the Parisian,
I've never lived there.
But my father calls it
"the mythical country",
the one who sticks to their shoes,
where you are in exile.
And it's in exile that I speak
the best of my life in Paris,
in the shadow of distance.
You're okay? You hear me?
Yeah, I'm good. Where are you?
-I'm in Greece.
-What are you doing there?
I've come to see my grandmother
and work a little.
I couldn't go to Paris to work.
To be honest.
-When do you come back?
-In a few days.
But I'll let you know.
There, bro, everybody is calling me.
Everybody...
-Everyone is asking me: "Where is he?"
-Yeah, I know.
"Do you have any news? Is he replying?"
I'm neither your manager,
neither your secretary.
Yeah, I know, brother. But I don't know
what's happening, I can't...
-I couldn't work.
-Come on, we lock ourselves in the studio.
-Yeah.
-...and we try to work, right?
Yeah. When I come home, I have to settle
two, three things with the label,
I'll recruit others
and after that...
After that, straight to the studio.
I'm waiting for that, man.
I'm waiting for that.
It's been over a year
that I was supposed
to record my third album.
The whole team was counting on me.
But I couldn't get used to it...
So I did what I do best:
to run away...
The most difficult part of creating
a new work,
is the first line.
The one who disturbs the balance
of a blank page.
The one who, by choosing to be,
assassinates an infinity
of other realities.
CHAPTER I
PREMIER PAS
I want to live abroad
All my life, I moved
I lived in the suburbs
I lived in Paris
I've thrown away my phone
So I don't get bothered
So don't come to question me
Send your requests by e-mail
I think you're not listening
When things are not right,
I eat like crazy
And lately, I gained a lot of weight
It's depressing when you're a pacifist
It's been a while since I'm not
up to date with the news
I hated success,
but must believe that it was not enough
And if I was 100% myself
I wouldn't even do this movie
I've been on the road
for more than ten years now.
Sleeping carelessly,
not thinking about the next day.
I have so many concerts
that my private life
has become an intermission.
And I ended up alone.
I can't stay inactive
for more than a day or two.
Because it's the moment that chooses
when the dark thoughts
infiltrate my mind.
Sometimes I let some in, slowly.
Just to dissect them.
Check if I can look them in the face
and use them in my work.
But I don't let it go for too long
because if we're forced
to contemplate the dark,
we end up getting lost.
I don't know if I'm fleeing Paris
or if I need to run away
from my artist routine
when it becomes too heavy.
Plus, being almost a...
public personality...
I became almost a stranger in my own city.
In fact, since it's been too long
since I've released anything,
I've put a stupid pressure on myself.
So, I have to come back with an album.
Not just a song, not a thing...
Well, man, I'm telling you,
you can do whatever you want.
Lately, my life,
it's managing a box, managing good times,
managing a breakdown... It's shit.
Anyway, a breakdown, again,
it can inspire you, but...
-Yeah, but it's...
-I'm aiming for something bigger.
That's why I want to move.
Greece made me feel good.
We must continue to travel,
to see other places.
It's what I'm gonna do,
if we stay in Paris, we'll be depressed.
Sure.
This is the first time in my life
that I'm in front of a blank sheet.
-I tell myself...
-Oh yeah?
-Yeah.
-But that's everyday life to me!
Come on! Come to my school, you'll see!
-I don't want to.
-We'll give you an A!
-I don't want to!
-No, but I understand,
but don't overthink it, man. It'll pass.
It's true, you'll see...
Because in the end,
in rap, we have to release our emotions,
we must release what we feel.
That's the lease.
It's super shameless, brother.
-But it's a therapy.
-Yeah.
Because when I tell personal stuff,
I take it back
and I put it in my shelf, you see.
It becomes an object that I put away,
that's no longer there,
trying to ruin my day.
-It doesn't exist anymore.
-It does...
-You've materialized and frozen it.
-Yeah.
It's pretty selfish.
-But it's not selfish...
-It's therapy.
-But what is generous...
-You offer it to others.
That's it, everyone can...
My goal is that even if I speak...
For example, I have a broken heart,
I want to find what is universal
in there, you see?
And often, the most universal,
it's super-precise and personal stuff.
Today, I cried in my brother's arms.
It happened like that, without warning.
Between two innocuous jokes
that we said to fill the void.
First, he cried.
Suddenly. Silently.
It sounded like a sigh
of an old football ball if we step on it.
Maybe, today, the void was too big.
Who knows?
The day was like so many others.
It was even beautiful.
And it's not his kind of whine.
Specially because he met others today,
a lot more troubled, no doubt.
But, well, he cried.
And I cried because I saw him crying.
It was like a dam that gave way in him.
A magma of distorted feelings
from being repressed
which was breaking on me.
A fucking wave of burning vomit
that paralyzes your throat,
and relieve you
when you finally spit it out.
Today, I cried in my brother's arms.
And it was better than laughing.
ALBUM: DAY 1
Elite, do you have a lighter?
That can be very hot
with the arrangements.
The thing you did,
it may well finish the loop.
I think, the chorus,
I'll improvise it.
Because...
It was hot, the thing you whispered.
Yeah.
In college, I was hideous
But determined like a gangsta
I used to steal PlayStations,
I'd resell them and buy myself games
In college, I was hideous
But determined like a gangsta
I used to steal PlayStations,
I'd resell them and buy myself games
What do youngsters know?
I used to roam the whole of Paris
I'd give myself a spiky hairdo with gel
I had the hairstyle of Reese
-That's the shit!
-That's hot.
That's the shit!
In college, I was hideous
But determined like a gangsta
I used to steal PlayStations,
I'd resell them and buy myself games
What do youngsters know?
I used to roam the whole of Paris
I'd give myself a spiky hairdo with gel
I had the hairstyle of Reese
It's not that much like Feu
and company, you see?
You didn't want to change the stuff?
It stays the same color.
After you've won, she's okay, you know.
-That's the one, it's the banger.
-I know.
-Don't say that shit.
-You know him...
You know, anyway...
-It's his comfort in there.
-Do you like... fast food?
-You always go back!
-Yeah...
Actually, it's easy for me.
-To only create sounds where I get...
-Yeah.
-You know.
-This is what you want?
No, this is not what I want.
It's too easy.
To entice things,
start with one sound, then...
In the middle, change the mood
with orchestral delirium
or stuff like that, I'd love that.
We need people who excel at what they do
and kind of bring them to our world,
you see?
To have other musical styles.
I felt that there were too many things
who kept us in Paris
and that were preventing us
from dedicating truly to it.
Suddenly, we were stuck.
There was a country
which I had been thinking for a while.
So, I got tickets for everyone,
I rented a house and we left.
CHAPTER II
TAKOTSUBO
I took some guys who have talent
and I like everything
that they do.
I asked them to work together.
Everyone has their specialty, that's
what is cool.
Lo is in his own world,
has the madness that few people have.
You have Diabi, who oversees everything.
Hugz, whatever happens, is going to bang.
Loubenski and Selman
are training musicians.
I knew they were the dream team.
-That one?
-No.
Victory!
Ah, that's good!
Calm down, Diabi! Calm down!
It's not the time to clap!
Calm down.
Calm down!
I'm changing.
What do you want to do? You want...
This will be the door to enter my studio.
This one is coming out.
Basically, I wanted to do it here,
but it's too noisy.
Yeah, it's a little bad.
Actually, it's small, but you know,
I can really fill it with...
You know, futons, pillows...
So, when you do it there,
it'll absorb the sound.
That's good, Diabi. Yeah.
Like that, yeah...
-But you have to fill it better.
-I will.
I'm actually gonna do that.
Bring me the futon.
That's okay?
Yeah. Okay, that's staying, it absorbs.
But it absorbs a little.
If I cover it all, it'll absorb fully.
If you put the bar here, it'll hold it.
In any case,
we'll have to remove the door.
In any case?
There, that does it.
There's a peculiarity, but I like it.
-You like it?
-It's cool.
Travel light, come back heavily loaded
My girlfriend is heavily loaded
My team is doubling Charo
She rolled the joints heavily loaded
The keufs have heavily loaded us
The flashball is heavily loaded
My hotel charged me heavily
It's my turn to take care of it
Kilos of hashish in the Jeep
And at the graveyard of dreams
Lie our jackal's hopes
No more storage in the RAM
Stories on bandages
A kind of morbid boredom
Which makes you hope for a drama
And then this desire will disappear
With the first missing
When I realized I was a coward
Of those who romanticize the street
A mic in his wallet is shining
An ill-mannered brought it to us
My brother told me: "Look at the price!"
Not a dime, but we took it
At least we will have tried
That's it, here's the future
Try to prove that you're real
Becoming it by stopping to try
A little coffee and we're going.
I have to go there.
After that, you'll just use...
Ah!
You see? Ah!
But like the last chord,
it doesn't arrive on the fifth,
it must shift to... You see?
Gentlemen.
-We're hammering on Head.
-Ah...
-It's not good?
-I like it, but nothing more.
Get up, brother. There's football!
Even I will play!
Ouch, it cracked!
I swear, this piece,
it's useless to do too much...
too much...
Actual changes, because, really...
Yes, but at the base,
it sounds a little, like light.
-It sounds light.
-Doesn't need edits.
-Agreed.
-It sounds light,
but you get lost by doing that stuff.
We don't get lost! We make music,
we don't make yogurt.
We have to try 15 000 things
to come up with something we like.
Generally, good ideas
come from bullshit.
It's certain.
In my life, I'm just a spectator
You're falsely right and falsely wrong.
But I like it.
They don't want me to slip away
I need to be alone
To be condemned to that.
I feel adrift these days
We say the infinite universe
They're not the same chords, are they?
-I know they're not.
-You're crazy!
-It's them!
-How do I sing after that?
Space.
I don't want to put it back.
-What do you want to do?
-I dunno.
-Take a break.
-Go ahead, take a break.
I can't do it anymore.
In the end, I didn't do anything.
Sometimes I wonder if I really exit
In my life, I'm just a spectator
Then I hurt myself, but discreetly
The psychiatrist told me:
"It's just one aspect of your fear"
And when I hurt,
I feel like living a little
It's dark when the lights come out
We almost forget that we are sad
They don't see that I'm in the moon
They don't want me to slip away
I need to be alone
The lights of the city dribble
On the stage
You were the only one
But your eyes are black
The ink replaced the sap
I don't need you
I feel adrift these days
We say the infinite universe
It's also said that it extends
So where does it extend to?
I don't have my feet on the ground
I need space
I'm afraid of your hidden face
I don't have my feet on the ground
The elements composing the universe:
galaxies, the heaps of dust, the stars,
move away from each other, inexorably.
A little like us.
When two stars are too close
and then one of them explodes,
she condemns the other stars to wander
astray in the universe.
We call them "Wandering Stars."
insomnia is her curse
Her eyes on a screen
Until she becomes bleary-eyed
I look out of the window
The moon is green
Viewing it from the confluence
I never wanted to get used to it
She’s everywhere
You make me defy all the laws of sleep
Coming back to me at night to the point
Of dislodging the planks of the bed base
The noise of dead leaves
Scratch the pavement
My reflection in this puddle
In which I can no longer see myself
It reminds me very much of you
Needs structure.
-Cool.
-It'll be cool.
Eleven o'clock.
In Tokyo.
I'm alone.
It's another energy
that I perceive.
Is that why I love this city so much?
Or is it because here I'm nobody?
Hello, Ken? It's Tiga.
Are you in Tokyo?
Tomorrow I'll be with some friends.
Come join us!
Small, I was in a world apart,
populated by monsters, unexplored lands,
flamboyant samurais.
I gave shapes to the shadows.
I interpreted the breath of the wind
in the trees
like imaginary melodies.
I turned on myself, head in the air
until the buildings are overturned
and the clouds are falling.
I was convinced that everyone
had this fantastic vision
of what surrounds us.
Growing up, I realized that no,
that most accepted
a cold interpretation of reality
and they were waiting
for me to come back
in this narrow mold,
leaving me to miss a part of me.
It was only through art that I could
express my distortion of reality,
and make it a strength.
Escaped from a Tim Burton film
I'm in my delirium
Is there death for man?
I'm just running away
May God forgive me
The love for my team
That my team gives me back
And the full moon
Turned this man into wolf
Tomorrow,
I'll have changed mood at dawn
You thought you saw a simple handshake
But the bag in the hand
Passed from one hand to another
That the concrete in the panorama
Paris will always have many dead rats
Traffic restrains of the Panamera
We'll erase the evidence
Yeah, but not our remorse
And the coward is out, the fellow is rare
You were so proud of the mercy stroke
And now, you're less proud
You're not afraid of hell
But the head upside down,
you have like a taste of dirt
And before God
I try to do my best
I don't feel so good
I don't want to show anything
In front of them
The sequences of the pieces,
I begin to see where they're going.
I was lost at first,
there was too much work.
We have to finish
at least 15 songs before...
-Yeah.
-At least 15...
Frankly, if you want to do that,
it's possible, huh,
but you have to be here
every day and sleep here.
-No more trips to the countryside?
-No more trips,
leaving to go to the restaurant
and coming back
the next day at 5h30 pm...
It never happened to me.
Okay. Anyway, that's what I planned.
I have the impression...
We're going too much... Actually,
we're going too much into the performance
and not much into the effectiveness.
That's what I thought too.
That's the thing
that really hit me yesterday.
We don't have a pretentious album yet,
but I'm afraid we will.
Frankly, we can do 15 titles in ten days.
You know it.
But, for that, you have to be here.
We already did, but you must be here.
No, but don't worry, go ahead, it's good.
We go into mode...
Even if we don't have 15 songs,
if we made ten songs, man,
it will be huge already.
Otherwise, in fact, after,
we will be rushing so much
that it will jeopardize a lot of things.
Well, let's go get refreshed.
I'll be coming back inspired
from the mountains.
I'll go see some great wise men.
There is something in the way
The wind blows
There's a few more pixels in the sky
As if in my life before, I was absent
I feel it
There's something
In the shadows buried in the hollows
There is something in dreams
By searching the essentials
As if in my life before, I was absent
I feel it
I feel it
Excuse me.
Do you know where Aooni temple is?
What is that?
Don't worry, it's nothing.
You're looking for the temple?
You have to go up there. I can take you.
Is it far?
We have to climb a little more.
In my family,
we are farmers for generations.
We've only ever worked in the fields.
There's no one here anymore.
Everybody's gone.
God left the mountain.
This country is deteriorating
more and more.
It's money that counts.
Everyone just talks about the money...
What is that?
This is my crew.
My team.
Do you like it?
It's been a long time
I've seen a young person like you.
Nice team.
Do you want to see?
Nice.
I put them like that.
Stylish.
In the past,
everyone considered nature a goddess.
They prayed to her. But now it's money.
What will become of this world?
I like everything that floats.
All that evaporates.
The movements that we see
from the corner of the eye.
It's too much to stare at.
Fragile ideas,
which one would kill to have.
Diffuse feelings,
which only appear when you lose them.
The ethereal.
When the writer probes
human thoughts to seize the body,
he is looking
to dispel the permanent fog
in which the spirits are ignored.
Yet this vagueness
of daily life dresses too,
in its way, human feelings.
Sometimes it's better to live
without understanding everything.
ARRIVAL OF S-CREW
Life is a whore
You're stupid if you think she loves you
After shooting you in the legs,
she shoots in the head
Yeah!
How are you, man?
Yeah!
How are you, guys?
-The trip went well?
-Yeah!
Yeah! It's good, uh?
-Did you see what they brought?
-A month
since they're there!
There were no dogs?
You know here it's straight to prison.
Ouch!
Here, the prison,
it's not like in the series.
Prison Break?
In prison,
they force you to get up at 6 am.
You don't get up,
you're fucked. You're gonna work.
12 hours of work.
What are you going to do?
-I can sleep.
-You don't do it.
-I sleep.
-You can't.
They put you in misery
until you're formatted.
-It's crazy.
-It's the army.
They force you to be a better man.
Can you imagine Doums there?
He'd go crazy!
I'm so happy.
I'm about to cycle in Japan.
-We'll have to go rent it.
-Damn!
Having my guys
closer
in the country we dreamed of
when we were kids,
it made me a...
I found the love
of when rapping in the room
of Mekra with his grandmother who
would send us out if we played too loud.
I loved that.
You've recorded songs
since you got there?
At first, I was depressed,
I couldn't record.
I started to... I don't know, brother...
Actually,
I was like that in Paris already.
It was cool here to tell me:
"I'm not going out, I'm still locked up"
now that we're here.
Yeah.
It's not that I had no inspiration,
but I didn't know...
I have too many texts
and I don't know how to organize them.
-That's okay.
-They were full of prods.
So, I didn't know where to turn to.
I was going around in circles.
So yeah, Loub. You can find us...
"A purple peanut"?
Okay, I'm going right now!
For my team, I would do anything.
Session number one.
We don't need to listen to it.
-Yes.
-Exactly, yes.
You see that?
Yeah.
Ah, yes!
Do you understand that? That's it, huh.
-Because, just ...
-He'll explain that to you.
As we said, it would be nice if there was
one or more themes coming back
in the "bumal".
-Yeah.
-The most identifiable, that's it.
Okay.
That's hot.
-Make several variations.
-From this theme.
It's the same thing, and tell it
every time in a different way.
-That's hot.
-And with that...
There's a great minor chord.
Yeah, we can also make it major.
-We can.
-Yeah.
It will be much sadder.
Movie stuff, that's it.
You have a theme with an accompaniment.
The chords from the beginning.
You're so cool!
Nickel, thanks. Thank you very much!
Come on, we'll work out a plan.
Diabi, I find you too...
-I find you careless.
-You do?
On the organization. Yes.
-Well, tell me.
-Too sad.
-Too sad?
-Yeah.
Like you let me ramble, actually.
Are you crazy or what?
I have to say, "We finish this piece."
But already, you had to come this morning.
-Well, I didn't have any...
-Sorry?
-I didn't have any...
-Do you want to do like F?
Do we look at the messages?
I'm guilty.
-There it is, thanks!
-I'm guilty.
-Well, there, then.
-I woke up at 2 pm.
I'll not rush it because I'm too insolent.
When I'm insolent,
it has to be hot,
the phases have to be hot.
All the relationships I have
give me some inspiration.
Besides, many more than me,
actually... In fact.
If you look, in my stuff,
I speak of myself,
but through others, in fact.
Because my life is not very interesting.
I'm right there in speaker mode,
in real life.
You know what I mean?
Ah, he got it, the bastard!
-More like...
-We have to play in a loop.
Selman! Just the...
The cello guy plays very well.
-That's what I thought.
-He plays well.
-He must think...
-A soft sound.
A sweet sound, you see?
Like a brioche.
Let's go!
-They'll stop in ten minutes.
-Huh?
They'll stop in ten minutes.
-They'll stop in ten minutes?
-Yeah.
Ten guys, huh.
-One more.
-One more?
I'll explain it to you.
-We have five minutes. Can we...
-Ten.
Ten? Okay. There is still the theme.
-The theme is not the priority.
-Okay.
-That's the priority.
-Okay.
We are doing both now. Let's go.
-As you wish.
-Don't worry.
-We do that and the theme.
-Go ahead. Playlist.
It's noon and they have to leave,
but they can stay another 15 minutes
and they are okay to stay
if you do what you have
to do in 15 minutes.
-They're the best.
-It will be done.
-Thank you.
-I love you.
Go ahead, Diabi, you tell me.
I need a little more compression
in the voice.
That's what I'm doing here.
I went there anyway.
They will stop me no more.
In the arms of another girl
I envy the love I have and I'm drowning
It's going too fast, like death
For a young black
It starts at daycare, this terrible gap
It's going very fast like the coming
From the cops in rich neighborhoods
Growing up with gold in bar,
Inherited from your family
And the grids of private schools
Become your ramparts
So, yeah, we can all get out, that's right
But we still have to do
A lot more effort there
There, you know what they will tell you
If you ever talk to them about it?
"Don't worry, go,
When there is a number at stake
We get strong in math"
The news will hurt
They scream at the TV
Still a seed full of beauty
That the street buries
You wanted to tear off the pain
Become insensitive
But you still have in your heart a bit
Of goodness you thought you'd lost
We must not atrophy
Catastrophic balance
Because often everything goes too fast
Except the suffering
-You killed me there.
-Sorry!
You want to kill me, Diabi
Dia-bye
Diabolo-bolo, yes
They talk about democracy
But nobody believes it
True anti-racists bother LICRA
States fill our rivers with nitrates
I'm waiting for love like Jenifer in 2003
They talk about democracy
But nobody believes it
True anti-racists bother LICRA
I'm waiting for love like Jenifer
-Shut up.
-Shut up.
Perfect. It's perfect like that.
-Shut up!
-Shut up!
No!
You have sushi, sashimi.
I'm not hungry.
Check the arrangements
of "Menteur, Menteur".
Have you done it yet?
- Estou farto.
- Diabi, louder!
They're not square
Like Jim in "Liar, liar"
They're not square like Jim
In "Liar, liar"
Give them ten opportunities
They choose slow, slow
First counter-attack, I score
I score like Landers, Landers
I have Hisoka's smile in Hunter x Hunter
They're not square like Jim
In "Liar, liar"
Give them ten opportunities
They choose slow, slow
Baby, I'm in the bus, bus
In the subway, subway
I have Hisoka's smile in Hunter x Hunter
I see Paris from above
Like Hauts-de-Seine
"Ken" for the first name
"Feu" for the stage name
Double demon like the Olsens
Smoke comes out of me like onsen
I dreamed that you spoke badly
It was strange like hell
I had been told that you spoke badly
But you're sweet as a Lu
Secret side like the moon
Nobody walks on me like the moon
Yeah! Don't tell your life
I will break your heart like a Lu, yeah
Take care of your sins
F.T.G B.T, yeah
If you're homophobic
It's because you judge
Force my LGBT
And I was really annoyed, yeah
I rub shoulders with top models
There is R
But in front of her, I bugged
In front of her, I bugged
She's creamy like Nivea
Easy as level one
When it's over, she erases her coms
It's easy like the phases in "like"
Softly
Okay, you're sweet, but gently
It's been less than two weeks
We know each other
Better do it gently in this world
You took me for a drink
You will not make me believe
That it's wine
Yeah, you're stone like Silver
The strike comes from
The Rif as Sylvain
As soon as we came back from Japan,
it had been so intense
and rich in emotions,
that Diabi and I,
we didn't call each other.
We gave each other time
to settle our affairs
and all the responsibilities we left
during the two months we had spent.
And by taking a step back,
I realized that...
I didn't even have a third of the album
and that even if it inspires me,
and I had found the right formula,
we had to go back.
CHAPTER III
VOYAGE LÉGER
This time, I told Diabi:
"Come on, we'll stand in the sun."
LOS ANGELES
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA
It's part of the arrangement.
Right, fuck it.
Right, I wanted to make a point
about what we have done and not done.
So, really finished,
we have "Menteur-Menteur".
Even "Menteur-Menteur",
there are things I would like to change.
The moods to the chorus...
Remove them, rather. It's tweaking.
-Yeah, tweaking.
-It's not good.
-Nothing to leave there.
-If it is to be fine-tuned,
it's almost finished.
After, it's retouching.
What else?
Well, there is...
The one we just did. "Y a Pire"?
We'll recheck that.
The harmonies on the chorus too.
We only have that?
-How many titles?
-Ten.
Ten. Finished, yeah.
-That's great.
-Just have them chained.
I was nothing
I will always represent my people
My people
For them, I was everything
When I was nothing
I was nothing
I will always represent my people
What a surprise.
Since earlier, did you film that?
A bunk bed?
I didn't really realize.
It makes me feel bad,
but I don't know if it's hot.
You make me listen
because it's useless if I don't like it,
and you'll have worked for nothing.
Like yesterday, you spent two hours on it.
Yeah, but like that, you listen well.
Listen to the catch, I can listen.
I don't really like it.
I'll do it again.
What don't you really like?
I don't know. I swear, I don't know.
-I did that on each piece?
-It was only two.
I will always represent my people
Ah, the voice, it's nice!
My people
It's good to work with pros.
How long did I stay?
I was everything when I was nothing
-15 minutes ?
-I had time to go to Insta,
like things and do everything.
For them, I was everything
When I was nothing
I like that.
I will always represent my people
My people
For them, I was everything...
-No! You're crazy!
-Fuck!
The end, shut up! Until the end!
That's how you do it! You neglect things!
What do I neglect?
You will listen to the end!
I will always represent my people
Yeah!
For them, I was everything
When I was nothing
I was nothing
I will always represent my people
-And now, you can do your selection.
-Oh fuck...
Okay, that's hot!
Sometimes there is magic,
ideas are linked together.
Are you trying to make me understand
that we will not record?
What?
Are you trying to make me understand
that we will not record?
I'm blown up.
You want to record,
we record, but I'm dead.
We don't really care about what they say
In a rap album,
collaborations are like a second layer.
Once the spine is done, this allows
to feed on all artistic encounters
and bring freshness.
BRUSSELS
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Soon, I'll stop it all, mama
Soon, my life will change
Difficult to tell
Between men, we guess
Soon, I'll stop it all, mama
Don't worry about my future
Soon, my life will change
Tomorrow, I'll move from this city
-Something like that, you see?
-It's stylish.
It's big, we say what we want.
-You like it?
-Yes.
I have to work on it.
In studio, it'll go well. Here, I'm shy.
Our success is for all the mother fuckers
Who looked at us badly
And when I was little,
I admit, sometimes I was jealous
Of the kids my mum took care of
Those who came to lift the furniture,
they were not the movers
Separation of households before
The child becomes a teen
Mouss spent four years in the closet
For him, it was big
And your rappers
What are they talking about?
It's rednecks, it's lifeguards
-He hears me?
-Yeah.
-The beginning, it was not bad.
-Yeah?
-You want to listen?
-Calmer.
Yeah, it was cool.
Want me to try something?
-Yeah, cool.
-Come on.
I wonder if it's vibes.
It's not the right note,
not the right range.
I am in the bendo, shut up
Hail not, I'm not courteous
Far from thugs and bourgeois
Between life and death on the armrest
I hear "Dirty Negro", oh yeah?
I turn dry, Glock, boom, boom
Bang, bang
Every day to be in main event
Just find the one that was the best.
And even there, I don't know if you had
to put the one you put in lead.
You know,
you should do a chorus, a little?
In the team, I have known everyone
for years. What we did,
is that we locked ourselves in Japan,
doing what we love, actually.
And you saw, like everything...
Diabi oversees everyone because
there are crazy musicians.
And so, that's what...
There is an alchemy
that is created, it's crazy.
-Mama, I was under gasolina
-Mama, I was under gasolina
But I want to be a solid guy
I don't want to see my guys under lean
No
That worries me
Yeah, I love it.
It's good not to have all the time
in mind what you will do.
You're right.
You put a little sketch
and after, the free space that there is,
it's the creation...
My texts are always a little...
I see colors.
So, I stay in that thing.
It's stronger than me.
I'm really in...
You see, like "Feu du bois"...
Bah, all songs,
in general, I'm in this stuff and...
-You're going to get it deep down.
-I'm going to the bottom of the thing.
Yeah, but you write fast.
You can do a billion things...
-I write all the time.
-Full of crash tests.
But I don't like crash tests.
I'm crazy,
I don't like it when it's not finished.
When it's just a little...
I have trouble with that.
Rap is the music of doing well.
You don't need anything.
Your voice, a notebook and imagination.
And you become the superhero
of your street.
-We killed it.
-Very hot.
-Dirty!
-I think that...
We started rapping on instruments
which didn't belong to us.
The sample is the art of diversion.
Some take it for looting,
but it's creation.
A Frankenstein monster composed
of a patchwork of sample sounds.
But when you get famous,
the copyright related to the sample
complicates everything.
The problem is the sample.
Yes!
This is the most famous group in Guinea.
That's not the problem.
If they come, they take everything.
-They take everything.
-Yeah, at worst...
-At worst, what?
-They take everything.
And I give them everything, even 200%.
On Jay-Z's album
or Isaac Hayes, he has 0% to him
and everything goes for Isaac Hayes.
It's the same for me.
It's Guineans. At worst, they are dead
or they will ask me for money,
I'll give them.
Take everything, even what I'll do next!
Take this money, I don't care!
I live for music.
Even though the use of samples
get lost in rap,
I wanted to have this hotter color
on the album.
We decided to audition new musicians
to sample them later.
Let's go!
Go ahead, next!
He has gone mad!
Hey, talk to people, brother!
Sorry, brother.
He's crazy, this guy.
Cool!
Thank you. It's cool.
We go on?
Okay, thank you!
-We'll think of someone else.
-It was a pleasure.
-It's not won, huh.
-No.
CHAPTER IV
CIEL NOIR
So this time,
we had to go back to the source.
NEW ORLEANS
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, USA
How are you? Hi, brother.
-Hi, brother.
-What's up?
-You're okay?
-Yeah.
You're good?
Cool?
This is hot!
I'm not trying to hide myself
behind metaphors.
But you have to go around some truths
to touch them better.
A real suffering is precious.
It's like a treasure.
It is protected from intrusive looks.
We admire it in secret,
possessive and shameful.
And we are proud to survive.
A real suffering is not exposed
in the harsh light
of the factual explanation.
It could be spoiled, desecrated.
Make it mundane and unattractive.
Make it heal, even.
No, a real suffering, it's sublime
and it is distilled slowly,
at the bend of words.
For the dead cats who hang up
these snatches of pain
to their own suffering.
For those who do not listen
with the ears.
In the universe, there is no sound.
Who cares about wandering stars
that rattle noiselessly?
It's on "state emergency".
You lie! When the neighbor came,
he said, "You know the hurricane
that's going to hit us?"
-Yeah.
-It's called Nate.
-Nate?
-Yeah.
Ah, it has a blaze?
-When they have names...
-He has a blaze!
Nate will strengthen
by getting closer to the American coast.
-What?
-It will become stronger as it approaches.
We're trying to finish an album
for the posthumous album...
-Are we on Tremé?
-Yeah, it's there.
They are ready for Halloween
since last Christmas.
I would like... Do you know what we do?
We write and compose at the barracks.
Yeah.
And after that, we...
We take a studio day,
or one night, and we record.
That's crazy.
Right, that's great.
But, man...
But, man... It's a monster.
It's a monster from hell!
Well, that's it.
-You just got that?
-Yeah.
Too bad.
There it is.
Go, there!
You didn't expect that, kid?
-Run under hurricanes.
-What a trap!
You're too hot!
Hydrate yourself while you run!
I think it's there.
He's Jeremy. He plays in the street.
We had met him the day before
on Bourbon St.
He was so talented that he was offered
to come to the studio.
Do we record that?
This meeting was pure destiny.
Jeremy was playing on the street
in Las Vegas,
when the killings of October 1, 2017
broke out.
He fled and took a ticket
to New Orleans.
That's where we met him.
The main reason
for our trip to New Orleans,
it was the meeting with a local legend,
the Trombone Shorty jazzman.
I tell him to go?
Thank you.
That's hot.
I think that was the best one.
That was good. We were doing well.
Hurricane Nate hit the United States.
After crossing the Gulf of Mexico,
this category 1 storm
swept the Mississippi delta.
In New Orleans, the authorities have
decided to lift the curfew.
The areas near the coast could be affected
by the floods.
And if cyclones were the sum
Of all the last sighs of the Earth?
And if the earthquakes were
The sum of all our first steps?
And if the cyclones were the sum
Of all the last sighs of the Earth?
And if the earthquakes were
The sum of all our first steps?
11 am, New Orleans
I'm walking solo
In the neighborhoods of Tremé
The news comes to announce the hurricane
The air is heavy, the sky is black
Forbidden to hang out
Curfew is scheduled for 7 pm
But the people here don't look too worried
They say they knew the worst with Katrina
And the crimes
To know who controls the rain-tee
They are partying and offer me to toast
Have a good mood in abundance
Musicians have fun improvising
All the neighbors get supplies
Crowded crowd, completely ready
Play the trumpet in a storm
And the newspaper might have been wrong
But I run soaked from head to toe
The hurricane has gone a few miles
The areas around the port are flooded
Far from my lands, sentimental mood
It's not just the fear I felt climbing
Far from my lands
I only thought about my people
I only have their memories
And their invocations
Strange as one feels impulses of love
In contact with death or its evocation
Europeans forget all too often
That they're nothing
Faced with the nature
That takes back their rights
Tornado of thoughts that turn in my head
I catch one in flight
And I think back to you
Okay, let's go, then?
-This is what you want, Ken?
-Yeah.
It's good, right?
-Let's go.
-Come one, let's go.
Writing is the first act
Writing is the first act of a man
Deprived of his freedom
I have the names of prisoners
As my witness
Engraved on the walls of jails
Pure as young love
The whispers grow louder
No sooner do we live that we die
It's the sound of caves going back up
And disturbing these fucking residents
Had to cheat the system to get away
Fuck the subway and its full rates
Street word is: "You’re hotheaded"
But the saddest part about life
Isn’t things happening to you
But rather nothing happening at all
When one of my people gets tired
We take turns
And if one of my people falls
We get them back up
But if one of my people leaves
I can’t get over it
Although I’m sure we leave behind
These grounds to better rise again
We’ll be there for his mama
One of my people falls
We get him back up
We’ll be there for his mama
We only leave to better rise again
Yeah, go ahead... I'm coming.
-You hear me ?
-Yeah, I hear you.
Ideally, we record the choruses.
-Yeah.
-But there's no time.
-Yeah.
-I'm afraid they'll leave before the end.
Okay.
Selman, if you want to go
on something else,
you choose.
It's serious beautiful, it's not bad.
Diabi?
It's good? You tell me when it's good?
Above the clouds, the sun shines
Back on earth, the sky is dark
A mother buries her dead
All in this together, but where do we go?
We’re all blind passengers
Passerbyes wear masks
And devour it all, like a mass
That looks like No-Face
From Spirited Away
Demons congregate
Around the body we pick up
And the blood look black
Under the revolving light
They only think about the money
So watch me grab them euros
I’m at the top and I’ve become a lion
Love is an essence, death is birth
One day, there won’t be anything left
Of these mouths that curse
Nothing left of these fading horizons
Nothing left of our mothers,
Of our sons, of my music
Only these spitting volcanoes
And no more lightning striking
No more flowers nor a grain of salt
And no more clouds falling onto us
When concrete golems rise up to the sky
There will only be trembling stars
Falling into these vanishing galaxies
No time, no dimension, no meaning
The universe will go back
To what it was before its birth
Dark sky.
CHAPTER V
COMPTE LES HOMMES
After the last studio session
with Trombone Shorty
and all the singers,
there, I knew that...
We couldn't push the album further
musically speaking.
We had gone super far in delirium,
we had tested a lot of stuff.
I had the number of pieces that I needed,
the atmosphere that I needed.
I just needed an end.
And since the beginning, I wanted
add a touch of Greek music,
I thought, "I'm going to leave here where
I started to think about the album..
MYTILENE, GREECE
On my island.
I'm going to take Selman with me
because he's a Turk and there's
a music called "rebetiko."
I told him: "I'll introduce you
to musicians from the island,
I would like you to compose
a whole bunch of curls
and use it to finish the album."
It turns out that my island, Mytilini,
is experiencing the biggest migration
crisis since the Second World War.
Whenever I go to see my family,
I witness this catastrophic situation.
And just like all the conversations
that I have, the people I meet inspire me,
indirectly, it's found in my texts.
They say we can't make up
for all the misery of the world.
Give them what was stolen from them.
These are my arguments.
It's been 25 years
that refugees arrive on our island.
The locals never had any trouble
with those who come
because they are people who need help.
The problem is not:
"Why are people coming?"
but: "Why are they fleeing their country?"
Some say:
"But why don't they stay
in their country?"
How can you stay in a country
where bombs kill your children?
Would you stay?
I went with a photographer at sea.
We found a boat with 15 people in it.
When we came in, there were babies.
There was also a woman
who kept crying.
We said: "We are here to save you."
She takes out her cell phone and shows me
a picture of three children.
She had one in her arms.
She had boarded the day before,
there was a shipwreck,
both babies drowned.
One of the bodies arrived here,
and the other in Turkey.
After, we hear: "The problem,
it's the refugees who are landing."
It's a problem
that the woman arrives with a baby
and it's not a problem
that two babies drowned.
Today, I think back
and I can't believe it was real.
Rebetiko is the music of the outlaws,
exiles, vagabonds.
In the 1920s, more than a million
of refugees from Asia Minor
have piled up in the slums of big cities,
where they developed this musical
current forbidden under dictatorship.
Today, refugees come from other countries,
but the uprooting sung
by the rebetiko is the same.
You want to know where I come from
Check the BPM
FINAL RECORDING
FINAL MIX
I have to stop complaining
There is so much worse in this world
Misfortunes, there are plenty
I took some blows, but I'm not dead
I have to stop complaining
Must take a chance, we are men
Intransigent with myself
And tolerant with others
I have to stop complaining
There is so much worse in this world
Misfortunes, there are plenty
I took some blows, but I'm not dead
I have to stop complaining
At home, everyone eats up
When I don’t feel well
I strengthen myself
Love, it’s nothing, it comes and goes
So now, I’m hanging on to the light
When the clouds come out
And I no longer even regret
The many nights we spent together
Even if our love was stained
With all sorts of somber nuances
You looked draped in your pride
But you were naked underneath
A young man from the Entourage is dead
I cried in a synagogue
And if our bodies perish
We’re only left with love, if not, what?
What? In my heart, a few signs still
Told me: “Launch into your dreams and
bring peace between all the MCs”
With us the point of music
Is to upset hearts
And dreams, it’s like the classics
Each to his own
Music makes me take off far away
But what a strange rocket
My girlfriend smiles at me
Although she’s been transfused
I have to stop complaining
There’s much worse in this world
Misfortunes, there are a lot
I’ve taken some blows, but I’m not dead
I have to stop complaining
I have to take my chance, we’re men
Intransigent with myself
And tolerant with others
I have to stop complaining
There’s much worse in this world
Misfortunes, there are a lot
I’ve taken some blows but I’m not dead
I have to stop complaining
At home, everyone eats their fill
When I don’t feel well
I strengthen myself
Love, it’s nothing, it comes and goes
The adrenaline on stage is so strong,
that one night, at a concert,
I broke my hand on a speaker
and I felt that the week after,
when I saw that
it had doubled in volume.
It's a metaphor for my life as an artist.
Once the exit door is noticed,
I was so afraid to return to the galley
that I threw myself
into this frenetic whirlwind of success,
without realizing
that I covered the shocks internally.
It reminds me
of the Looney Tunes cartoons
when the character is pursued
and continues running in the void
before realizing it
and falling.
In real life,
the shock can come years later.
When you feel calm,
it hits you even more violently.
Life is a test.
The essential is elsewhere,
so, I wandered into other universes.
But it was in me that I traveled the most.
It's not rap that will save me.
But I try to tear off
all my calcified feelings
to crush them and spread
the dust in a work,
to blow them on stage.
That's how I treated myself on this album.
Today, I play in front of 80 000 people
and I've never felt so surrounded.
Subtitle translation by Claudia Patricia