We launched the movement with Brittany Bosco and Tessanne Chin and we are doing it again with rap. Let me warn you, it has nothing to do with the rap a la BET. No.
While some think that rap is dead, we want to keep hope, even if it’s slim
We found a slammer brain, a real MC.
Last month, he gave a charity concert. All benefits have been distributed to an organization designed to help the Haitian people. It makes us want to revisit his music. Beyond the review of a corrosive album here’s the portrait of a complex individual.
Kery James. His name sounds english but he is French. He doesn’t look like an angel but we can’t call him a thug. He is candid without being vulgar and he raps in an elevated style about difficult neighborhoods. Does he multiply contrasts on purpose?
Too real to show off
His style you deal with it or you don’t. His rage is so palpable that you don’t need to speak Moliere’s language to understand it.
You can’t play a Kery jam in a party because his lines are not made for attention-seekers.
You can’t dance on my music so I will never be a superstar
Besides, it’s not easy to become attached with him because his songs reveal a deep disinterest for recognition, celebrity and fame.
Too real for real hip-hop
With Kery, we are getting closer to real rap. The rap that was appointed to denounce injustices, the rap of street poets. It has nothing to do with 50 Cent and all the other gracious gorillas who fill the screen with a blinding bling bling.
In reality, the first MCs or artists of rap (rhythm and poetry) were much like an americanized version of African griots. Griots are appointed musician-poets who transmit traditional values orally. They ensure that younger generations are not forgetful of their heavy history. Kery feels invested of a similar mission; he wants to perpetuate the rap tradition and he even encourages a takeover.
You can slice up my throat but my texts have a voice
(…)
If one day they murder me
Keep figthing and bury me a the Medina
“Le prix de la vérité” – Kery James
Sometimes being silent is supporting violence, not rights
I will never be the accomplice of silence
Being anticolonialist is not being anti-Jewish
I only have my words as a trellis
“Avec le coeur et la raison” – Kery James
Too real to accept his plurality
In Un manque de…, the artiste pays a tribute to his African background by opening the song with Western African melodies. Not bad for a French citizen born to Haitian parents in Guadeloupe. But who is he really? Does he even know? He is a little bit like all these individuals who can’t claim a nationality. On one hand, he whines because wherever he goes he is never home. On the other hand, deep inside, he must because he doesn’t have to fit in a predetermined category.
Fitting in ? Under what shape ?
With frizzy hair and swollen lips?
Even I have a hard time believing it but it seems that I am French
Honestly without trying to shock you
I didn’t come to France to dance but to bank
I swapped the zouk for some bloody French rap
“Le prix de la vérité” de Kery James
Real enough to be a party-pooper
He gives us some lessons. He mocks those who thinks that sniffing coke is sexy and the ones who believe that going to jail makes you look cool. Even though La poudre aux yeux (Powder over your eyes) starts up with some piano, we don’t want to get caught off guard. We almost have the feeling that he will soften but he keeps his sharp sincerity and a cold sobriety.
This world is murky, it takes guts to face it
So you get some coke to go out
Denying the truth, you opt for a trip
You travel, you sniff dreams or braveness
Nose full of flour, calcined brain
“La poudre aux yeux” – Kery James
Too real not to dash over taboo
As nerdy as he is, Kery is also a self-respect, engaged artist. He boldly shares his opinion on the Israelo-palestinian conflict. He is muslim and he doesn’t feel sorry for that. He perfectly knows that religion is a controversial issue but he goes for it anyways.
Who can pretend that I should remain unbiased
Remain unbiased when injustice is blatant
(…)
I write this text, manifesto of my active support to pacifists, to palestinians.
Not only because some of them are Muslims
Because contrarily to received ideas anchored in the unconscious collective
Not all Arab-Palestinian are Muslims
“Avec le coeur et la raison” – Kery James
Real enough to acknowledge his imperfection
Against war, against violence. He wants to break the myths about rap. He tells us “not to confuse rap with real life” because “there are no gangsters among MCs”. Nonetheless, we have heard a different chorus for years: In order to be credible in hip hop, you have to get your bachelor from a correctional establishment. When we listen to its album Réel, we rather want to laugh at stupid and naive bullies who think they are playing in the big league because they are not afraid to get their teeth broken.
However, Kery is not necessarily immune to the things he raps against. Because of an altercation that turned badly, he was offered jail time with 1o months of suspended sentence.
He gets quickly critized for preaching peace and fighting.
On the other side, his lyrics make us believe that he doesn’t take pride in his strong character.
I am ashamed of not being, the one you admire,
I will never be exclusively the one that you want me to be,
There is love in me,
But there is also hate in me,
There is also pain in me
And I still have a little bit of humor left,
There is tenderness is me, but I don’t want to be bully,
There is wisdom in my mouth but sometimes there are injuries too
“Lettre à mon public” – Kery James
Maybe the biggest of its violence resides in his lyrics. His album cover is not decorated with the “explicit lyrics” label and his texts are clean. So clean that we could read it to grade school students. So clean that we should read it to grade school students… especially the ones from tough neighborhoods. The ones media teach us to hate. Those who are taught hatred, which means failure, without even reaching high school.
They need this brutal flow, they need to get a shot of strong vocal cords.
Almost all the artists manage to shock with a coarse language. With Kery, we understand that noble causes shouldn’t get defended with dirty words.
Don’t think they are authentic just because they are crude
“Réel” – Kery James
Too real to rap?
Kery James @ the Blues Festival of IrignySource
Disiz, another French rapper, has already announced the end of his rap career and his conversion to rock. He tried to explain his disgust for the rap universe after the release of his last album. What is so repulsive about the hip-hop scene?
Kery closes his album by explaining why he has to leave rap… temporarily. He promises to come back… one day. He doesn’t feel as strong as he appears to be because “at the doors of the illicit, it’s hard to remain legit”.
He doesn’t want the rap world to corrupt him and he takes off with a drop of guitar.
Here people are fake, foolish and fallacious, they falsify values
They consider the worst as being the best
But hush, for a moment,
Let me stand back to soar higher
To suffer, to open up, to find myself again
Maybe I can even discover who I am
“Lettre à mon public” – Kery James
Note: This article was originally written in French. Lyrics to the song have been translated in English.
Publié lemars 30, 2010
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