Unterhaltung

Words and Notes: Hip Hop

While musicians shape their story through the poetry of notes, writers tell their fate through the lyricism of words. Sometimes the two disciplines intertwine and the melody of one feeds the prose of the other. Knowing how to use words to capture the interest of discerning listeners is a dangerous task. However, many authors have reflected, analyzed and examined the place of the great Afroplanetary stars in our international musical landscape.

Probably the most creative artist of our young 21st century is Kendrick Lamar. He’s only 36 years old, but his aura extends far beyond the world of rap. Like many of his contemporaries, Kendrick Lamar could have been swept up in the malaise that an unequal society imposed on vulnerable populations. However, he managed to resist the cycle of violence and sterile confrontations between rival bands in the underprivileged suburbs of the ’90s. Although jazz didn’t seem to be an obvious source of inspiration for this young rapper, he thrived on the soul music his father listened to, The idioms of John Coltrane, and the advice of some highly skilled instrumentalists, including Terrace Martin, daily guided him into a world that he could never have imagined. Kendrick Lamar’s clairvoyance allowed him to fuse all of these sound echoes from The Epic of Black Music to appropriate their juice and magnify it. Pimp a butterfly was without a doubt one of the biggest albums of 2015 and remains the anchor of an artist in search of an artistic ideal that could have perverted his battered youth. His élan and his passionate desire to elude an all too often caricatured fate elevate him to the rank of a modern-day poet. He even received the Pulitzer Prize in 2018! How surprising it is to read an entire book dedicated to a young thirty-year-old whose artistic development and soul-searching is still ongoing. This is the challenge of Nicolas Rogès, himself in his thirties, whose expertise traces the path of a rebellious, concerned and militant generation. ” Kendrick Lamar, from Compton to the White House » has been available since 2020 in the editions Le Mot et le Reste.

Olivier Cachin in the studio at RFI. © Joe Farmer/RFI

The journalist Olivier Cachin has been a specialist in urban cultures for more than 30 years, even if his musical knowledge extends far beyond the borders of hip hop. His show Rapline on M6 in the early ’90s accelerated his notoriety and established his image as a fine connoisseur in this universe where the rhythm of words carries the social message of a reckless youth. Olivier Cachin is the author of numerous books including “ The rap dictionary (Éditions Scali), a well-documented introduction to the tumultuous history of these rhythmic and poetic upheavals. From The Last Poets to Dr. They are all there. An opportunity to understand that the rapper’s “flow” has its origins in the ancestral African-American popular culture of the first sermons.

Book by Laurent Rigoulet (ed. Don Quichotte). © Joe Farmer/RFI

Admittedly, it is difficult to define a date of birth for this deeply demanding form of expression. In ” burns » (Editions Don Quixote), Laurent Rigoulet immerses us in the daily life of the black community, at the dawn of an artistic and sociological revolution whose main protagonists are gradually drawing the outlines. Their names are DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa. They invent a sound, a mood, a way of life, a discourse. They will be the pioneers of a rebellious culture and a demanding tone. Coming from an idle population of the Bronx, these strong minds will make sense of their underground struggle. But soon overtaken by the record industry, these brave craftsmen of original rap can only find their failure in the face of the destructive power of the music craft, which inevitably dilutes an intention, words, a power of authentic expression. . The rehabilitation of struggle, of protest, of engagement, of engagement is a civic duty… That is perhaps the message between the lines of “ burns in the face of 21st century tensions?