MC Solaar
b. Dakar, Senegal, but raised in Cairo and Paris, MC Solaar is the most prominent of the new breed of French rappers. His debut album (translating as Who Sows The Wind Will Reap The Beat) gave him four Top 10 French singles, the album itself moving over 200,000 copies. It brought him to the attention of the UK's Talkin' Loud imprint. They, like many others, were impressed by his free-flowing, relaxed style, and its easy musical backdrop, formulated by his DJ/producer Jimmy Jay. Gang Starr were so taken with the album that after a single hearing they asked if they could remix the title-track. Solaar also took part in many collaborative projects for the Talkin' Loud stable (United Future Organization, Urban Species) and the Guru of Gang Starr-orchestrated Jazzamatazz project. His own material most often concerns sad stories about malcontents in the stream of French life. The wordplay and nuances do not translate easily, but the musicality of the French language does. As well as rappers like Big Daddy Kane, Solaar draws his inspiration from the French literary tradition of Baudelaire and Jaques Prevert.