the essential
The Gringe rapper, real name Guillaume Tranchant, will be on the Bikini stage this Friday evening. The opportunity to share with his audience his album “Hypersensible”, released at the beginning of November.
La Dépêche du Midi: The album is called “Hypersensible”, is it your sensitivity that you wanted to share?
Gringe. Yes, but I’m not the only one. The times are dark, especially in human relationships, we are all put to the test. I needed to unite around that, to explain that it is not a weakness to feel permeable to energies, including bad ones, that we can turn it into a strength. At the end of the album, I talk about hypersensitivity as a “hyper-power”.
You still present yourself as “a marginal who takes the world in the opposite direction”, in the title “Confessions of a hypersensitive”.
I have always felt out of step with my contemporaries. I was never in the right place, I never knew what I wanted to do. I was going to class to go to class. I was bored, felt cramped. I imagined the world of work as a heartbreak that would deprive me of my freedoms. I do artistic projects because it repairs something in me. I don’t follow the strictures of rap to be famous or mainstream. But I have this desire to share: concerts are super important for that, it’s the reward, but also the moment of truth. When I go on stage and feel the energies of the audience, that’s what gets me back into the world.
You also share your political beliefs. Why is it important?
I got older so I didn’t see myself making a purely introspective album, only with my problems, my anxieties. I wanted to go from micro to macro, zooming in on myself to zoom out on the outside. I denounce police violence in “Du Plomb”, and in “Effet de Surplomb”, I question our humanity.
This album was released six years after “Enfant lune”. In the meantime, you have released the book “Together, we bark in silence”. Did that help you in writing?
It taught me to synthesize my thoughts better, to be more precise. Before, I thought I was restricted by the format of the songs, that it was complicated to push a thought, develop it in a short time. But in fact, I was wrong: when the words are chosen wisely, there is no need for so much space. There, I went through with my ideas in fifteen titles. For a year and a half, I had a lot of texts in reserve, I hesitated to make a second book. But I met Tigri, who produced the album, and he made me want to transform these texts into songs.
You have also invested in cinema. Other projects coming up?
I played in the film “Les Cadeaux” which will be released at Christmas, a series for January on France 2. For the rest, we’ll see, I’m going to tour, try to take the album as far as possible, and maybe do a reissue. There will always be a bit of cinema, music, literature. I am working on another book project, less autobiographical, more romantic. I wish it could be adapted for cinema.
