the essential
The 10th edition of Montauban en scenes opens this Thursday evening with a rap evening. Vacra, Heuss the bastard and Hamza launch a sequence aimed at 18-25 year olds. An event which marks a turning point in the existence of the festival and proves that urban music is now essential in the French musical landscape.
Stream, autotune, flow… English skills required for this first evening of Montauban on stage. Always looking for new things to broaden its audience, the festival is this time focusing on the rising talents of the French-speaking rap scene. There should not be many people over 35 for the launch of the Jardin des Plantes festival. The 18-25 year olds, on the other hand, have arranged to meet on Thursday evening (and not in ten years…) to move from streams (listening on platforms) to live.
“She tells me you’re not there; she would like a duplicate; possession love tiki taka; I’m under jack she’s under matcha tea.”
If we were to do a blind test (or blind musical test in good French), the most connoisseurs would have Vacra directly in their mouths. With his “Tiki taka” (2022), which followed his first success Plan Sequence (two million views and four million listens), Vacra risks warming up an evening which unfortunately promises to be uncertain in terms of weather.
Des records you stream
Heuss the bastard still hopes that he will not be cursed despite the predicted precipitation. The one who is capable of selling a lot on the classic record circuit (double platinum disc with his first album “En Esprit”) also breaks listening records on Spotify. For example, with Gazo, he reached the top 5 of the top tracks on the online listening platform. And it was also for another duet with the master Jul, “Moulaga”, that he definitely made a name for himself in the pantheon of French rappers (120 million views on the Internet!). But we must not reduce Heuss the bastard to these brilliance. His style, full of pop references and humor that can go as far as cynicism, makes him one of the best-known MCs (in short, not Solaar scheduled for the next day) of his generation.
What to say about Hamza. The Belgian rapper made a place for himself on the French-speaking scene with his album “Sincerely” (150,000 copies). He is also a hit on Spotify with nearly 5 million listeners each month. It is finally capable of filling an Accor Arena, in Bercy, in less than a full day. In short, like the Rose festival, completely dedicated to the genre, the new rap scene is also establishing itself in more mainstream festivals. It’s going to blow up this evening, at the Jardin des Plantes!
