With “Hypersensible”, his second album, Gringe explores a rap devoid of pride in which he agrees to “get naked” to deliver his “vision of things” in uncompromising pieces, including a duet with his accomplice OrelSan.
“I like this, this introspective writing which allows you to find out a little about yourself and what you are going through: I need to get to the bottom of things and get naked”, confides Gringe to the AFP, a few days after the release of this solo opus.
The title establishes the character: through 14 pieces, Gringe combines rap and sensitivity, almost an oxymoron as this musical genre is today teeming with songs in ego trip mode, in which the artist exaggerates his successes to demonstrate his supposed superiority.
“I am someone who is quite on edge,” explains Guillaume Tranchant, his real name. Being hypersensitive represents for him a natural state which influences his “vision of things”, his “relationship with people and the environment”.
As in this diptych: “Du Lead”, “epidermal” rap in reaction to the death of young Nahel killed by a police officer in Nanterre in 2023, followed by “D’acteur deplomb”, with existential questions about “what we tinker with of our humanities.
Gringe continues to question its favorite themes of “filiation”, “romantic relationships”, the “drifts” of the world and “the question of mental health”. This was the subject of a book in 2020, “Together, we bark in silence”, which talks about brotherly love and his schizophrenic little brother.
“So, the image of the alpha and virile male rapper is not my thing,” says Gringe, “far from these “archetypes”.
He is proud to have received “an ultra-feminine education”. “There were three of them: my mother, my aunt and my grandmother,” he summarizes, taking the father out of the picture, already crushed in “Pieces detaches”, on his first album “Enfant lune” in 2018.
– “Like yang” –
“My projects serve me first, in a somewhat selfish way, to repair things within myself. And that is a bit contradictory with what is done in rap (…) and the image that gives to see the rappers from them,” says rapper Tranchant.
The 44-year-old artist was influenced by NTM, IAM and the AMER Ministry, groups “which practiced protest art and recounted the lives of people on the margins”. “And we lost that. We got into something hyper individualistic,” he judges, believing that “rap was better before.”
However, he says he is keeping a curious ear because there is always “a young crop that arrives and has assimilated what the elders had done best.”
In addition to music, Gringe pursues other projects as an actor. He notably starred in the Canal+ series “Bloqués” and “Validé”, and played his own role in “Comment c’est loin” (2015) by and with OrelSan, one of the most listened to rappers in France.
Calvados, in Normandy, as a meeting point, the two young friends grew up with their caustic duo Casseurs Flowters.
OrelSan is also present on a track from the album, “Feelings”. “He came, like the yang, to take the opposite view of what I had just done, to defuse the serious tone with which I had written my verse” which furtively addresses “the question of Palestine”, explains Gringe.
On Skyrock on September 19, OrelSan announced the end of filming for a new film, with members of his entourage in the cast, however leaving doubts about the presence of his sidekick.
The person concerned also dodges and concentrates on his tour which will start in November. The rapper plans to be surrounded by musicians and a DJ, with the idea of ”stretching the songs to make them even more musical on stage”.
