Gringe takes its time recording an album. The rapper, actor and writer, aged 44, has only released two in his entire career which began almost twenty-five years ago. The first, Moon childwas published in 2018; the next, Hypersensitivesix years later, which he is preparing to defend on tour from Thursday November 7. On stage, Guillaume Tranchant, his name in civil status, wants to expose both his inner world and his questions about current society. He then locks himself in a luminous cube, accompanied by his musicians and his DJ, Pone. Sometimes he comes out to perform his pieces linked to social news, such as Leadwhere he reacts to the death of young Nahel killed by a police bullet in June 2023 in Nanterre, or Fake IDin which his rejection of the conformism of social networks and current rap which has become too uniform for his taste is expressed.
Read the review of “Enfant lune” (in 2019): Article reserved for our subscribers The melancholy flow of Gringe
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Hip-hop fans discovered him in the early 2000s alongside Orelsan in the group Casseurs Flowters. He was then the joker, flirtatious, flirtatious friend whose features the rapper from Caen exaggerates in an autobiographical and comic film, How far is it (2015). The two accomplices also have fun every evening in the satirical series, Blocked, broadcast on Canal+, where they exchange their offbeat points of view on social issues.
From there, Gringe will know its “cinema parenthesis” as he describes it, which makes him play supporting roles in Carbone (2017), by Olivier Marchal, Tickles (2018), by Andréa Bescond and Eric Métayer… Until this first role in Laetitia Masson's television series, Illegal citizens, broadcast on Arte in March. The rapper then devoted himself to writing a book with his schizophrenic brother, Together we bark in silence (Harper Collins, 2020). Gringe has therefore not been idle between its two records.
“Writing mechanisms”
Sitting on one of the sofas of his label in Paris, he even claims to have corrected the errors in his first attempt which he found “too talkative, too soft”. « Moon childit would have made a good maxi if I had stopped at five-six songs. I was too scattered when I recorded it. Now I compartmentalize more and get more involved. I gave myself a year and a half to make this album. Originally, there was the idea of a second novel, with my editor, Marie Eugène. »
His exchanges with her on writing, his roles in cinema directed by female directors influenced, according to him, the result of the album which he considers “better defined, dissected”. He explores his favorite themes (family, filiation, mental health) with the young composer, Tigri, in whom he says he found “the equivalent of a Skread for Orelsan who knows [l]e direct musically ». “For my novel, he says, my editor told me: “Keep your rapper’s pen, your urgency and I’ll trim away what’s superfluous.” By watching her correct, I picked up writing mechanisms that I integrate unconsciously. I have adopted intellectual gymnastics, I am more concise, I document myself more, I go deeper into things. As it becomes an obsession, I no longer need to discipline myself, I am fully on my project until I have finished. »
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