It’s a beautiful novel, it’s a beautiful story that tells RenaissancesK. Maro’s recent autobiography, launched in time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his hit on tour Femme Like U. But it is also the journey of an immigrant who did not immediately have the sky within reach. Meeting with the only Quebec artist who, in 2024, has played in Beauce, Miami and Mongolia.
Published at 9:00 a.m.
On June 13, K. Maro took the stage of the Musique Fest in Rivière-du-Loup, then on September 28 on that of the AIC Steppe Arena in Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia. His tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of his album La Good Life draws on the globe one of the most singular itineraries that one can imagine, an astonishing cartography of everywhere where its tube Femme Like U has spread, from Tashkent in Uzbekistan to Baku in Azerbaijan, as well as in several cities in Kazakhstan, but also in Chicago, Miami, Nice, Saint-Georges, Nicolet and Sherbrooke.
“You have people who think that I buy Russian followers on Instagram,” laughs the 44-year-old rapper, “but thanks to Femme Like UI quickly filled rooms in Moscow and Kyiv. » Two cities that he chose not to visit during his current trip, while waiting for the conflict to resolve. “Either I do both again, or I don’t do anything. »
Cyril Kamar especially wanted this time to stop in all these countries peripheral to Russia which, for two decades, have shown him “unconditional love”.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Rapper K. Maro in his art gallery
In Mongolia, the organizers took buses to pick up people in the steppes. To hear 8,000 Mongols singing in phonetic French for an hour was immense.
K. Maro
Fight
“I have the impression that since I came into the world, I have had to fight against things,” confides the rapper and entrepreneur seated at Maison Keï Akai, the contemporary art gallery he founded in 2023 with his lover Anne-Sophie Mignaux, also mother of their 3-year-old daughter.
Born in Beirut in 1980 while the civil war was raging, young Cyril arrived in Montreal at the age of 10 and studied at the chic Stanislas College, where his experience of tragedy would never cease to fuel a distance between his comrades accustomed to cotton wool and him. He sang his first rhymes at the age of 15 during freestyle evenings at Patro Le Prévost, a community center in Villeray.
PHOTO PIERRE CÔTÉ, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Claude Léveillée, Nancy Dumais and LMDS in May 1999
This is how LMDS was born, a duo which was, in Quebec, with Dubmatique, among the first contingent of hip-hop artists to sneak onto popular platforms. And this, even if, to achieve this, it was necessary to record a version ofA beautiful story (1997) by Michel Fugain, an idea that was suggested to them by… Mario Pelchat.
Excerpt fromA beautiful story by LMDS
“The recovery is a little indigestible,” says Kamar, smiling, “but I look at it with a lot of kindness, because at 16, 17 years old, you don’t know anything. It wasn’t up to Mario Pelchat to know what hip-hop culture is, but he was right, it got us played on the radio. »
A brilliant guy, actually
After two albums, LMDS was going to scuttle itself, so that the other half of the duo, Vaï, could pursue his desire for purer, harder rap. K. Maro, on the other hand, dreamed of nothing less than conquering the planet, the objective he had in mind when creating this Trojan horse called Femme Like U, a mixture of good old funk, rock, soul and, capital sin, pop, which has not only made him friends in the rap-game world.
PHOTO BERNARD BRAULT, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
K. Maro on the National stage, in 2011
“But you’re a brilliant guy, actually. » This phrase, half laudatory, half condescending, K. Maro often heard in France from journalists or people in the music industry, who took him for a redneck or a hothead.
“I would perhaps have been less arrogant if I had grown up on a feather pillow, with the heating at 22 every night,” he pleads.
But the reality is that I grew up with my paws in shit, that I had to sort myself out when I arrived in Montreal so as not to be treated like a buffoon.
K. Maro
At 44 years old, Cyril Kamar is of rare grace, the worthy heir of his mother, Aida Kamar, a graduate in philosophy, who co-founded the important organization Vision Diversité in Montreal and who was made knight of the National Order of Quebec in 2008.
“My mother is the real socialist of the family,” says the son, whose flashy image, at the time when he was prancing at the top of the charts weighted with bling, could no longer contrast with maternal values.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
K. Maro at the Ritz Carlton in September 2004
“At one point I was like, ‘But wait: are you your mother’s son, America’s son, rap’s son? It seems like there are several people inside you and you don’t know which one you are at peace with.” »
The answer, what he had to imagine how to remain in all these incarnations, that there were no other ways of being like him than to embrace everything. “For me, today, it’s perfectly normal to be in a meeting with my investment bankers in the morning, then to go to rehearsal afterwards. »
Are they creed? « Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art »a phrase from Andy Warhol that he put into practice by turning early to the production of other artists, which allowed him to successfully negotiate his inevitable decline in popularity, post-Femme Like U.
Did he make a lot of money? “More than I ever imagined, even if that was never the primary motivation. All I wanted was for my parents to agree to extend the study deferment they had granted me so that I could devote myself to music. »
In show on November 29 at MTELUS and signings at the Montreal Book Fair on November 30 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Visit the show page
Consult the details of his visit to the Book Fair
