Portrait

Billie Brelok, poetry and uppercut

French-Peruvian rapper Billie Brelok returns with a double album entitled "Gare de l'Ouest". © DR

04/02/2019

Despite her wise braids, there was already a certain rage in the voice and words of Billie Brelok when she claimed to be a Bastard in 2014. The clip had become viral. After a first EP rather traditional and 3 brilliant videos, the young French-Peruvian rapper Nanterre returns with a new opus, a double album, called Gare de l'Ouest . His poetry has lost none of its power and urgency. An uppercut.

With her initial BB, Billie Brelok draws a groove really apart in French hip hop. And even "in French hip hop feminine" could we say, as girls are rare. But Billie Brelok too frequent letters to be imprisoned by words, even if they are fashionable: "engaged and feminist, these are words for which I have a lot of esteem.For me, feminist, it evokes the emancipation, but this label can quickly become the four walls in which you let yourself be locked up ... Sometimes I say to myself, that I am just a detail, that it is especially the era that is feminist, and I look at this with an eye rather optimistic! " retorts the miss, who prefers to call herself Billie Brelok rather than Billie Boca for fear of the men's interpretation of her stage name.

" In Billie Boca, I liked the reference to the cup and ball because it's a game of skill and precision, and you have to do it a lot of times before you succeed. micro, but a friend dissuaded me from taking that name ... " A reference too phallic in the "testosterone atmosphere of hip hop still very masculine ten years ago" . So, Billie preferred the reference to "charms", " those little obsolete objects, lucky charms, or little gifts that speak to us even if we do not always remember who gave them to us. memories or great stories behind these little things, I find that it fits me well " says the girl, who began her career as a rapper late, after first writing for the theater.

Billie had discovered hip hop before adolescence, in the neighborhood parties of Nanterre, where she grew up, but also of course on radio and recess classes. Billie started at the open mic parties in Nanterre where she started alone at the microphone. Today, she is accompanied by a beatmaker (Didaï), a guitarist (Dan Amozig) and a bassist (Gaye Sidibé). But it's mostly a clip that made it known in 2014, almost four years after its debut. With her punchy banter, her dense and imaginative poetry, she diverted what is generally experienced as an urban insult: "Bastard".

" This song is about the crossroads I'm in. Many people have interpreted this song as feminist, so much the better, but at first it was more of a nod to La Marseillaise , and its reference to " the unclean blood that " I have impure blood, even though I do not know what it means, but I can say that I belong to this generation which is more and more aware of being a point. My parents are Peruvians, immigrants to France, and they come from very different social backgrounds, one rather bourgeois and the other comes from a popular background " .

They could have chosen Spain or the United States for their studies like many Peruvians, but " France had a story that spoke to them, a revolutionary story that is being taught in Peru, and they arrived not long after May. 68 " says Billie, who grew up listening to music imported by her parents. Latin American songs that tell stories and revolutionary myths, such as those of Peruvian Susana Baca, Argentine Mercedes Sosa, Chilean Violetta Parra, and Cuban Sylvio Rodriguez, also fed Billie. Today, she who raps rather in French, also sings in Spanish.

" My parents spoke to me both languages, but shouting and words of love came more naturally in Spanish" she concedes ... Billie does not hesitate to sing a few verses in German on his new album, Station the West , on which she invites some beatmaker or rappers to join her.

As in his first album, we are still overthrown by his poetry, burning like a sirocco and chiseled like a Celine prose that would upset the misconceptions about social mix and migration stories, without hatred of course. We sometimes let ourselves be carried away by his anger and sometimes caress him by his breath of fragile hope. A bastard feeling, too? In any case, a certain emotion and the desire to dissect his verses to discover their story, beyond fever.

In Biafine , on her first album, The Embarrassment of Choice, Billie refers to this ointment that a ventilated center instructor gave to everyone for the slightest pain. "It seemed like the solution to everything, until I realized that Biafine is only treating burns." Billie has a song in the form of a metaphor about the inefficiency of standard solutions ... A good sound ointment on various words.

Billie Brelok West Station (Well Done Productions / L'Autre distribution) 2019
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By: Elodie Maillot

Billie Brelok

album - Rap - France