After two years of absence, the Toulouse rappers are making a resounding comeback with a song that questions French identity in the middle of the countryside.
“It seems that there is fire in the chapel, the country of Joan of Arc or Djamel. It seems that being embittered is our pride, that we are the kings of freedom. In the grimoire, there are the Gauls, there are the knights, but in the kitchen, there is my grandmother and her erased Berber tattoos. Bigflo and Oli have long known how to manage their surprises. They booked one on Tuesday, publishing a new clip at noon. It’s called Sacré brothel, to hide nothing of the tone or their intentions. “We wanted to come back with a song that is strong in meaning and important to us rather than with a light and more anticipated song,” says the duo on their YouTube page.
It’s done with this hymn to France, a country they love as much for its qualities as for its faults. In five short minutes, the two brothers decline all the ambivalent feelings that the country inspires in them in a sort of patriotic Je t’aime, moi non plus in 2020 sauce. « I am French, with a hesitant air, as if in to doubt became obvious, testifies the duo. I love France ! Like an aunt with whom I don’t always agree, who tries too little. But for whom I will cry all the tears of my body at his death. »
Why am I uncomfortable in front of my own flag? Why do I see it brandished only abroad or among fachos? For a long time it took the dust; mine didn’t help me too much. Why does it bother me less when it’s that of Argentina or Algeria? I answer: I am French, with a hesitant air, as if to doubt it became obvious
Without imagining that Bigflo and Oli, on their own, sum up a generation, we guess that their questions find a particular echo in a country on the eve of the presidential election and among young people who, according to the polls, announce that they are will largely abstain on Sunday. “Tell me from whom I am the descendant? Collaborators or resistance fighters? As many idiots as complexes, sings Olivio Ordonnez. Have you seen how long it lasts? Love-hate is no small feat. The police, that of dirty burrs? Or the one on the front line at the Hyper Kosher?
For their clip, Bigflo and Oli set up on the sly a small glass studio that they transported on the roads of France, from the Capitole of Toulouse to the passes of the Pyrenees, from the alleys of necessarily bucolic villages to the Place of Republic in Paris. . « This clip was really a titanic hassle to set up, we didn’t expect it to be so complicated ourselves, » says the duo. But the result contributes to the message: it was under the gaze of passers-by that they shot their film for a week, in March. The bubble through which they address the French is of course that of their insolent celebrity which took them to the July 14 parade. But it is also the place where everyone forms their own opinion, « in their soul and conscience » as the expression goes, where everyone has to deal with their desires and their contradictions. Looking at them, you think you see everyone in the voting booth, weighing the pros, the cons and, more and more, the nothing to give a damn.
She’s beautiful, my France and her region, even if she doesn’t see me in the mirror. I figure we could do it, break the glass ceiling. Instead of pointing out each other’s differences, focus on everything we have in common
France ? A sacred brothel, therefore, as the duo describes it with great blows of punchlines. But for which Bigflo and Oli also admit a sacred attachment: “It makes you feel weird but I love this country, the one that taxes me and covers me with taxes, the one that pays for me at the pharmacy, that took me, free, see the sea in camp.» With this song, the first in two years, the two brothers claim their share of Toulouse’s musical heritage, the one which, from Nougaro to Zebda, always slipped the values of the Republic between two stanzas. But unlike their elders who sang of their convictions, the two young men mainly tell of their doubts, as Florian Ordonez confides: “Many questions, few answers, I only have the words of a song. How can I be a committed artist when I don’t really know what to think?