Kay the prodigy, rapper in the thousand – Liberation

We did not go far from the drama. While she had grasped it, Kay The Prodigy almost overturned all of her coffee on the small table of this bistro located in Montreuil, in Seine-Saint-Denis. « It is because of his things, there, she said, laughing, showing off her huge false nails. I went to bed at 3 am to do them. ” Tonight, she will go to The flames ceremonyequivalent of music victories for rap, r’n’b and Afro and Caribbean music, and wants to be stylish, like all guests.

She performed there live last year, went on stage to interpret her title Hush ! In duet with producer Richie Beats. A certain recognition of the environment for this rapper now aged 24, one of the most famous faces of a new generation of artists who have pierced after the confinements and who now populates French rap, in aesthetic rupture with the industrial behemoths of the previous decade. « There was a kind of fed up in part of my generation, she advances. Many wanted to recall why they loved hip-hop, its culture, rehabilitate this term which had been a little watered down with the time which is linked to the world of the street, to resourcefulness. It comes from the ground, from the roots. ”

Kay The Prodigy comes from Strasbourg. A city that does not shine more than that on the rap map but which has seen it artistically form, evolve in the small local underground scene, always collective. She left her four years ago to go to work as a optician in Paris, then build her start of career. « Rap is to my generation what rock was for those who were young in the 1950s or 1960s. We grew up with it, we will surely die with. » His music crisscrosses bubbling sub-genres, necessarily inspired by the United States, and relatively little audible in the current streaming tops: Drill Samplée, Jersey, Plug … The Mumble Rap and its nonchalant phrasing, not very articulated, is also an obvious influence, just like the trap.

These sound paradigms, she explored them on several remarkable EPs, in particular Eastern Wind in 2022 and Eastern Wind 2 In 2023, designed with his friend Beatmaker Mezzo Millo, Strasbourg like her. The album will arrive one day. In the meantime, she continues to disseminate her raw and skulling words, often explicit, taking out a few singles and emphasizing the scene. Several times, the qualifier « Hardcore » has been attached to its aesthetics by commentators certainly little to the subtleties and the history of rap. “People often confuse the hardcore spirit with honesty. They are not used to hearing women being released, frontal, it makes them weird. And so, it seems hardcore. While comparison with what could go out fifteen or twenty years ago, today’s rap is generally very soft. ”

She is a distant heiress of Nicki Minaj, certainly the most important American rapper in the 2010s, even the most influential currently, who raised the figure of the figure of the figure « Bad bitch ». « It is not just a woman who dresses sexy and who talks about sex. It is a claim. Emancipation is there, makes its way and you can’t do anything about it. The bad bitch can be the most powerful banker in the country. Nicki Minaj may have men around them, she had the last word, was very picky on her artistic direction which quickly became a reference. ”

The subject of the place of women in French rap, constantly rehabilitated to the latter, however seems inevitable at this stage of the discussion. Kay The Prodigy answers it without detour: “It is difficult for me to ignore this debate because it is indeed there, we can count on the fingers of the hand. There are not many of us, whether on the front of the stage or in the underground. It is a question of culture and entourage. I started to rap with guys friends. The fact that they agreed to make music with a girl is not trivial, not all do it, far from it. Rap is lived in groups, you have to have dragged into it to understand it. You exchange techniques, you are trying to improve yourself … This is what is missing from many rapperies: that the guys let them express themselves by their side. In a rap group, half of the guys can be zero, completely rinsed, without it posing a problem. When you are a girl, you must be in the other half. You don’t have the right to be bad. « 

The determination, a cardinal concept of French rap, sometimes claimed until disgust, seems to take full meaning here. Kay The Prodigy uses the term several times « value », binds him to the image of his father. “My family is from Madagascar, but my father lived in Mayotte. There, he was a pastor, but has had no church since he arrived in mainland France. Religious education taught me values, I wear them with me, they serve me in everyday life, in the stress, doubts. I often wonder what prevents me from resuming my job as a optician, from returning to a form of security of stability. Surely the freedom that music offers. « 

He sometimes express his faith in music, as on the song Damocles Released in 2024, on which she also plays the role of the big sister, is part of a tradition of rap of advice old as the genre. “I try to say things I would have liked to hear a few years ago. We have geeks, hardworkings, girls who have gone around the country to deliver 10 balls, who are in business … I will not necessarily go immediately to a rapper just because she exists, on the contrary. I prefer to tell him: “Make your way. And if necessary, we are together.” But we are not going to pretend to be constantly united, we can completely fight if necessary. ” And win, especially when you are above the lot.