I love MC Solaar he’s so cool

[lyna_rochdi]

MC Solaar was an idol for my father and uncles so I grew up listening to him. I didn’t know “Lève-toi et rap” but I can tell how much my father entourage must have related to it. Solaar discusses growing up in the suburbs of Paris and how education and nurturing of his mind was seen as the only way out. “Lève-toi et rap” translates to wake up and rap, which Solaar does after seeing injustice. For him rapping is a way to point out what is wrong with how French society treats immigrants. Baldwin also notices the wrongdoings of French society on Algerian immigrants, despite the apparent blindness of the French. I find it interesting that both are a means of protests

Also it’s interesting to point out how both Baldwin and Solaar are black men, but Baldwin does not relate to the French immigrant experience (he sympathizes but does not relate) while Solaar does. Perhaps the difference is that “they knew exactly where home was. They thus held something within them which they would never surrender to France” while Baldwin’s melancholia is much more abstract.