Alliance Ethnik's lengthy silence was as deafening as the media hype about them in 1995. That year the group's first album "Simple et funky" established a rap style mixed with funk which was widely accepted among the public: this album sold more than 400,000 copies in France and produced three singles ("Respect", "Honesty et jalousie" and "Simple et funky") whose combined sales reached one million.

At that time never had a first album of a French rap group or artist ever clinched a platinum record. The music world could no longer ignore Alliance Ethnik, who multiplied its live performances while getting intense radio and press plugging.

Even the very Anglo-Saxon MTV Europe played its clips, a unique privilege for French rappers shared only at the time by the consensual (and not so funky) MC Solaar. The members of the combo from Creil (a town in Oise county near Paris) suddenly left the limelight in order to assess their situation and return to their roots while nevertheless remaining active.

The rapper K-mel played in films, performed duos (among them one with Cheb Mami) and produced young artists (Gutsie, Faster Jay) while Crazy B. went back to being a DJ. He was recently crowned vice-champion of the world DMC for the fourth time in a row. Next they all got together to plan a worthy comeback capable of establishing credibility while keeping in public favour.

Creil, my personal El Dorado

The return of Alliance Ethnik (who spent most of last year in the studio) is set for Tuesday January 12, 1999 when their much awaited second album "Fat come back"(Delabel/Virgin) is released. At first sight it seems that Alliance Ethnik fortunately didn't try to serve up a reheated version of "Simple et Funky". Harder and forever lively, the sound becomes even more American under the direction of producer Prince Charles Alexander who knows French rap well indeed since his collaboration with Marseille's IAM and Oxmo Puccino, and Delabel artists such as Alliance Ethnik. Alliance Ethnik's come full circle.

Other sound craftsmen on "Fat come back" are : James Staub (Pete Rock) and the group itself. This strategy is gallantly defended by K-Mel, the charismatic leader of this unifying Alliance: "It's an Americanized album and we're proud of it. We were the first to bring over an American engineer (Bob Power) and as it happened everyone else followed suit. This time we're featuring Americans who are important to us, with whom we have a natural affinity and who are not necessarily front page news today." This is the case with Biz Markie, "the specialist" of New York rap who is featured on the track "Fat come back" where the good old scratches of the 1980's screech tirelessly to the beat of The Sugar Hill Gang, whose domineering sound was borrowed for this album. Besides Biz Markie, the studio doors were wide open to a long line of special guests: Youssou N'Dour (on the track "Un enfant doit vivre"), De La Soul (on "Star track") Common (a famous Chicago MC on "Jam") and the ever faithful Vinia Mojica already present on the first album.

Alliance Ethnik still defends the musical notion of rap. Never has K-Mel, whose delivery is inimitable, had such varied output. Without pretension, the lyrics of the 14 songs (peppered with interludes by comedians such as Gad Elmaleh and Djamel Debousse) fluctuate between an observation of daily life, mockery and personal views like on "Creil city" which, with its layers of recurrent synthesizer, sounds like a "Metropolis" rap. K-Mel and his tribe, who admit to being more mature, fill their compositions, which are lively all the same, with a personality which is less unbridled and perky than their previous work. To sum it all up "Fat come back" is less simple but as funky as ever.

A concert band since their formation at the dawn of the 1990's, Alliance Ethnik is coming back to defend this efficient and tailor-made production "Fat come back" by doing a two-part concert tour- a little this spring and the rest in the autumn. Playing hard to get is obviously an art.

Gilles Rio