RFI Musique: Over three years with no new MC Solaar albums or the slightest tour date! What have you been doing with yourself all this time?
MC Solaar: Leading a normal life! I spent fifteen years caught up in the cycle of recording albums, doing all the promotional stuff and then going out on tour. I’d had this idea at the back of my mind for a long time - right back when I was working on 5^e As - that I’d take a year off at some point. After Mach 6, I decided I wouldn’t be going out on tour and I wouldn’t set foot again in the studio for a while. I felt like doing a lot of other things like watching my son grow up. But what happened was time flew by without me noticing and I ended up caught up in my daily life whereas I should have been getting back down to work again. Before I knew it, my year off had turned into two!

Your new album’s called Chapitre 7 (Chapter 7). But I heard that you were originally thinking of calling it Da Vinci Claude* after one of the songs on it?
Yes, that’s right. Da Vinci Claude is a good title for a song, but it’s not such a good title for an album. It might have sounded like I wanted to write a sequel to The Da Vinci Code or something. I read it the summer everyone else got into it.

Talking of references in your songs, it’s amazing that you bring up Metro Goldwyn Mayer right after Brigitte Fontaine namechecked MGM on La Metro…
It’s all a question of influence. I was searching around for rhymes I could use on Coup d’œil dans le métro and I must have seen her singing on TV one night. Metro Goldwyn Mayer was just right, because it’s got this old-fashioned ring to it and there’s the whole organ-grinder thing going on.

On another track, Carpe diem, you list all these childhood memories: food you used to eat, games you used to play, famous people from the time. You’ve already written songs like Obsolète, A la claire fontaine and Les Temps changent, based on the same listing technique. Is this becoming a bit of a Georges Pérec-style obsession with you?
I’m aware that, at times, I’m a bit like Pérec with all my lists and things. I just have this impulse in my brain to make lists of things that have the same value to me, things that have always put me in the same mood, the same frame of mind. It’s automatic. I think of Simon and an image of a Rubik’s Cube comes to mind. Sometimes, I wonder whether the whole process isn’t some form of psychoanalysis for me. But on another level I really wanted to set people thinking. I wanted them to wonder who Pierre Juquin was, for instance. Anyone under thirty has never heard of Pierre Juquin because they were into cartoons and stuff instead. This is a way of opening a window on history.

The thing that’s different this time round, though, is that in the third verse there’s this threat of a dark and dangerous future. It’s like the past was great but there’s a dark and disturbing potential there like in 1984, like in Schwarzenegger movies or the idea of conspiracy theories.

It’s true that on this new album you often venture into much more serious songwriting territory than you did on previous ones...
The guiding thread throughout the album was a desire to raise serious issues such as child soldiers, guns and the fact that water is currently running out on the planet… Maybe after listening to the new songs, people will want to find out more about these issues, join associations and stuff.

After having taken time off, did you write the new album fairly quickly?
Writing can go quickly but actually, this time round, I have to confess it didn’t go quickly at all. It was a lot harder to find nifty short cuts and experiment with things I’d never done before. Even beginning a song with the line "It all began" is something I’ve already done so many times before! When your pen automatically reverts to stuff you’ve done before, it’s much harder to come up with new themes and new stories.

Musically speaking, the new album was a bit of a trial and error process as well. There’s a lot of electro and Dirty South in contemporary rap and that obviously influenced us. But we ended up going back and reworking a lot of stuff because I didn’t want it to sound like I was following a trend.

As far as the songwriting was concerned, couldn’t you just trust the techniques and the ‘savoir-faire’ you’ve developed up to now?
Yes, but that would only work with songs based on a style I’d used in the past, the classical way of doing things. But this time round what I was interested in was developing new  methods of writing, not just limiting myself to doing things I already knew how to do.

Your debut single came out eighteen years ago now. And (Marseilles rap supergroup) IAM will soon be celebrating twenty years in the music business. Do you ever get the impression you’re now part of French rap heritage?
It’s interesting. I bumped into Malek from IAM not so long ago and he told me they played this gig in Paris one night and the crowd ended up singing along like it was some sort of rap karaoke - and yet IAM songs are quick, you have to have a real technique, respect the  rhythms and stuff… Yes, I do think there’s a French rap heritage. There are classics like IAM’s Demain c’est loin and Assassin’s La Formule secrète…

You’re something of a reference yourself in the French rap pantheon…
There are people out there and certain rap groups who view me the same way they do IAM. They like me and they’re a bit fascinated by what I do. But, you know, there’s a funny thing about rap and that is that it’s a sound which always attracts a young following. Sometimes, when I talk to kids today they seem to forget we’re not the same age. They forget there’s ten or fifteen years between us and they start talking about stuff I’m meant to know!

*MC Solaar’s real name is Claude M’Barali.