The Pharaohs have been IAM's primary source of inspiration since the release of their first cassette album, Concept, back in 1990 and Egyptology has surfaced in their work time and time again since. On their 20th anniversary, the group paid their own personal tribute to the Pharaohs, heading off to Cairo to play a special concert at the foot of the Pyramids. Ironically enough, the group's first trip to the Egyptian capital in January 2008 (to prepare their show on 14 March) was the first time the six members of IAM had ever been to Egypt. Needless to say, the group's Pyramid concert was filmed for posterity and Audrey Draougo has also made a documentary (Encore un printemps) retracing two decades of the Marseillais rap crew's career. RFI Musique spoke to IAM's 'sound architect' Imhotep just after the concert and he shared his impressions post-show.

RFI Musique: IAM have been together for two decades now - and here you are on your 20th anniversary making one of your childhood dreams come true. How does it feel?
Imhotep: I have to admit I'm still in a bit of a daze really. The first time I set foot in Egypt, I couldn't actually believe it was happening. It's my second time now but right this moment I'm in my unwinding stage, coming down after all the stress of preparations for the show. I was really wound up during the show itself and the days leading up to it. I was so busy getting stressed out about the technical side of things, worrying about whether the two guest orchestras would be in synch and all the rest of it that I didn't really have time to realise what a blast it all was. I wasn't sitting there getting all excited about it like I would have been if I'd had less on my mind, but I still realised the enormity of it all. I think I'll catch up with things a bit later when I watch the DVD and discover the things I wasn't aware of at the time. It's funny, none of us had ever been to Egypt before January 2008, but we'd been talking about coming here for twenty years. Well, we've done it now! And we managed to do the whole tourist thing as well as checking out locations for the concert and meeting the musicians from the two guest orchestras: the Popular Orchestra of Cairo and the Cairo Opera Orchestra.

Strangely enough, the samples of the sound-and-light show at the Pyramids which DJ Kheops has used a lot on past IAM albums didn't actually feature very much in your Cairo concert…
Well, we used a few in the intro and we'd originally planned to use a few playing out, too, but we dropped the idea in the end because there just wasn't enough time to rehearse. Things were OK with the Cairo Opera Orchestra where the musicians are used to working with scores so they get their act together within a couple of days. Everything's all very precise with them, things are sorted out down to the last detail. But the Popular Orchestra of Cairo is another story. As far as the conducting and the arrangements go, they're pretty much all over the place. The musicians are never in time together and they're quite capable of speeding up as they go along, so that they start off at 89 bpm and end up at 112 BPM! The rappers had a bit of a hard time keeping up with that. At the end of the day we were the ones who had to adapt to them, rather than the other way round. But I have to say their presence infused our music with such freshness and creativity…
As for the matter of whether we should have used Egyptian samples, well the thing is if we'd wanted to do a show that would have been exclusive to Egypt, something that would have been completely different from the rest of our tour, then we could - or maybe even should have - used the samples. But the problem was that we were still caught up in the tour and we didn't really have enough time to prepare a special show just for Egypt. If we'd done a special Egyptian show we'd have had to dig out all the old tracks like Kheops appartient à l’horizon and that would have been a major challenge. Basically, the only song to have survived from that era is Le Mia because that's the only track Chill can rap on without feeling he's being dragged back into the past. You know, Shurik’n doesn't rap Les tam-tams de l’Afrique any more because he finds the diction too old-fashioned. Actually, we‘d originally thought about doing a medley of our old tracks, but then we discovered that our lyrics had dated too much.

Talking of which, together with The Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, IAM are one of the oldest surviving rap groups on the scene…
…And we're very pleased about it! The best thing is we've never once stopped along the way. We've always stuck together as a group. There have been times when it's been more difficult than others to keep it all together, but we've never once thought about splitting up. We've all had our bad patches, moments when we've been more or less committed to the group as individuals. Personally speaking, I was more or less out of the running during the making of Revoir un printemps. My wife had a few health problems and I had to take a bit of time off. I have to say, the musical choices IAM made at the time suited me a lot less than before and I felt less involved at that point.

Coming back to your concert at the Pyramids for a moment, what was the emotional high point of the show for you?
The finale with the Popular Orchestra sent shivers up my spine it was so good. In fact, on all the pieces we did with those musicians - and especially on Au quartier - I really felt there was an added emotional intensity. As for the strings the Cairo Opera Orchestra contributed on La fin de leur monde, I'm hoping I can use them on the studio version and do a remix with them. They really added something to our music, giving it extra feeling.