After quickly coming out of his announced retirement, Booba is releasing a new song this Friday.
Like him, many rappers have given up on an early career end.
In hip-hop, announcing your retirement has become an exercise in style and communication.
Hello revoilou. Booba, the ex-future retiree (but in fact, no) released this Friday morning, a new title,
Kayna
. The break was therefore short. While the rapper from Boulogne had announced to end his career to devote himself to production when his 10th album,
Ultra
, was released on March 5, he finally returned to this early retirement at the end of April in an Instagram post: "The high committee of Piracy has officially forbidden the DUC to retire". At 44 and after 25 years of career, piracy never seems to be over for someone who said in his song
Game Over
: “I'll stop when I have to, I won't make the album too many”.
But how do you know when to stop?
Whether they are pioneers of rap near their sixties or young artists, many rappers have expressed their desire to put their musical career on hold or to end their musical career for good.
When the love of rap is stronger than anything
American rappers are pioneers when it comes to asserting their right to retirement. Some US journalists have even called 2019 “the year of rap retirement fever” and laugh at the trend for easy breaks. "What's going on with all those rap stars, in their 30s or early 40s, retiring faster than the Grand Old Party MPs in the Trump era?" Jokes a Billboard reporter in an article that traces recent retirements from American rap. Nicky Minaj, Lil Pump, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne… All of them have threatened to end their careers in recent years before finally returning to music quite quickly.
For a long time, the hip-hop community considered that after 40 years, rap had to be stopped to make room for young people. The constant emergence of new talent on Soundcloud or TikTok has made established rap stars feel irrelevant or even has-been. But when, in France, artists like Mc Solaar (52 years old) or Oxmo Puccino (46 years old), were able to prove that there was no age to rap, many of those who were considering retirement are income on their choice.
In 2014, certain of his decision, rapper Alkpote announced that he would complete his last
Orgasmixtape
project
and then retired from music, judging that he had become too "old" to continue.
Result, following his statement, the rapper has never been so productive.
Since then, he has multiplied collaborations, studio albums and mixtapes.
This inability to draw a line on his career, Alkpote explains by his almost obsessive passion for rap: “I have to stop but it still tickles me.
My system in my head for rhyming is there.
Even when I don't feel like rapping, I still find rhymes.
I think it's not going to go like that, ”he reveals on Mouv.
Retirement as a communication tool
One of the reasons that discredits this type of statement in the music industry is the marketing use made by some rappers. In 2016, after the revelation of Donald Trump's victory in the American presidential election, Maitre Gims, indignant, decided to publish on his Instagram account a black square on which we can read this sentence: "I announce to you that I am officially stopping the music… Thank you for everything ”. Quickly, the astonished fans became worried and the message quickly made the rounds on social networks. Is this the end of Gims? Well no. It was actually a way of promoting his
Black Belt
album.
.
Faced with the buzz of his message, the rapper, former member of the Sexion d'Assaut, was forced to react on Twitter to reassure his fanbase: “After April Fool's Day, I present to you the squirrel of the month of November! !!
He joked.
We still laugh about it (no).
More recently, in January 2020, it was Naps who made the news with the fastest retirement waiver in music history.
After posting a video in which he smashed a gold record and declared that he was stopping the music, the Marseille rapper deleted his post a few hours later.
The specialized press had not even had time to disseminate the news on the networks that Naps was already announcing its return for a next album,
Carré VIP.
Those who quit for good
This fleeting nature of most late-career statements has dampened the concept of retirement in rap. However, some artists actually put an end to their careers. We remember the appearance of Diam's in 2012 in
Seven to eight
where the rapper revealed live, shortly after the release of her autobiography, that she wanted to end her career after converting to Islam. “I had exhausted my interest in the medium after having won everything in the music business but also lost everything humanly. I needed to breathe, to recover "a normal life", with "normal" people and humility ", she explained a few years later.
Like her, artists such as Fabe, Salif or Alpha 5.20 have definitely dropped the microphone to the great sadness of their listeners. Although hard for fans to accept, these long-term retreats elevate the artist's discography and career to myths.
Some, like Nekfeu, have understood this well.
In 2019, after the release of his album
Les Étoiles Vagabondes
, the rapper, without any real official announcement, decided to delete his Twitter and Instagram accounts, thus creating a wave of end-of-career rumors about him.
Since then, Nekfeu has not returned to the front of the stage but nevertheless continues to be productive but on the projects of others.
With no less than six collaborations in 2020, Nekfeu even takes the opportunity to have fun with repeated rumors about his probable career in the song San Andreas (featuring Lesram) on
Alpha Wann's
Dondada Mixtape
: “Because they distort the facts, it seems that I quit this summer.
Although yet I have not made, no such announcement ».
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