"I tell what hurts me and questions me," says Slimane

• Chroniques d'un cupidon

  , Slimane's new album, was released on Friday 2 September.

• The design of this opus was not done without doubt, especially after the success of its collaboration with Vitaa.

  “These are silly fears, but I wondered if, listening to my new songs, people were not going to wait for Vitaa's voice.

  Or be bored now that I sing alone, ”says Slimane to

  20 Minutes

  .

• Slimane has had a little Esmeralda since this spring.

  “She changed everything: the man I am, the artist I am, what I want to leave… She changed my vision of love.

  It's thanks to her that the album exists: I realized that love wasn't just "love" love, that there were plenty of other forms of love that could totally nurturing when I had left them out,” he says, of his paternity.

Slimane realized that every hour is precious.

In December, he announced that he was taking a break for a few months.

"I needed it, it served me, and for nothing in the world I would not have wanted to be absent for the first months of my daughter", confides the author, composer and performer to

.

Becoming the father of a little Esmeralda changed him.

“It pushed me to think about how I live my job and to do things differently.

For nearly seven years, I've chained album, tour, album, tour… There, I'm very happy to release a new album, but I'm not going to embark on a tour too quickly.

I want to take care of my daughter, recharge my batteries and take the time to appreciate what is happening to me,” he warns.

His new opus, released on Friday, is called

.

On the cover, the soon-to-be 33-year-old artist appears as a "fallen angel", riddled with arrows.

“With Fifou, the photographer, we wanted it to represent me, so there is romanticism, with the spangled flowers, but also the skinned side with these wounded wings.

“An image full of contrast and paradox, as Slimane appreciates.

, his project with Vitaa, is coming to an end with the success that we know.

The new chapter promises to be more intimate and personal.

This Tuesday, in Orléans, you begin the last series of concerts of the “VersuS” tour.

Did you expect your collaboration as a duo with Vitaa to take on such magnitude?

We were caught in a musical and media tornado.

We didn't expect it, it's too good a story and we're glad it lasted so long.

This project is part of us, of our personal, artistic history.

It's rare, people who manage to make this kind of parenthesis in their career before returning to solo.

It is also a bet.

In “Enfant de la Lune”, which opens your new album, you sing: “That's it, I have hits, but I'm starting from scratch.

Lend me your pen to write solo.

» You were afraid of not finding the inspiration?

On the contrary, I had only one desire: to find myself alone in front of my sheet - or rather in front of my phone since that's where I write everything - and to be able to tell my stories all alone again.

But there were real questions: now that it worked together, will people be there?

Is it not too soon after the media coverage that the project had taken?

Was I going to know how to find myself while keeping what I learned with

?

There were plenty of doubts.

You embarked on the “VersuS” project when you were not at a low point in your career.

Do you really think that the public may not want to find you solo?

These are silly fears, but I wondered if, listening to my new songs, people were not going to wait for Vitaa's voice.

Or be bored now that I sing alone.

When you are an artist and you have a success with a formula, you wonder if it is right to change the formula.

In “Update”, you sing: “My whole album is about you”.

We guess a painful separation.

This track is the key to understanding the album?

All "in love" love songs are about the same person.

I use music as a bulwark against what I live, to transform what hurts me into something that makes me feel good.

By doing them, I give myself the right to move on.

“I'm afraid to get better and not do anything anymore”, you say in “Peurs”, the last song of the album.

Are you one of those artists for whom suffering is a creative engine?

This is what is paradoxical in my art: you almost fall in love with suffering because it allows you to create.

I wonder what I will tell the day when I will be totally happy.

I don't think that will happen.

It's not in my DNA.

I tell what hurts me and makes me ask questions.

There is a very tortured side in "Chronicles of a Cupid"...

In my songs, yes, there is this tortured side but I also always put a little hope.

If I say really dark things, I'm going to make sure that, in the melody, a major chord comes in all at once.

I want to maintain the paradox.

It was important for me to tell about my moments of doubt, of questioning, where I was at my lowest.

I don't like to give the image that everything is perfect, easy.

It's not my life.

I try to be sincere in what I say.

If in this period I had a heartbreaking love experience, I will tell it.

In "Child of the Moon", you sing: "Too many people think they know me when I don't.

Then in “Fears”: “I'm afraid that people love me for what I'm not.

"Is that how you feel?"

Do you think the public is projecting things onto you that don't correspond to reality?

We are in a world of images.

We artists want to project something.

I think I am a very changeable person, I evolve quite easily, so, by the time I project an image, deep inside me, I am already someone else.

It may be that the public fantasizes what I am not necessarily.

But that doesn't belong to me.

I have to give people the right to have the image they want to have of me.

It's the same thing with a song: I write it, it corresponds to a given moment in my life and, when it comes out, it no longer belongs to me.

If anyone wants to think of their grandmother or their dog, they have the right.

And so much the better, that's what I want.

In “Chroniques d'un cupidon”, the texts are however very explicit, you confide in them a lot.

There's not much need to read between the lines...

It suited me well, for a while, to tell myself that people didn't “understand” my songs or didn't go very far in analyzing the text.

Okay, here we go into psycho: it's as if, deep down, I didn't want to accept that people liked me, so I told myself that they didn't really know me.

But they know a lot more than I think.

And it suits them.

I'm learning to accept that it's all fine with them.

But it takes time.

You became the father, in the spring, of a little Esmeralda.

What has fatherhood changed for you?

She changed everything: the man I am, the artist I am, what I want to leave… She changed my vision of love.

It's thanks to her that the album exists: I realized that love was not just "love" love, that there were plenty of other forms of love that could totally feed when I had left them aside.

The love I feel for my mother, my sisters, my daughter, my friends, deserved to find its golden letters in my life.

Your daughter was born two months premature and had health problems.

Has this caused you new fears?

It healed some, all the unnecessary fears that I could feel.

When you see your 1.6 kg baby struggling for two months to gain weight and try to breathe, it calms you down.

Basically, I can torture myself for not much.

There, it allowed me to take a step back.

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You talk about your daughter in “De milles de je t'aime”.

In the lyrics, does the "We fight in a world that tells us to stop" refer to people who seek to know more about your private life?

There is that.

But I'm also talking about freedom.

The freedom to be there, to exist, to want to exist.

If there's one gift I want to give my daughter, it's freedom: to be herself.

We live in a world where, when we're free, however we want to be, it's complicated.

We immediately face walls of incomprehension, the refusal to get to know others, to accept others.

I found myself facing this for years for many different reasons: because I was obese, because I was a Arab who sang and did not rap… I don't want my daughter to grow up telling herself that she has no right to be whoever she wants.

"In the Dark" tells the story of a person who gradually loses his sight.

Why this song?

It's a tribute to my mom, who has had diabetes for years and is losing her sight.

We've been living it for two or three years with her, it affects us all but it's also something that we take with a certain distance, that's why I allowed myself to make this song.

Through this text, I tell her that I may never experience this but that I try to understand her, to put myself in her place and that I will always be there if she needs it.

She handles it in a fascinating way.

I knew she was strong, but now I find her even stronger as she prepares to live in a new world.

We can understand "Les amants de la colline", which you sing with La Zarra, in the first degree, but the metaphor of drug addiction seems obvious...

There is only metaphor.

It started with a report I saw on Brut about a young woman who prostituted herself to be able to use crack.

It upset me.

Besides, later, there was another video that let it be known that she got away with it.

I was talking on the phone with La Zarra and, at the same time, I passed by this famous hill.

I told him about this report and, as both of us can be a little

, I told him that I would find it too good to talk about two lovers who destroy each other while living the most passionate story of their lives.

"Les Fleurs du Bois de Boulogne" is dedicated to sex workers who exercise this profession without having chosen it.

Is this another subject that was close to your heart?

Some, sometimes, choose it, it is important to say it.

I wanted to highlight them.

There are girls who die and we don't talk about it or little.

Why don't these girls have the right to a minimum of dignity in the way they do their work?

There are plenty of countries where things are different.

It was different in France before.

Today, they are forced to do this in dramatic conditions and, all of this, in almost general denial.

I don't know if songs can change the world, but I wanted to talk about it on my small scale, with my own eyes, putting poetry in it.

It's the song of my entire career with which I struggled the most, I took a lot of time to write it.

I reworked it dozens of times.

Do you want to talk more about social issues in your songs in the future?

Yes.

Afterwards, I'm like everyone else, I need to grow, to move forward in my life, to learn.

I try to question myself, to think… This is my fourth album.

I was known at 26, everything fell on me all of a sudden.

I protected myself but now I'm starting to feel stronger, to see life differently, being a dad of a girl, new fights come in my heart… I hope to talk more and more about things not that bother but which others find difficult to talk about.

On a lighter note, several of your texts refer to “Titanic”.

Is it one of your favorite films?

(He smiles).

It is one of the films that educated me in my romantic relationships.

This crazy love, against all the barriers standing in its way… Looking back - be careful, I don't completely reject it, on the contrary, I am very blue flower and I still look at it today - I question this species of love ideology.

In fact, Rose let Jack die.

Is that what we are given as a vision of love?

Two people who love each other for the duration of a trip and, in the end, she lets him die?

This question has been haunting me recently.

Is there a more recent film or series that is more in line with your conception of love?

Honestly, no.

Everything is changing so quickly.

There are more and more series that talk about important subjects, it's cool, but I find that, by the time a series comes out, the world - or at least my world - changes so quickly that I hard to find myself in.

We are lucky today to have more and more different models, in films, series or in shows - I know you like

, I'm a fan too - and those are things who do good.

But despite all that, I still don't feel very represented either.

I also made peace with that, I thought maybe I wasn't doing everything right, maybe sometimes I wasn't enough, sometimes I was too much but, in any case, I have the merit of existing.

What would a series or a film that would represent you be about?

It would speak of paradoxes, that's for sure.

From a crazy, free and sulphurous youth (laughs).

There would be a lot of love, in every sense of the word.

And lots of differences.

I believe that today the difference has become almost, in quotation marks, a gift.

Should the stars involved be more irreproachable than the others?

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