Paris (AFP)

"I have the impression of having passed the cape of a lot of modesty, taboos," says the rapper Chilla in an interview with AFP, while she publishes Friday a second album.

Until now it was "unthinkable to talk about love" for the 25-year-old rapper-singer, who oscillates in a very contemporary way between rap, R & B and variety.

Two years after his first opus, the album "Mun" is "a project in which love is almost the main subject," says Chilla.

In "Dark Heart", Chilla also places "a big up to the Fucksters": "we often complain about these guys who only seek sex, but it is sometimes protective behavior," says Chilla.

"I have a lot of mates who are in this way (...) I can understand that guys behave like assholes, because it hides something deeper".

The rapper also tells the doubts that go through in the passage to adulthood, in its hatching as an artist. Born Mareva Rana, she grew up in Gex, Ain, with parents specialized educators who worked in Switzerland. She was finishing her first album on a tribute to her dead father.

"I had a part of my life well, then I eaten the reality," she says. "Basically, I write to solve my problems," and with "Mun", "I feel like getting people into my room, it's been an analytical, therapeutic process," says Chilla.

Musically, "Mun" is more homogeneous than his first album, with only one composer at the helm for almost all 17 tracks: the young Fleetzy, already author of songs for Kery James or Jok'Air.

- "work three times more" -

Produced by a heavyweight of the genre, Tefa (Diamonds, Sniper, Vald, Fianso), Chilla has bet on songs like "1st day of school" or "Oulala", and collaborations with the star Martinique Kalash or the experienced Youssoupha, to continue to climb.

In an ocean of rap artists loaded with testosterone, her female voice is surprising. Chilla has made a rap culture by watching MTV Base rap videos, mostly men, but also some "strong figures" like the American Eve or Missy Elliott, and the French Casey, Keny Arkana, and Diam's.

Compared to these pioneers, Chilla is pleased to arrive in a world where "rap is pop". "I did not say to myself: I'm a bitch, it's going to be complicated, I thought it was going to be easy but it would have to work three more times." If Diam? S got there, it's because that his level exceeded that of many rappers, "recalls the one who is one of his heirs.

Chilla explains that at first she had "completely restrained her femininity": "I did not want people to think that I'm in the seduction, when I reinstated her, it allowed me to accept my flaws, my hypersensitivity ".

Rather, she put forward her anger, her demands: Chilla has been noticed in recent years with several feminist raps: "If I were a man", "Balance your pig", or "Bitch", where she describes a world of ultra-machismo music.

With this second album, Chilla also grew up as an artist, demanding, hyperactive, in control, in the studio as on the shooting of a clip in the suburbs of Paris.

"I realized that I was screaming a lot when I rapped, that I put words in order to have some flow, without leaving any room for silence, without letting go," explains Mareva, who had seen herself as a soul singer and was studying violin at the conservatory, before discovering the "freedom" of rap and becoming Chilla. "I realigned with myself when I integrated singing into my rap, singing is my identity, my writing is rap."

? 2019 AFP