Paris (AFP)

Nekfeu, PNL, Ninho, Soprano and Lomepal are in the top 10 album sales in 2019 in France: rap - with a thousand faces, street language or influenced by French song - has become the new variety.

Behind Angèle, N1 in sales in 2019, and ahead of Johnny Hallyday, we thus find Nekfeu with 449,545 sales - physical or not - for "Les étoiles vagabondes". And PNL is close behind the former "idol of young people" who died in 2017, with 402,854 copies of "Deux frères".

"Rap has won, urban is the norm, the counter-culture has become dominant and the discourse + it is a fashion that will not last + is now difficult to hold", clarifies for AFP Olivier Cachin, journalist specialist in hip-hop.

"Urban sound is the new variety. Eddy de Pretto, Lomepal play with the codes of urban music. There is not one rap, but several between Gims, Bigflo and Oli, Black M, Maes, Heuss L 'Enfoiré, Gambi ", adds Antoine Monin, music director at Spotify, for France and Benelux.

"Make a portrait of a typical rap listener today? It's very simple, it's everyone," insists Olivier Cachin. "Hearing TV host Nikos Aliagas talk about + Khapta +, a piece by Heuss L'Enfoiré, is revealing".

What is the role of online listening or downloading platforms in this new deal? "The advent of digital has enabled artists to connect with their audience, this generation + digital native +", explains Antoine Monin.

- "Occupation of the land" -

The platforms blew up bottlenecks "he continues:" before we had to record, be heard, distributed. Now with small software, at home, you can put online very quickly, "adds the manager of Spotify .

This very rapid production and the distribution of singles in "stream" leads to "permanent occupation of the land", confirms Olivier Cachin. "An artist like Jul, who releases two albums a year, has reinvented the codes", bounces Antoine Monin.

But technical support doesn't explain everything. "There was an eager audience, rap is a real strong cultural movement. With a French specificity: I often compare rappers to Moustaki, or Aznavour, who like them are sometimes immigrants or children of immigrants. + I saw myself already at the top of the bill +, sang Aznavour: the rappers do not say anything else, they are the conscious or unconscious heirs of these singers ", advance the director of Spotify.

Maes, figure of the new generation of French rap, assumes without complex references like Daniel Balavoine or Charles Aznavour, which he quotes in his titles and places in his playlists.

- Less militant -

Olivier Cachin, however, also sees a fundamental consequence in this era of all-powerful rap. "With the emergence of a more commercial, more popular rap, focused on melodies, we sometimes have a less committed, less militant rap". "I talked about it recently with Kool Shen (half of the NTM group with JoeyStarr), who was surprised that the movement of + yellow vests + had no impact in hip-hop", says the author of the biography "Supreme NTM "(Michel Lafon edition).

Platforms like Deezer or Spotify are sometimes accused of drying up other musical genres with their playlists. "Digital brings me nothing," recently lamented Thomas Fersen in Le Monde. Antoine Monin ensures that there is a "rebalancing of the music repertoire", with over time, the use of platforms by a "wider, more varied, less urban and less young audience, which benefits artists like Clara Luciani, Kendji Girac ".

For Olivier Cachin, the stream is not everything and he wants as proof the rapper "rate of room filling". "Vald, Jul or NTM played at Bercy several evenings in a row at the end of last year, it was full with a white-hot audience".

And Spotify now offers its playlist of French hip-hop tracks acclaimed with the "pvnchlnrs" (punchliners) evenings, in Marseille at Silo (February 29) and at Olympia in Paris on March 5, with sizes - Niska, Maes, 13 Block, etc - live.

© 2020 AFP