Paris (AFP)

Uninhibited writing, pop, a wave of French-speaking singers, from Angèle to Lous and the Yakuza, via Suzane, spreads her messages on women's rights or tolerance for all sexualities.

"For me, it was a good time, this whole #MeToo movement was born when I was a waitress, I heard the debates but I could not participate," said AFP Suzane, who released her first Friday album. There is the uppercut "SLT" where she puts herself in the shoes of a stalker in the street, at work, on the internet, to denounce him.

"Even when I was 14, I wanted to say things like that, but it's just that I didn't have the words to write it yet. It's the right moment, speech is free, but to anyway I release mine without asking permission, "says the 29-year-old artist.

Embracing the point of view of the aggressor and the assaulted woman, this is also what Lous and the Yakuza does, in his shock song "4 heures du matin", which deals with rape, unveiled in residence in December in Trans Musicales de Rennes.

"I said to myself: + am I going to do a verse on the rapist? + Yes, I wanted to shed light on the evil, otherwise we don't treat it. It's like for racism, otherwise you will make the same mistakes over and over again, "recently told AFP the young woman born in DR Congo, who passed through Rwanda and who lives in Belgium.

- "It was time" -

These singers are still far from having the impact of Angèle - 2.5 million followers on Instagram, best sales in France in 2019 - and her famous "Balance ton quoi". But they are preparing to take off: Suzane was the most programmed artist at a festival in France last summer with 32 dates and Lous already has 3.7 million views in two videos on Youtube.

"It was time for that to happen, we are already talking about girls on stage, until then we had groups of boys, with a bass player in the corner, choir girls ... Except for a few emblematic female artists, girls' speeches were rare or little heard ", comments for AFP Ségolène Favre Cooper, programmer of the MaMA festival in Paris.

"It's fairly commercial music - which does not mean bad, but quickly assimilated - which affects young generations, even children, and at the outset puts a different discourse in their heads," she continues. . "It's very clever, not hyper frontal. The joyful, pop, festive music allows you to get messages across."

- "More fluid genre" -

And addressing female homosexuality, less treated than its male counterpart in French-language song, is no longer taboo.

Angèle mentions it in two titles, "Your Queen" and "You look at me". The singer Apple ("Les Failles") uses female pronouns in her love stories. Aloïse Sauvage sings "Jimy", not a boy's first name here, and Suzane describes a male coming out ("Little guy") and a girl who loves girls with "Anouchka".

"In + Anouchka + there is first a lot of lesbian clues, the character listens + My preference to me +, do not fantasize about Brad Pitt", dissected for AFP Pauline Paris, co-author of "Les below lesbiens of the song".

"It's still pretty wise, we are not yet at (singer) Eddy de Pretto, more raw. This may be the next step. But it's very positive", abounds Léa Lootgieter, the other author of the book, which sees in these new singers the incarnation of a "generation which claims its non-binarity, a more fluid genre".

Ségolène Favre Cooper stresses that "culture, song, lead to better tolerance, it goes better through music". "And since these music can be listened to as a family, from 7 to 77 years old, it can provoke debate when it stops."

© 2020 AFP