Paris (AFP)

Big fan of Serena Williams, Lala & ce - pronouncing "Lala Ace", the last term borrowed from tennis - upsets the codes to impose her game in rap.

The dilated flow of this Franco-Ivorian can be compared to the decomposed slow motion of the film "Matrix", a reference cited in her songs.

This singular vocal register gives her a little side from elsewhere, which she claims.

Hence the initials ET of his first album "Everything Tasteful", which comes out on Friday (at & ce Reckless / Allpoints / Believe).

"Yes, it's a little nod to the fact that I'm a little different in the French musical landscape, to the fact that I like to feel like an extra-terrestrial" confides the young woman to AFP. in the second half of her twenties.

If we still use the metaphor of the UFO, how to qualify this first disc after several remarkable mixtapes (between models and albums)?

"It's the return to earth: I brought back what I discovered in space, here it is, and there, we are going to make a new departure and we will see who will come in the shuttle and who remains on the ground ", she laughs.

Rapping in weightlessness, without wanting to spin like a meteor, also translates into the management of his nascent career.

"It's like a long-distance race, I want to last," she analyzes.

- Missy Elliot, Rammstein -

She took the time to lay her groundwork, in music and in fashion.

From summer 2019, Vanity Fair qualifies it as "the best kept secret in French rap".

To end 2019 "with style", the Japanese clothing brand Edwin is teaming up with her for a line inspired by her mixtape "The sound after".

And the magazine GQ classifies her at the end of 2020 among "the most stylish rappers", praising "her sober, androgynous outfits, (her) small thin dreads, with a collection of superb printed shirts".

Musically, this long silhouette (more than 1.80 m) presents multiple "influences spit out in the album".

As a teenager, she listened to "Lil Wayne, T-Pain, Missy Elliot, Booba", between a father professor in economics rather "French variety with Renaud" and an educator mother versed in Ivorian music.

"My mother would also wake me up with classical music, before going to school and one of my big brothers (she is the youngest of seven siblings) listened to rock-metal, Slipknot, I also remember Rammstein, there were sounds that I loved ".

From high school in the Lyon region, musical software accompanies it.

Then the shift took place in London, where heritage management studies were quickly abandoned.

- Projects in Ivory Coast -

London was capital for his "personal development".

"I found myself there being all alone, that's where I started having girlfriends."

Her love stories with women run through her songs, without filter and without her making it a militant act.

"It's natural in my life, it's natural in my lyrics, I didn't say to myself one day + go ahead I'm going to talk about girls! + (Laughs)".

Today she has put her suitcases down in Lisbon, even if she also passes through a HQ in La Courneuve (Paris region), which she shares with friends producers / musicians, and through a haunt in inner Paris.

But Côte d'Ivoire remains in focus.

"I go there more and more often, I try to attach myself there and my mother, after her retirement, wants to go back."

"There are little artists out there trying to do their thing: I opened my label & this Reckless in 2020 and I would love to sign artists there. I've always wanted to do that in music, put my artistic direction at the service of others, create a movement ".

Another kind of winning service.

© 2021 AFP