FouKi in search of paradise lost
Zayon is what the rapper considers to be his best album to date.
The world has become extremely tense, remarks FouKi. And his star status, acquired a few years ago, means that he is not often left alone. These two observations make him want to escape, and this is precisely what he does on his new album, Zayon, inviting his fans to do the same by listening to it.
FouKi, locked up at home while he wrote his album in a pandemic period, could invent a little paradise of his own, having nowhere to go. Moreover, the title of the opus (and one of its songs) is taken from Zion, a concept at the heart of the Rastafarian religion that FouKi, who added his famous Zay touch to it, associates with a fictional paradise where there are no more problems.
A crazy world
This world which seems less benevolent to him, FouKi evokes it a few times on his new album.
“We are caught in a spiral of hatred, he affirms in interview with Metro. People are less nice to each other. For example, the other day, I almost ran into someone when I left the convenience store without seeing them. Before, I would have been told to be careful. Now I'm being pissed off.”
And being a star in this tense world? “It's tough a bit.” The rapper doesn't necessarily want to show off with his girlfriend or his cat, he says, but people sometimes act like he owes them.
We add the people who occasionally approach it in a disrespectful way and we end up with an observation. “I don’t like going out anymore, it makes me feel uncomfortable. It makes me happy to take a picture with a kid, but inside of me, I just want to live a normal life”, launches the one who leaves places he liked to frequent before know the celebrity.
The world has become extremely tense, notes FouKi. Photo: Bertrand Exertier/Métro
Not like before
Thus, we feel a good dose of nostalgia on Zayon. For example, the song Ségala paints a sincere and authentic souvenir portrait of the artist's adolescence, before his stardom. “It was so fun when we were just chillingevery day with my friends”, says the one who has since had to create a shell to face all the changes in his life.
Several of the old friends with whom he used to music in time have also appreciated this piece, finding that their friend rapped there “as before”. FouKi is delighted, while specifying that he does not necessarily want to repeat what he has already done.
“Sometimes people tell me that my music isn't what it used to be… well, so much the better! My worst fear is being a copy of myself. If you leave the train, it's OK, but at least it keeps moving forward, it doesn't stagnate.”
FouKi adds that he prefers songs with a little resistance to the first listening, but whose music ends up getting on board, only songs that instantly charm, but that we don't listen to a month later.
An album whose he is proud
Zayonis what the rapper considers to be his best album so far. He doesn't know if he will count successes like Copilote or Gayé, but anyway, “that's not the goal”.
In the artist's opinion, the album has a nice color and is better designed, because it has two guiding lines – one joyful, the other less – which follow and overlap each other, in a game of perspective.
Other artists also appear on his new opus. Here, no Loud or Charlotte Cardin; it would be too obvious, believes FouKi, who prefers to search to find more surprising collaborations. It was in this vein that he launched Copilote with Jay Scøtt, an artist who is now ultra-popular, but underestimated at the time.
On Zayon, we find a collaboration with Swing and Primero (two Belgian rappers members of the group L'Or du commun), one with Imposs (veteran of the scene and favorite Quebec rapper of FouKi) and – the most surprising – one with P'tit Belliveau , with whom the rapper makes a song celebrating Saint-Jean-Baptiste and National Acadian Day.
FouKi says he is particularly proud of the album, all the more that he himself produced the majority of the beats for the project, which was previously much rarer.
It is also the opus on which he worked the most lyrics. Thus, the listener will hear much less Zay Zay (an expression that made the mark of the rapper), launched here and there. “Writing took me longer, because I wanted to find things to say that were close to my heart. So it came naturally to include less Zay. Why pokea Zay if I can pokea word that has more impact?”
So the train keeps moving for the Montreal rapper. A train that will stop at Place Bell in Laval and at the Videotron Center in Quebec City on April 8 and 22 for two large-scale launches, before continuing on its way to Zayon.
