After Dua Lipa released ‘Fever,’ a single collaboration with French super star Angele, we are all hooked on Francophone artists! Their sounds, the culture, the unique poetry in their lyrics – it all gives us shivers and makes us learn this beautiful language (and eat some cheese tbh!).
Below, we pointed out the 6 Francophone singers you have to check out and follow in 2021!
CHILLA
Noticed by the biggest names in French rap (like Big Flo and Oli, Kery James, Fianso and Féfé who invited her to the 1st part of their concert), CHILLA is now one of the hottest names in French music. The young artist started playing the violin at 6 and continued to develop her art in private school until she was 15. As soon as she graduated, she let go of the violin for rap, music that has always followed her and which perfectly matches her teenage desire to “spit out her anger”. Chilla’s musical palette is filled with a thousand colors of emotions and somewhat anti-macho rap, conscious and generational, which imposes a style of rare richness, and confidence.
MARINA KAYE
Marina Kaye is a 21-year-old French artist from Marseille, who got highly recognised a few years ago when her debut single “Homeless” reached #1 on all respectable French music charts. Before that, Marina had never considered herself capable of being a pop singer. Describing herself as a “shy” and “weird” child growing up, Marina didn’t even know she could sing until one of her friends told her so. From there, Marina’s friend entered her into France’s Got Talent which she won in 2011 at the age of 13. In 2012 she signed to TGIT Music to work on her first album, Fearless. The album topped the charts in France and later became certified double platinum.
Now Marina is making “dark pop” with a mature outlook on life. Her voice, which flits from mellifluous in one beat to pop-operatic in the next, is a beautiful addition to her songwriting. Stylistically, her music may jump between piano pop and electronic/R&B sounds.
AICHA DOSSO
The singer-songwriter, actress and writer was born in Ivory Coast and grew-up in Paris where she has studied English at La Sorbonne. Later on, she moved to New York to study method acting at the acclaimed Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. She considers reviving the forgotten art of Parsian-style musical cabaret her true calling. The talented artist inspired by her cosmopolitan heritage, which you experience in her music that ranges from Parisian Cabaret classics to a more modern form of ballad usually found in contemporary pop. Her music is certainly in a category of its own.
POUPIE
Poupie is an electric battery! It shows in her way of being, and in her music. At 21, the singer released her first EP, entitled Poupie, which reveals all the energy and uniqueness of an artist ready to take the world by storm. On each of her projects, she explores her trap, reggae and pop ideas in her signature style. There is always a word, an expression that reminds us of who we are listening to.
Firstly singing in English, then in Spanish, it was only recently that she tried her hand at French. As she explains: “It’s a language so close to me that it allowed me to look deeper into my personality, to reveal more things.”
HOSHI
Two years after a first album entitled “Suffice it to believe”, which has sold more than 200,000 copies, the one that is described as the new star of French song (reference to her stage name, star in Japanese) s’is about to release a second opus on June 5, 2020. It is in the tourbus of a tour of more than 140 dates across France that this new album called “Sommeil levant” is born, including the first single “Amour Censure”is already flooding the radio waves and accumulating more than a million views on Youtube.Among the 14 tracks that will make up this new album, Hoshi takes us on a colorful journey between his childhood memories, his personal wounds, and his first steps in the life of an artist.A sharper album, like the journey of this artist who has not finished talking about her.
TAL
Described as France’s answer to Rihanna, urban-pop diva Tal was born in Israel in 1989 to a guitarist father and professional singer mother before she emigrated to the Le Marais district of Paris with her family as a child. She learned to play the piano and guitar and enrolled in modern jazz dance lessons at age 12, and after a brief stint in a theater group called Les Sales Gosses, began performing covers in several of the city’s piano bars, where she was discovered by songwriter/producer L’Aura Marciano. The pair spent two years working on her debut album, Le Droit de Rêver, which contained collaborations with dancehall star Sean Paul and French-Algerian rapper L’Algérino, and went on to chart inside the Top Ten upon its release in 2011.