Complain Interview |
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Photo by Runcol Justin Runcol Grasland
Tell Rappfox readers a bit about yourself.
Well, I was born in Rennes, France. I began speaking English with my nanny at the age of 4, then started to go to the French-American institute at about 7 years old in my city instead of going out in the hood to play because my parents always said "English is the language of the future, you'll always need it in your life" (90s parents right?). Then, as I was pretty terrible in every subject at school but English, I quickly decided to become an English teacher. Thus, I did everything I could to go to English University. Today I've got a master's degree in English language, grammar, literature, civilization and politics and I passed the teacher's qualification exam (which is extremely hard in France for some reason) to become an English teacher in public middle and high school. That's why I am French but still can speak English properly. I know it's extremely rare to see a French person being able to speak English but that also shows I was right to become a teacher. (Teaching English in France is kinda like owning a funeral home, you can't be out of job, there will always be more coming! Haha. I'm also the proud father of the 7 year-old boy called Louie I dedicated my song entitled "Letter", and of course a producer and rapper.
Your sound is inspired by 90s Hip Hop, how did you get into Hip Hop?
Well, I was born in 1984 and was always about music since my first boombox. I got it for Christmas when I was 5 years old. I used to listen to the radio and record the songs which caught my ears on tape (the oldest readers will remember the “press play+record” on the boombox haha!) and listen to them over and over. So I was always very much into music even though my parents weren’t into it that much. When I was like 11 or 12 years old, a time when old school hip hop was booming, one of the radio stations started broadcasting Hip Hop a lot and they had Hip Hop shows run by famous French DJs such as Cut Killer, DJ Krueger, DJ Kheops and others.. They brought records from the US and released mixes on tape and CDs. It introduced me to this sound that I still listen to today, to this culture I’m still passionate about, Mobb Deep, Wu-Tang, Busta Rhymes, MOP, EPMD, Rass Kass, Cypress Hill, Dr Dre, Warren G, Snoop Dogg, LL Cool G, Skee Lo, and a lot more. This list isn’t by order of preference, just some I remember from the top of my head.
Your self-titled album Complain is a solid release. As I mentioned to you, the sound is a little darker than what I usually enjoy and listen to on a regular basis, but I can hear a rich lyrical talent coupled with compelling beats. What are some of the inspirations for that music?
First, thank you! About the beat making, my main inspiration was Apollo Brown but more influenced me in the making. But it’s when I discovered Apollo Brown’s albums that I decided to start producing. I heard an interview where he said something like “producers mainly try to make the crowd bounce, I produce to bring out emotions.” It was such an amazing way to see the process of creating. I immediately started saving money to buy the studio equipment to be able to produce beats. I already had the equipment to record and mix songs as I had been singing songs but for different musical genres apart from Hip Hop for a while but I didn’t have the sampler and the midi keyboard.
Disappointed by so many people who told me they would help me produce my songs, I decided to learn each step of the production to be able do it entirely by myself. So I’m talking beat making, mixing and all the way down to the final mastering, I started binge watching tutorials on YouTube. I watched every masterclass I could find, every music university class I could find, until I was able to do what I do now. I needed to sound as professional as the pros. Every time I tried but didn’t match the quality of what I listened to, I would go back to learning. I was also motivated by a friend who was into production. We would listen to each other’s beats and try to be better than the other all the time. (Big up my man O.G Samourai!!!)
However, when you make music, you don’t want to “sound like” somebody else, so I brought MY emotions to my music. It seems my life is darker than Apollo Brown’s, haha. I’ve had a pretty tough life so my background is pretty dark and rainy.
Your musical style is reminiscent of Jedi Mind Tricks and Immortal Technique, who are some of your musical inspirations?
People often tell me that but my main inspiration is Ugly Heroes, composed of Chris Orrick (Red Pill at the time) and Verbal Kent (who are produced by Apollo Brown). That’s the reason why I kinda have two types of voices on the album. But as I’ve been listening to Hip Hop for 25 years, every rapper is a part of what I do now I guess. I prefer East Coast rap so my style is mainly influenced by New York rappers though. Giving you the whole list would take a while so I guess I’ll let the readers guess who influenced me the most apart from the Ugly Heroes!
Well, I was born in Rennes, France. I began speaking English with my nanny at the age of 4, then started to go to the French-American institute at about 7 years old in my city instead of going out in the hood to play because my parents always said "English is the language of the future, you'll always need it in your life" (90s parents right?). Then, as I was pretty terrible in every subject at school but English, I quickly decided to become an English teacher. Thus, I did everything I could to go to English University. Today I've got a master's degree in English language, grammar, literature, civilization and politics and I passed the teacher's qualification exam (which is extremely hard in France for some reason) to become an English teacher in public middle and high school. That's why I am French but still can speak English properly. I know it's extremely rare to see a French person being able to speak English but that also shows I was right to become a teacher. (Teaching English in France is kinda like owning a funeral home, you can't be out of job, there will always be more coming! Haha. I'm also the proud father of the 7 year-old boy called Louie I dedicated my song entitled "Letter", and of course a producer and rapper.
Your sound is inspired by 90s Hip Hop, how did you get into Hip Hop?
Well, I was born in 1984 and was always about music since my first boombox. I got it for Christmas when I was 5 years old. I used to listen to the radio and record the songs which caught my ears on tape (the oldest readers will remember the “press play+record” on the boombox haha!) and listen to them over and over. So I was always very much into music even though my parents weren’t into it that much. When I was like 11 or 12 years old, a time when old school hip hop was booming, one of the radio stations started broadcasting Hip Hop a lot and they had Hip Hop shows run by famous French DJs such as Cut Killer, DJ Krueger, DJ Kheops and others.. They brought records from the US and released mixes on tape and CDs. It introduced me to this sound that I still listen to today, to this culture I’m still passionate about, Mobb Deep, Wu-Tang, Busta Rhymes, MOP, EPMD, Rass Kass, Cypress Hill, Dr Dre, Warren G, Snoop Dogg, LL Cool G, Skee Lo, and a lot more. This list isn’t by order of preference, just some I remember from the top of my head.
Your self-titled album Complain is a solid release. As I mentioned to you, the sound is a little darker than what I usually enjoy and listen to on a regular basis, but I can hear a rich lyrical talent coupled with compelling beats. What are some of the inspirations for that music?
First, thank you! About the beat making, my main inspiration was Apollo Brown but more influenced me in the making. But it’s when I discovered Apollo Brown’s albums that I decided to start producing. I heard an interview where he said something like “producers mainly try to make the crowd bounce, I produce to bring out emotions.” It was such an amazing way to see the process of creating. I immediately started saving money to buy the studio equipment to be able to produce beats. I already had the equipment to record and mix songs as I had been singing songs but for different musical genres apart from Hip Hop for a while but I didn’t have the sampler and the midi keyboard.
Disappointed by so many people who told me they would help me produce my songs, I decided to learn each step of the production to be able do it entirely by myself. So I’m talking beat making, mixing and all the way down to the final mastering, I started binge watching tutorials on YouTube. I watched every masterclass I could find, every music university class I could find, until I was able to do what I do now. I needed to sound as professional as the pros. Every time I tried but didn’t match the quality of what I listened to, I would go back to learning. I was also motivated by a friend who was into production. We would listen to each other’s beats and try to be better than the other all the time. (Big up my man O.G Samourai!!!)
However, when you make music, you don’t want to “sound like” somebody else, so I brought MY emotions to my music. It seems my life is darker than Apollo Brown’s, haha. I’ve had a pretty tough life so my background is pretty dark and rainy.
Your musical style is reminiscent of Jedi Mind Tricks and Immortal Technique, who are some of your musical inspirations?
People often tell me that but my main inspiration is Ugly Heroes, composed of Chris Orrick (Red Pill at the time) and Verbal Kent (who are produced by Apollo Brown). That’s the reason why I kinda have two types of voices on the album. But as I’ve been listening to Hip Hop for 25 years, every rapper is a part of what I do now I guess. I prefer East Coast rap so my style is mainly influenced by New York rappers though. Giving you the whole list would take a while so I guess I’ll let the readers guess who influenced me the most apart from the Ugly Heroes!
You mentioned to me that you made that album whilst undergoing chemotherapy, tell me about that journey.
It was long and boring. I didn’t start producing exactly when I got the news. Maybe something like six months before. But when I got the news, I reckon it darkened my music somehow naturally. Moreover, I stopped working so I had a lot of time on my hands. As I got kind of physically weak and was kinda crushed by the news, I spent a lot of time home so I didn’t have much to do when I wasn’t going in and out of the hospital. I spent hours in my home studio, learning, producing, writing, recording. I beat cancer for the first time in June 2018. But the fuc*er came back and I was diagnosed with it a second time in September 2018. I had to go through the process of chemotherapy a second time from then. So I started getting chemo treatment a second time from September but this time chemo wasn’t enough as the cancerous cells got used to it so, (and this is when science gets unbelievably into the future), they had to pump all my blood out of my body, make it pass through a device which would select and keep my strongest stem cells and put the blood back in. (That was in December 2018.) Then I was locked in a sterile environment at the hospital for a month and went through a stem cell transplant in February 2019. They doubled the chemo treatment and put the previously selected strongest stem cells back in to help my body fight the disease. Then we hoped the transplant would work, and it did.
When I got in, they let me bring my studio equipment so I kept working while locked in. (You should have seen the look of the nurses and doctors when I brought it. Haha!) When I got out at the beginning of March 2019, I finished my chemo treatment (which lasted until December 2019) Thus, I beat cancer a second time. The thing is that, with that type of blood cancer, most people get cured after the first round but as I got two rounds of chemo treatment in a row, it burnt my nerves. So I am now suffering from neuropathy but it’s alright, it turns out nerves grow back, slowly but surely so I’ll get over that around this summer they told me. At least I don’t have cancer anymore, my doctor called me 3 days ago to tell me the good news. So from now on, some rappers may say this or that about me, I beat Death. Nothing can put me down. Some people may try to add rocks to my (very) rocky road, but this guy is relentless. Whatever difficult situation pops up now, I know I can overcome it.
It was long and boring. I didn’t start producing exactly when I got the news. Maybe something like six months before. But when I got the news, I reckon it darkened my music somehow naturally. Moreover, I stopped working so I had a lot of time on my hands. As I got kind of physically weak and was kinda crushed by the news, I spent a lot of time home so I didn’t have much to do when I wasn’t going in and out of the hospital. I spent hours in my home studio, learning, producing, writing, recording. I beat cancer for the first time in June 2018. But the fuc*er came back and I was diagnosed with it a second time in September 2018. I had to go through the process of chemotherapy a second time from then. So I started getting chemo treatment a second time from September but this time chemo wasn’t enough as the cancerous cells got used to it so, (and this is when science gets unbelievably into the future), they had to pump all my blood out of my body, make it pass through a device which would select and keep my strongest stem cells and put the blood back in. (That was in December 2018.) Then I was locked in a sterile environment at the hospital for a month and went through a stem cell transplant in February 2019. They doubled the chemo treatment and put the previously selected strongest stem cells back in to help my body fight the disease. Then we hoped the transplant would work, and it did.
When I got in, they let me bring my studio equipment so I kept working while locked in. (You should have seen the look of the nurses and doctors when I brought it. Haha!) When I got out at the beginning of March 2019, I finished my chemo treatment (which lasted until December 2019) Thus, I beat cancer a second time. The thing is that, with that type of blood cancer, most people get cured after the first round but as I got two rounds of chemo treatment in a row, it burnt my nerves. So I am now suffering from neuropathy but it’s alright, it turns out nerves grow back, slowly but surely so I’ll get over that around this summer they told me. At least I don’t have cancer anymore, my doctor called me 3 days ago to tell me the good news. So from now on, some rappers may say this or that about me, I beat Death. Nothing can put me down. Some people may try to add rocks to my (very) rocky road, but this guy is relentless. Whatever difficult situation pops up now, I know I can overcome it.
And what was the process of making the songs and album, whilst experiencing such an adversary of life?
You’ve got to play with the cards you’re dealt with. I’ve always been a “black cat” as I always was very unlucky. I got a lot of bad hands, health wise, family wise, financially wise, but instead of being broken, I used my scars to create Complain. I put all my anger, my rage, my fear, my feelings into my music and that’s what people can listen to now. It’s a 100% genuine emotion-filled project and a true story. It’s dark, it’s melancholic, it’s filled with rage, sadness, lack of understanding why life keeps sending sh*t my way but it’s 100% authentic. I suppose it gives my music and character a stamp of authenticity. I am real, 100% real.
You’re still battling against health issues, does this affect your ability to make music? And if so, how?
At the beginning I had problems with grasping things between my thumb and index finger, or with walking (I limped and wasn’t able to walk for more than 4 minutes in a row without stopping to rest a bit for a while.) because of neuropathy. But as I only need one finger to tap on my sampler or keyboard, to type to write songs on my computer, it doesn’t affect me. I told you, I’m relentless! I still use music as my own private therapy. The emotions inside of me are changing though. I guess my second project won’t have the same “colour”.
What is next for Complain?
More music! I am (almost) not sick anymore but I still love making music! I do it because I love it, because it’s fun, and of course for the fans, (and for me!)
If I make it big, good for me. If I don’t, I’m still having fun so it’s a win-win situation here.
I don’t want to give you a date for my next project but I can assure you there will be more music. Singles? EP? Album? I don’t know, time will tell.
Today’s ways of releasing music is mostly streaming on streaming platforms. So lots of people tell me I should release singles to remain relevant. But I don’t know, I come from the old school. Releasing albums makes me prouder. It feels like something whole. And I don’t want to be rushed by a date, you can’t control your emotions and as I said, i need them to put them into what I do. So it will come when it will come! Nothing will be released before I’m fully proud of it. But singles and EPs could be something new. We’ll see!
I would also like to record featurings with other rappers to bring a new vibe to my music. Everybody loves a good featuring, doesn’t it?
Listen to Complain's self-titled debut album or on Spotify, you will not be disappointed!
Follow Complain on Instagram, Facebook, Soundcloud and Twitter. Keep an eye out for our interview!
You’ve got to play with the cards you’re dealt with. I’ve always been a “black cat” as I always was very unlucky. I got a lot of bad hands, health wise, family wise, financially wise, but instead of being broken, I used my scars to create Complain. I put all my anger, my rage, my fear, my feelings into my music and that’s what people can listen to now. It’s a 100% genuine emotion-filled project and a true story. It’s dark, it’s melancholic, it’s filled with rage, sadness, lack of understanding why life keeps sending sh*t my way but it’s 100% authentic. I suppose it gives my music and character a stamp of authenticity. I am real, 100% real.
You’re still battling against health issues, does this affect your ability to make music? And if so, how?
At the beginning I had problems with grasping things between my thumb and index finger, or with walking (I limped and wasn’t able to walk for more than 4 minutes in a row without stopping to rest a bit for a while.) because of neuropathy. But as I only need one finger to tap on my sampler or keyboard, to type to write songs on my computer, it doesn’t affect me. I told you, I’m relentless! I still use music as my own private therapy. The emotions inside of me are changing though. I guess my second project won’t have the same “colour”.
What is next for Complain?
More music! I am (almost) not sick anymore but I still love making music! I do it because I love it, because it’s fun, and of course for the fans, (and for me!)
If I make it big, good for me. If I don’t, I’m still having fun so it’s a win-win situation here.
I don’t want to give you a date for my next project but I can assure you there will be more music. Singles? EP? Album? I don’t know, time will tell.
Today’s ways of releasing music is mostly streaming on streaming platforms. So lots of people tell me I should release singles to remain relevant. But I don’t know, I come from the old school. Releasing albums makes me prouder. It feels like something whole. And I don’t want to be rushed by a date, you can’t control your emotions and as I said, i need them to put them into what I do. So it will come when it will come! Nothing will be released before I’m fully proud of it. But singles and EPs could be something new. We’ll see!
I would also like to record featurings with other rappers to bring a new vibe to my music. Everybody loves a good featuring, doesn’t it?
Listen to Complain's self-titled debut album or on Spotify, you will not be disappointed!
Follow Complain on Instagram, Facebook, Soundcloud and Twitter. Keep an eye out for our interview!