Benab, the new rap nugget of Sevran dubbed by Maes, releases his first album

With a step smoother than that of his glorious elders, Benab digs a furrow opened by Kaaris ten years ago and whose route Maes or Kalash Criminel have since extended. At 26, Youness Benabdelouahed is Sevran’s new rap nugget. After having accumulated millions of views on YouTube, the young artist with the slender figure is releasing his first 13-track album this Friday, “Au clair de la rue”.

The first seconds of eponymous song illustrate his musical style, “a melodious, benabic rap”, says the person concerned. A few notes on the piano, then the heady voice of the rapper singing his encounter with the street. “I like to mix the two, the classic and the pe-ra,” he slips.

Benab’s path is that of a suburban child who preferred “odd jobs” to “bad roads”, describes Raouf, his manager. “I’m not going to talk about robberies in my sounds, because I’ve never done any,” confirms the artist. I tell what I see, my life experience. I’m not going to advocate hatred or peace. “

The man only changes his good humor for the photo. When he recounts his youth and his discovery of the world of rap, the Sevranais wears a smile that reveals the pleasure of having found the path that suits him. It was not won.

“I went on stage as if I had done it all my life”

His musical career would be, according to him, the fruit of pure chance. “It was two or three years ago, I was looking for work,” says Benab. I had just finished my technical-commercial BTS and I was a pizza delivery man. I got fired. “

In Sevran, the boy has been seeing Maes and Bersa since childhood. The first released a remarkable debut album in 2018, and his younger brother “followed his career from the start”. The second is an influential “beatmaker”, a composer of melodies. With such luxurious godfathers and a certain gift for singing, could Benab escape rap?

One day, he is invited to put his voice on a piece. “We just needed a guy who could sing,” he says. I entered the studio for a test session. I immediately liked getting into the cabin and writing toplines [NDLR : les paroles qu’on couche sur une mélodie]. »

The first songs, “La Vida” and “Banal”, quickly accumulate hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. Duets will follow with Maes, Kalash Criminel or Imen ES. “We started to go on with small concerts,” continues Benab. I was going on stage like I had done it all my life. “

All his life, no, but the artist has drawn on his theatrical experience. For three years, in college and then in high school in Sevran, the teenager tames the boards by playing contemporary pieces or scenarios. “I did this to channel myself,” he explains. My mom signed me up because I fought too often. “

“I don’t see myself 30 or 40 years old in rap”

Unlike Maes, Kaaris or Kalash Criminel, the turbulent pupil Benab was kept away from the news pages of the newspapers. He maintains a friendly proximity with the first city. “We’re the same age, we were in the same class,” he recalls. We are in mutual aid mode. I’ll bring him some toplines, too. We don’t think about money. “

The new nugget of Sevran rap doesn’t think of a career either, at least that’s what he says. “Tomorrow, if I no longer enjoy myself, I will stop,” he blurted out without hesitation. I don’t see myself 30 or 40 years old in rap. “

The young artist therefore still has a few years ahead of him. That he intends to use to obtain what he really seeks: “recognition” He gives himself the means, assures Jabyr, the cousin of Benab. He and Bouj Bouj, a mutual friend, accompany him on his trips back and forth between Sevran and the recording studio in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.

“Some weeks, he came here three times a day, seven days a week,” he says, slumped on a sofa dominated, among other things, by the diamond disc awarded to Soprano for his album “Cosmopolitanie”. “All the artists record here, and I have the keys,” laughs Benab.

Very present in the studio, where he sometimes officiates as a sound engineer, the 26-year-old Sevranais does not forget his city of heart, his “home”. “I want to show that there are not only dark sides but also good sides,” he says. One of his first tracks released on the Internet is not titled “Sevrania”?