Born in France to formerly enslaved Nigerian Yoruba parents, Adebiyi’s cultural heritage and social influences were about as diverse as you can get – but that didn’t mean he wasn’t raised on a healthy (and obligatory) dose of Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Otis Redding; standard fare really. Although his Saian Supa Crew received a humble dose of commercial acclaim, Adebiyi felt the need to shake off the shackles of hip hop and embrace raps roots, as well as begin his own musical journey.
There was an acoustic guitar and much emotional support given to him from acclaimed Sierra Leonean-German singer-songwriter, Patrice, and a meeting with Gorillaz’s Dan The Automator which saw the pair working together for Adebiyi’s debut solo album, Jeune à la Retraite, and last year’s awesome Le Charme des Premiers Jours. His latest album opens with a riff that tricks you into thinking you’ve put on Portugal. The Man, then eases in and out of ragged rhythms, high energy indie rock, reggae and straight-up hip hop – all with the smooth delivery of Adebiyi’s rhymes – in a way that makes you feel like this collision of sounds makes sense. He’s found sonic harmony, cultural harmony, a harmony of his influences and really, it’s what he’s always wanted.
Recorded between his home in France and San Francisco, his latest album took some time but the result can’t be denied. “It was all up about one year, one year and a half,” Adebiyi says. “I had many ideas but I also had many other things I was working on.”
Travel also influences the time it takes to get a project done, particularly when you’re spreading it between two continents, and from a practical perspective, Adebiyi is also a family man. Still it’s the ever-present studio time-paradox – where the best laid plans can fall apart and the most time-poor projects can come together with ease – that ends up being the indefinable reason as to why a project took the time it did.
“I was really ready when I began this,” he says. “Sometimes some things go really fast and sometimes they just really don’t. So what I do now is I just try and be patient and wait for those moments. That’s when it’s the most natural and the best results happen ya know? But it involves a lot of waiting.”
Every diverse element on this sounds as though it comes from a completely natural place but given Adebiyi’s time in the industry – and having already come from a project that experienced a decade during which they rose to the heights of success before their light slowly faded – you can’t help but wonder how much of Adebiyi’s musical choices are strategic. Does he deliberately cram as many influences as he can into an album now he’s free to do so in his solo career? Are decisions ever based on the audience or on sales or is everything a purely creative expression?
“When I started I always had so many influences and I have always been more than just a rapper in the way some outside people view rap – but to me this is the heart of rap,” he says. “That’s why I always say I just have to do what I gotta do, I got to music through the music that felt natural. I was listening to rap music, French music, Afro-beat, reggae and it all came through into my music. I always knew I’d have to wait about ten years until every influence could start coming into my music though you know? And now it can.”
If the diverse range of sounds and genres were never consciously chosen to widen his audience, was there ever a concern that he might isolate them? “What I’m doing is so logical I don’t ever think that people will struggle to understand it; this is what’s so beautiful about rap music, you take all of this other music from outside and you put it all together – from classical to rock to reggae – and you make a rap song,” he says. “I’m making my own samples now and after I listen to a sample like actual music then I get to have fun. I don’t really think about being diverse, this music is just as close to me as I can be.”
Apart from the Hendrix-style blues riffs, the tumbling drums and electro melodies, the most outstanding part of Adebiyi’s overall sound is his ability to create such a cohesive energy. When he last came to Australia his collision of electronic and organic instrumentation was a highlight and it’s something that is slowly becoming a signature Féfé sounds. From his debut album, and probably from the moment he began re-inventing himself with that gifted acoustic guitar, organic melodies free from click tracks brought Adebiyi’s storytelling to life.
“It’s an amazing energy,” he says of playing with a band. “When I did the first album I really didn’t know anything about playing with a band, I learned everything on the album. Somehow, it worked and I liked that energy, it was like a rock energy and to me rock and rap are really close. The energy just had to stay alive in the live environment. It’s hip hop because I’m doing what we shouldn’t be doing and that’s hip hop – it doesn’t have to be labelled, it doesn’t have to be boxed in and somehow that’s always been my struggle. I was wondering for so long how I could be inside my work, how could I be comfortable with what I’m doing and I’ve really found that with this album and with this sound.”
The most unique thing about the Féfé storytelling is that, for the most part, it is in French and yet the energy he creates translates a mood that goes beyond words. While that might seem utterly absurd when talking about a rapper – a genre so dependent on word play and innuendo – Adebiyi proves that storytelling within music really is a complex endeavour. While each rhyming couplet may not be absorbed, the message is clear at every point – the music and the words are one.
Still, English saturation is a large part of the McDonalisation of society and I asked Adebiyi if anyone has every pushed him to record and entire album in English. “No I’ve never been pushed to do anything in English,” he says. “I’m Nigerian and Nigeria is an English-speaking country, so I do wonder if I should release an album in English for my people – but no, not just to sell more records. But my problem is French is the language I know, it’s the language I can play with and the language I can reinvent but English, I can try and I’ve tried a little in this album, but it’s a question of confidence and I’m not confident in English.”
Having performed around the world his confidence lies now within the energy of his music also, and its ability to translate what may get lost in the langue. “The energy is universal and that’s the thing I can play with among everyone,” he says. “They don’t know what I’m talking about, they don’t hear my wordplay, but I think they always feel it with good music. I think it really helps with a good energy too and not an angry energy which is what my energy is.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
