Le Vinyle Club Vinyl Le Vinyl Club Ipséité - Damso

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Damso loves words for their meaning and musicality. He has managed to restore the prestige of French rap in the original sense of this musical genre, meaning rhythm, flow, and poetry.
The Brussels artist has become a key figure in the rap scene, and with Ipséité, his second album, we understand better why.
Some have criticized him for his raw and sultry lyrics, but after all, it's typical of great poets to navigate through troubled waters… Ipséité carries us along like a drunken boat into the dark, at times moving universe of this multifaceted rapper who has carved out a distinctive place in a highly competitive environment.

An album with a devouring creativity, far from the clichés of gangsta rap, and regarded as his best album to date. Ipséité is released with great fanfare and will reveal to the public this great artist of the word. Our hearts have been "dancing the Macarena" with this unique artist who marks this golden age of French rap at the end of the 2010s.
First, we must set the scene for Ipséité and recall the personal history of the rapper: William Kalubi Mwamba, aka Damso, was born in Kinshasa in the early 1990s. Fleeing the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he moved to Belgium with his parents at the age of 9. "Young African who became rich, I left the country without papers," the rapper recounts in "Kin La Belle," a track from the album that pays a striking tribute to his hometown.
The wounded teenager, William, finds refuge in writing and in his constant quest for a lost identity. Studying psychology in Brussels, he learns the art of flow and releases his first mixtape in 2014: Salle d'attente. The waiting room of his life and/or the birth of his art… we will note that the mixtape catches the attention of Booba, the big boss of French rap, who decides to sign him to his label 92i and releases "Paris C'est Loin" featuring him. Damso stands out for the fluidity of his flow, laid back and cold, and for his charisma. William is ready, the lyrics are there, and Batterie Faible comes out a few months later.

Right from the start, Damso's world is striking with the darkness of his lyrics, a calm yet abrupt rap, which critics will deem vulgar given the raw, sexual, and dark lyrics, yet always with disarming poetry. The end of the 2010s is a prosperous time for French rap, with creativity and a variety of projects flooding the platforms, and Damso knows he must hit hard to stand out.
Ipséité was released in April 2017: it consists of 14 tracks, 14 gems that will be etched in the granite of French rap.
The title itself, which we don't really understand at first: "Ipséité", a term borrowed from philosophy, specifically from phenomenology, which encompasses a whole concept about "proper identity" that makes one person unique and absolutely distinct from another.
A name that sets the tone for the album where each track is distinct from the other, yet forms a whole. "Signaler",
"Mosaïque Solitaire", "Macarena", "Kin La Belle", "J'Respect R"… Ipséité is a factory of singles that quickly flood the airwaves and parties. "Everyone dances the Macarena" but the darkness is always there, as evidenced by the masterful "Mosaïque Solitaire", a double track in one, or the nightmarish ending "Une Âme pour Deux", a bad trip that plunges us into rawness and terror, as if to say that the final point is just a deception, and that waking up will always be difficult.

Ipséité is a slap that leaves you reeling, which is why nearly 8 years after its release, it holds a rare timelessness in a French rap that has become a bit too consumerist… It is still too early to crown it with the medal of "classic" in French rap, but Ipséité is heading straight for that highway of recognition.
Proof of this is, and rare in the music industry, it became double diamond certified last year.
Damso will continue to surprise thereafter… up until he announces a break in his career in 2025 with the highly anticipated BEYĂH …
To be continued…

Marie-Laure Sitbon

THE ANECDOTE
On the track "B.QuedusaalVie", the second track from Ipséité, the backgrounds were recorded by a taxi driver.
Without going into too much detail, the author of Ipséité only specified that it was two in the morning at the time, that this taxi man wasn't really in his right mind and that he kept his backgrounds. He’s the one who does: "I only do dirty stuff hey hey" in the background. Everything is very well.

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