France's top rapper converts
2009-11-16 22:43
Paris - France's best-selling rap singer Diam's released a new album on Monday after a three-year hiatus that has seen the 29-year-old voice of Paris suburban angst undergo psychiatric treatment and embrace Islam.
The musical comeback of the Cypriot-born star came one month after she caused a stir when photos of her wearing a long black headscarf at a Paris area mosque were published in celebrity magazines.
Diam's, whose real name is Melanie Georgiades, reached super-stardom in France in 2006 with the release of Dans Ma Bulle (In My Bubble) in which she rapped about racism, poverty and injustice in France.
She won an MTV Europe Music Award in 2006 for best French act and Dans Ma Bulle became the best-selling album that year, with more than one million copies sold.
Success however proved to be poison for Diam's, who talks about overcoming a bout of depression and her conversion to Islam in her new album "SOS".
"Modern medicine was not able to heal my soul, so I turned to religion," she was quoted as saying about her conversion to Islam.
The artist spent much of last year avoiding the paparazzi and checking in and out of hospitals for treatment for mental illness.
Hit rock bottom
After hitting rock bottom, she spent a couple of months pouring her heart out in a studio and the result is SOS, with its debut single titled I Am Somebody in English.
Many of her songs deal with mental distress, but the loaded issue of being a Muslim in France comes up in Lily where she raps "I am the enemy because I am a convert and I wear the veil."
A prominent rights group has spoken out against Diam's, saying she has undergone an unfortunate makeover from a feisty streetwise girl from the suburbs to a subservient and traditional Muslim woman.
"With this new image, Diam's represents submission, tradition and isolation," Safia Labdi, president of Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissive) group defending women's rights.
"Diam's has had a hard time," she told Le Parisien newspaper. "She was lost and found herself by wearing the veil. This is something that we unfortunately see with a lot of young girls."
Diam's, a leftist sympathiser who has called President Nicolas Sarkozy a demagogue in her songs, plans to donate revenue from her album sales to her new charity foundation "Big Up Project" for Africa relief.
Born to a French mother and Greek Cypriot father, Diam's moved to the Paris suburb of Essonne at the age of three after her parents divorced.
Her first album released in 1999 Premier Mandat (First Mandate) was a flop, but she managed to break through four years later with the release of Brut de Femme (Raw Woman) that included the hit single DJ.
The release of the fourth album has been carefully scripted, with Diam's scheduled to give only a handful of interviews as her managers wonder how French youth will react to the new Diam's.