PORTRAIT. Toulouse: Zinée, a colorful rap at the Rose Festival
In a few months, the Toulouse rapper has experienced a meteoric rise. With her album Cobalt, released in 2021, she chained concert dates. His talent allows him to open the Rose Festival in Toulouse, which takes place on September 2, 3.
Zinée is the calm… and the storm. A huge, hypnotizing, cobalt-colored wave – the name of her latest album – that breaks when she takes the microphone. But it’s also a diamond in the rough that floats in her oversized tracksuits that she rarely takes off. Inside, the young 25-year-old woman with an angelic face embodies a nonchalant serenity. A shell that she breaks while rapping. With her high tessitura, Zinée – who takes her artist name from Zizou, a nickname given to her by her childhood friends – blesses herself by exploring herself.
The rapper with long smooth black hair cries out her sorrows, her doubts, unleashes her uninhibited darkness in an assumed ego trip and over a few sentences, lets her boundless determination roar. “It costs me to open up, admits the rapper bluntly. Acting out when you don’t feel like it is hard. But the music clearly saved me. It’s a lift in the quality of life. »
The rising rap star, a bit flayed alive, intensely feels the music. She associates sounds with colors, which allow her to explore strong emotions.
double passion
Initially, music was not really part of the career plan of the child from Toulouse. Even though as a child she played the piano and the guitar and at 14 the teenager had written a rap text on Tallion’s law. “With hindsight, it really wasn’t crazy,” she rewinds. laughing. Before performing in front of the camera, she dreamed of becoming a director, her first passion. After a year of studying cinema at the Toulouse Jean-Jaurès faculty, Zinée flew to Brussels and joined a filmmaking school. On the spot, it’s disillusionment. “It’s not what I expected. They explained to me that what I wanted to do, I will not learn here. And I showed my work to directors who told me that it was not incredible”.
Zinée finds a job as a saleswoman in a clothing store. A year later, she moved to Paris and continued to work in clothes shops. One evening, during a barbecue, Zinée met the Dojo of the rapper collective 75e Session, which she ended up joining a few months later.
The rapper decides to put on her art. A label has its premises a few meters from his apartment. She meets the director and makes him listen to some of her sounds on her dictaphone – Zinée had never recorded in the studio before. He signs it in 2019. Everything is linked. The rapper released a sound on streaming platforms, then her first project “Futée”. “In a few months, I was living from my rap. I owe a little to Toulouse, slips the one who has never forgotten her roots. She made me angry.
O Toulouse
The rapper often returns to her city of birth. During a stay, she met Bigflo in a bar in Les Carmes. A few months later, the rapper offered him to integrate the programming of his festival.
This Friday, September 2, Zinée will open the Rose Festival at 4:55 p.m., organized by Bigflo and Oli, Bleu Citron and the group La Dépêche. “It’s an honor, exclaims the Toulousaine. I’m so happy that there is this festival. I know it will last, we needed it. »
Zinée will appear on stage with her usual slab and an Adidas tracksuit, with which she has entered into a partnership. The color? Pink, for the city, the festival and no doubt its mood.
After her concert dates, the rapper will return to work on her next project, which will have cinematic writing. The Zinée wave is heading towards new horizons.