“There may be a way for me to do something in music! There’s a way, yes. Because if he signed tomorrow with a major record company, Ktouf would already have everything, or almost. His texts are already ultra-chiseled, his sounds very accomplished and his flow downright effective. “I am a hyper-perfectionist, confides this 22-year-old rapper from Montpellier. I have the concern for perfection, even if it means racking my brains, and finding more funding. While waiting to be noticed, Ktouf fights on, microphone in hand.
This Friday (10 p.m.), Ktouf, winner of the Rap Académie Occitanie springboard, will perform at the Halle Tropisme, at the YungFest, the very popular urban festival of Montpellier (Hérault). “My objective, right now, is not to be number 1, smiles Ktouf. It is to live from it. Living off music would be crazy. “In the meantime, he is a delivery man, “to make a little money”. But Ktouf firmly believes that his time will come.
“Since I was little, at home, we have been making music”
Because music has always been his second skin. “Since I was little, at home, we’ve been making music,” he says. My sister played the piano, my mother the ukulele… We have always been immersed in music. Ktouf, he was passionate about the guitar as a teenager. But quickly, he lets go of the guitar for a style that itchs him a little more: rap. In 2018, with childhood friends, he founded Skwang, an urban music group, and took to his first stages. “We produced our first sounds at home,” he recalls. We put on instrumentals that we found on YouTube, we wrote, we recorded ourselves on Audacity… It was just a delirium, we had absolutely no idea behind our heads! We were in a hurry for the weekend to arrive to get back to it. »
Little by little, the homemade productions of Skwang, by the band of childhood friends, are hitting the mark. “There was a little enthusiasm around us. We were a boy band, in 2021! laughs Ktouf, who for a time imagined a career in the kitchen, before giving it up. Because in hip-hop, the young artist from Montpellier likes it right away. “There’s better, huh! he smiles. “But I felt there was something…”
“As a child, I listened to songs, I said to myself, ‘How is it possible to create new things?’ »
But last year, “the group broke up,” says the artist. One of the members moved away, another joined the Army… And Ktouf continued on his way, alone. But he quickly produced titles, like Style, Poem, Feather Or Checkultra-promising.
It sounds very contemporary, but it’s also full of influences, like the RnB he played when he was a teenager, the Arabic music his mother listened to, African rhythms… “All that is in me he smiles. A first solo EP of 7 titles, key, will be released this Friday for its premiere at Yung Fest. “I remember, when I was little, I was listening to songs, and I was like, ‘But how is it possible to create new things?’, recalls the young artist. It’s funny to think that today, I got there. »
The whole Yung Fest program is this way.