The Franco-Guinean rapper Alpha Diallo alias Black M, who recently settled with his family in Côte d’Ivoire, is talking about him. Thursday April 6, in an interview with France TV, Black M is invited to talk about his father and his origins. His “hero”, left Mali, in the confines of Guinea, to settle in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. With his work as a cook, he manages to maintain a large family (Alpha, his brothers and sisters) and black in a neighborhood of bourgeois and whites, which houses the Eiffel Tower in particular. ” The hero ! He comes from a village in Guinea. You should know that Guinea is an extremely poor country in West Africa. In 2023, we don’t even have the FCFA franc yet, we are still with the Guinean franc, it’s very poor, but very beautiful of crazy ”.
It was enough to arouse controversy and the ire of Guinean Internet users who qualify Black M’s statements as “defamatory and offensive”. Internet users accuse him of denying his roots and of lacking consideration for his country of origin. Some have called it all the names of birds: ” As if his parents were not Guineans » ; « He is a mercenary in charge of promoting the CFA franc », « He is a failed or losing artist”….
Black M’s Apology
Following the wave of controversy, Alpha Diallo apologized to Guineans via Twitter and Facebook: “To denigrate Guinea is equivalent for me to denigrate my parents, my grandparents, my ancestors, my history”. He recalls that he has been going to Guinea since he was young. “My parents made it a point of honor to transmit to us, my brothers, sisters and me, the maximum of our culture. I can’t even express in words the richness of the lessons I learned from it”.
He reiterates that he could never say or even think ill of his home country. “I apologize to all those who felt offended by my clumsy remarks in Julia Martin’s interview on France TV”.
Will his apologies be enough to calm the heat?
Abdoulaye Pellel Bah