Five huge tour buses are parked at the back of the Zénith de Caen, this Thursday, May 5, the day of the resumption of the Sexion d’Assault tour, interrupted for the month of Ramadan. Three of them are waiting for the artists and the other two for the technical team, all ready to hit the roads of France for around forty concerts, including two – May 14 and 15 – at Paris la Défense Arena. “It’s the return of kings”, boldly launches the group in the video announcing this tour. Not without reason.
From 2010 to 2013, the seven rappers of the Parisian group indeed dominated the French scene with two albums, The school vital points (2010) et The Apogee (2012), and contributed to tracing the contours of the genre defined today as that of “urban pop”: a mixture of rap and song on music in tune with the times, without taking too virulent positions on the societal topics. They celebrate the “upside down caps”, their choice of a life far from traditional family codes (Sorry), their desire to pile up gold records, their clothes and their label, Wati B, and pay tribute to their mothers “before they go”. But after two albums – the last of which sold more than a million copies – the friends of 9e district of Paris brought together by a rap producer, ex-soccer coach, Dawala, decided to pursue their solo career, with varying fortunes.
Gims as master of ceremonies
Ten years therefore that the seven members of the rap group had not played together, ten years that their public, lulled by their hits during the college years, had not seen them on stage. So, as soon as they announced their reunion at the end of 2021, most of the tour dates sold out within hours. Others have been added, but Sexion d’Assault may have had too much of an appetite. A week before the date, there were still plenty of places left for the May 15 concert at Paris la Défense Arena, as in other cities. And the group probably had a little light hand on the scenography: a screen and three rows of columns with projectors playing on the mass effect of the group. No musicians – unlike the Gims solo concert at the Stade de France – no DJs to interact with musically but a soundtrack that sometimes takes over from the choruses. All this, with these muffled infrabasses which transform the room into an enormous discotheque, no doubt a tribute to the “Saturday night parties”which the band sang in one of their greatest hits Wati By Night.
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