It’s the return of a star of French R’n’B, who had slipped away to raise her child. At the beginning of the 2000s, the Niçoise Kayna Samet was the singer that all French rappers snapped up to bring a bit of melodies, “a bit of magic” to their harsh, sometimes raw texts. Then the latter discovered the Auto-Tune software, which makes their voices more melodious, relegating to oblivion singers of the caliber of Kayna Samet, whose songs like Flayed alive, Maiden from below had illuminated the rap and R’n’B scene of the 2000s. To the point of suggesting to specialized critics that France finally had its Mary J. Blige, the queen of American hip-hop soul. Booba, the first, had invited her for a piece that has now become a classic, Destiny.
It is also under his impulse that the young woman, a solo mother separated from the father of her daughter, the rapper Sinik, decides to record new songs for herself, grouped together in a first EP, Altaïr, Part 1, published on October 14, before announcing the release of a second in February 2023: « I will be back step by step, she explains. Being in the studio, in concert, is great, but there is also the time of life. I had the chance to be a mother. I had this great need to accompany my daughter and to be there for her. And then, at the beginning of my career, I had badly surrounded myself, I made bad choices. I gave up and devoted myself to my child. »
“The voice of the “calle””
After a long break where she exercises various small jobs, she therefore resumes the path of the recording studios: “They first closed the doors to me, telling me that my time had passed, and they remembered that I knew how to write radio hits. I finally took up music again by writing for others, I started practicing a new profession of rap: the “topline”, or knowing how to hum a melodic line for other artists. »
She starts by writing these “toplines” for rappers, Uzi, JSX, writing for new rappers like Laeti, also an actress in the series Valid by Franck Gastambide, then for the singer Shy’m whom she coaches vocally. And then one day, Booba sends her a sign and posts on her Instagram profile one of her new songs, named after her: Kayna. She answers him in music on her own thread, and the « boss du rap game »as she calls him, offers to record a new song together, Kayna Remix. In this title, the one who describes herself as “the voice of the calle, from the depths of Algeria”écrit : “I’m like a boxer in the ring, I already know that I will have to be pushed into the void. It will be them or me, my destiny is written, ask Booba. »
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