Sameer Ahmad

Rap artist, musician, speaker

June 16 - July 16, 2022

Black and white image of Sameer Ahmad sitting down wearing a white t-shirt and cap

Dorian Cusy

Sameer Ahmad - Un amour suprême

Hector De La Vallée

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"I don’t set out to create oppositions and I don’t do black and white; I unite, I assemble.”
Who?
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I am a teacher, often working with refugee children, and I’m also an artist. I have been rapping since the 2000s, when I discovered the genre through skateboarding videos. The two practices are very similar, particularly in how they both value technique. Rap is often associated with combat sports, yet it’s a completely standalone practice, as is skateboarding. It’s not just sheer confrontation; it’s also about style. That’s really what got me hooked from the beginning: the playful performance aspect of rap in contrast with the dominant trend at the time which focused more on vindication than on esthetics.

 

I am known for my writing style, but in reality I don’t really write. For me, it’s all pure spoken word, which is most certainly tied to my Iraqi heritage. I go through phases induced by different moods that come to me like bright flashes. When something doesn’t feel natural enough, I scrap it. It all has to stay very instinctive and jazz-like. When working with the French language, I am more concerned with sound than substance. If I had to compare it to something, I’d say my art is closer to Tarantino than the Parnassian poetic movement. When I start to compose, I keep five or six cult scenes in mind and develop everything around them. Once I have the backing track, I can see what kind of setting I want the scenes to take place in. In the case of my latest song, Bleu Delta (from the original soundtrack of the graphic novel Bayou Bastardise), it was Louisiana.

 

Based in Montpellier, rap artist Sameer Ahmad has written five albums: “Justin Herman Plaza,” “Perdants Magnifiques,” “Apaches,” the diptych “Un Amour Suprême : Jovontae & Ezekiel” and "Effendi." As a child, he emigrated from France to Iraq then to Algeria, along with his father, a political refugee, and moved to France in 1985. He first got into rap after discovering the world of skateboarding in the city of Flers, in the Orne department (northwestern France).

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La Place, a place of expression dedicated to hip hop music, has for mission to promote all the aesthetics and artistic practices of the hip hop cultural movement, as well as its extensions in the visual arts or cinema, through actions of diffusion, transmission, support to creation and accompaniment. Located in the heart of Paris, under Les Halles' « Canopée », La Place is equipped with a concert hall, a broadcasting and creation studio, an exhibition space, a bar and has 8 creation spaces, adaptable to all practices (recording, rehearsal, video editing, graphic arts, dance...)

 

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