137 Avenue Kaniama

Musician, poet and filmmaker Baloji was born to a Belgian father and Congolese mother in Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He grew up with his father in Belgium where he has assimilated multicultural influences, ideologies and experiences. Far from being a typical French-language rapper, he is a creative artist who experiments with different musical genres in order to articulate his witty and incisive words. The general emphasis is snappy, up-tempo pop rap with Baloji's primarily French lyrics taking pride of place. However there is a tremendous amount of musicality and variety of style. His modern twist on the hip-hop/R&B/soul/jazz fusion is unique in that it incorporates classic Congolese rumba, courtesy of veteran guitarist Dizzy Mandjeku who also plays in Baloji's live band. There are other Congolese artists involved including Chabrown, a fine singer formerly with Papa Wemba's Nouvelle Ecrita, and Malage de Lugendo, a former OK Jazz and Zaiko Langa Langa member who sings lead on the splendidly commercial and humorous ‘Bipolaire – Les Noirs’.

Baloji has a cinematic approach to his writing. He has a playful fluidity of style and at the end he concludes with an adventurous and powerful mini-opera, ‘Tanganyika’, which is 11 minutes of hard-hitting text backed by a female-voiced operatic refrain and highly lavish instrumentation.

137 Avenue Kaniama is a dramatic, intriguing, and largely successful and enjoyable experiment.