Africa Is a Country

Doctor Mac

Doctor Mac

By
Hinda Talhaoui

This is number 4 in the music break series, Paris is a Continent.

A still from the music video for Mac Tyer's "Docteur So."

It’s the return of one of the best R&B artists in French. K-Reen is back with a new track called “Comme avant” (Like Before) featuring rapper Youssoupha.  She’s a veteran of French R&B and rap, having been featured on one of the first compilations of local R&B in the mid-1990s and collaborating with legends like MC Solaar. Youssoupha, whose father is a legendary Congolese rumba musician, Tabu Ley Rochereau, needs no introduction. K-Reen was born in French Guiana.  Their collaboration is another example of how Paris is a place where the black (and Arab) diasporas meet and colleraborate. K-Reen’s album should be out in March 2012.

We’ve featured Nessbeal in this series already. This time, a song from his new album, the song “La Nébuleuse des Aigles” featuring his discovery Isleym (remember her). Nessbeal (government name: Nabil Sahli) and Isleym are both of Moroccan descent.

Somebody new in this column: Mac Tyer.  The video for the track “Docteur So.”  Like most of the musicians in this post and this series, he is from the suburbs of Paris. In his case, Aubervilliers, in the northeastern part of the city. His family migrated to France from its former colony, Cameroon.

Further Reading

Fuel’s errand

When Africa’s richest man announced the construction of the continent’s largest crude oil refinery, many were hopeful. But Aliko Dangote has not saved Nigeria. The Nigerian Scam returns to the Africa Is a Country Podcast to explain why.

Fragile state

Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.

Coming home

In 1991, acclaimed South African artist Helen Sebidi’s artworks were presumed stolen in Sweden. Three decades later, a caretaker at the residential college where they disappeared found them in a ceiling cupboard, still in their original packaging.

Imaginary homelands

A new biography of former apartheid homeland leader Lucas Mangope struggles to do more than arrange the actions of its subject into a neat chronology.

Business as usual?

This month, Algeria quietly held its second election since Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted in 2019. On the podcast, we ask what Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s second term means for the country.

The complexities of solidarity

Assassinated in 1978, Henri Curiel was a Jewish Egyptian Marxist whose likely killers include fascist French-Algerian colons, the apartheid South African Bureau of State Security, and the Abu Nidal Organization.