À l'ombre du showbusiness [English translation]

In the show-business shadow

How much time ?

How much time will they smother our art ?

How much time will they share the music awards ? (1)

We don't care, we are true, come on

They try to smother our art, gotta be honest

They refuse to acknowledge that in this century

Rappers are heirs to poets

Our poetry is urban, art is universal

Our poetry is human

Our texts are pictures which unveil the ill-being of the starless fates

Our litterature, photograph of instants, (2)

Shall become a witness singing the past in the present tense

A piano, a voice, you see, the art of the poor ones only needs that

I rap with word power, without a trick

I am, by dint of words, an artist

I practise a sad, infamous art

Because it is through our records that voice in the ghetto rises

My rap is a proletarian art then minorities here are majority

Yet like any other art I think rap goes beyond differences

Gathers hearts before bodies

Making sceneries out of bodies

Ensuring harmonization of hearts (3)

What if I wrote better than Lionel Florence ? (4)

Born of the second France, I'm still waiting my first chance

Forgive my arrogance but they condemn my art to silence

While I'm crying my mates have finished their last dance

So yes I am a poet in the dead ones society

In the show-business shadow, my art is off the street

My art is a gemstone that was covered with concrete

That can only be melted by feelings

My art is committed

My art makes sense

My art holds an opinion

My art is intense

My art does not apologize if it bothers you

Because it pacifies our hearts

This is the cry of the indigenous ones

Oh how I love the language of Molière (5)

I am highly wordy, you know ?

There is a soul behind the colour of my skin

And if I practise a sad art

That's because my heart is like a sponge

We are rappers and artists even if it bothers you

(In the show-business shadow

In the show-business shadow)

I write poems of tears

Rains of fears (6)

They want to kill my art

But my works remain

In the show-business shadow

My verses are sparkles

Which radiate on hearts

That's all right if they rule me out

I grew up on black ice

Where every fall can be lethal

In the ballet of bullets

In the dialogue of metal

France put us aside

I wrote it, what one feels when one is rejected

Without decency, I described it

Come on

For twenty years we've been singing the suburbs

For twenty years they've been denigrating our writings in high places

For twenty years they've been suffocating our screams

Which transcribe the tensions of the hearts in crisis and the living conditions of our brothers in jail

For twenty years we have been opening windows on horizonless futures

For twenty years we've been laying our hands on open wounds that bleed rejection

Because equality of opportunity is but a project

(Charles Aznavour) (7)

(In the show-business shadow

In the show-business shadow)

In the show-business shadow

You need to be optimistic brother

Every great movement has suffered

Poets starved to death in the show-business shadow

Today, it might even be...easier

Doors are closed and locked

But they open little by little

And the more you believe, the more you can

The more you will succeed in the show-business shadow

Today it might be...simpler

Because there is a whole youth behind you brother

In the show-business shadow, the sun can rise..

• Artist:Kery James
• Album:À l'ombre du show business (2009)