Doctor Mac

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

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.