AfricaIs aCountry

Doctor Mac

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

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

Progress is exhausting

Pedro Pinho’s latest film follows a Portuguese engineer in Guinea-Bissau, exposing how empire survives through bureaucracy, intimacy, and the language of “development.”

The rubble of empire

Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.

Atayese

Honored in Yorubaland as “one who repairs the world,” Jesse Jackson’s life bridged civil rights, pan-Africanism, empire, and contradiction—leaving behind a legacy as expansive as it was imperfect.

Bread or Messi?

Angola’s golden jubilee culminated in a multimillion-dollar match against Argentina. The price tag—and the secrecy around it—divided a nation already grappling with inequality.

Visiting Ngara

A redevelopment project in Nairobi’s Ngara district promises revival—but raises deeper questions about capital, memory, and who has the right to shape the city.

Gen Z’s electoral dilemma

Long dismissed as apathetic, Kenya’s youth forced a rupture in 2024. As the 2027 election approaches, their challenge is turning digital rebellion and street protest into political power.

A world reimagined in Black

By placing Kwame Nkrumah at the center of a global Black political network, Howard W. French reveals how the promise of pan-African emancipation was narrowed—and what its failure still costs Africa and the diaspora.

Securing Nigeria

Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by foreign airstrikes or a failing state, but by rebuilding democratic, community-rooted systems of collective self-defense.