A drink with Cut Killer: “At the ANPE, when I said I was a DJ, people asked me: “Record store at Fnac?” »

DJ Cut Killer, at the Florida café, in Paris 1er, on November 11, 2022. JERÔME BONNET FOR “THE WORLD”

So that’s a hip-hop legend. A 51-year-old boy who hugs you like a little brother. Simple and funky. Seventeen hours and dust. Cut Killer, one of the biggest rap DJs in France, arrives at Florida, a Parisian café next to Les Halles. Soft lighting, red velvet armchairs, shiny black tables like vinyl. This sober, discreet side, a bit chic, describes it quite well.

This establishment is his HQ, the place where he catches his breath while whistling amber rums like too wild honey. “I grew up not far from here, in Strasbourg-Saint-Denis”, he said. And it was 100 meters from his home that he fell in love, in 1987, at the age of 16, with Technics chrome turntables while watching Dee Nasty caressing LPs during the “Chez Roger Box Funk” evenings, at the Globo, in the 10^e capital district. “My story with rap began at Les Halles. I bought my first records there. This neighborhood is the beating heart of my life, the soul of French hip-hop. If Brooklyn, the Bronx and Harlem were to be in France, they would be in this corner of Paris”he says.

Sitting on the bar floor, it does not need to order: “Fafa”, the director, sends him a glass of J.Bally, twelve years old. “I started smoking and drinking when I turned 30. I was organizing my birthday at Bains Douches and JoeyStarr said to me: “Stop your bullshit now.” He introduced me to rum”, he recalls. There is a resonance between this liqueur and Cut Killer: the character, the delicacy. And longevity.

“Cut” is thirty-five years of career, thousands of parties, millions of titles played, billions of scratches… His nights were more beautiful than today. To take his throne, one would have to sit on his knees. This 1.90 meter giant is always there, ready to set the fever for hours in a small provincial club, or in a crazy nightclub, in Ibiza or New York. And in his radio show on Skyrock, the “Cut Killer Show”, which he has hosted every Saturday evening, from 10 p.m. to midnight, since… 1996.

“We weren’t wanted”

Sharing a drink with Cut is like going back to the beginnings of hip-hop, this movement that combines rap, graffiti and breakdance, which emerged from the bowels of the asphalt and is still sometimes misunderstood. “It is a revolutionary movement which imposed a direction of life and told people: “We exist”he recalls. We were extremists of this music because it didn’t go anywhere, we weren’t wanted. »

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