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“‘Cause too many classics bring me close to a trance
But sometimes I fall down when I grasp their meaning
They don’t care about the message as long as they reach the target
The result: more beeps than understandable words”

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“I’ve stolen some of their words here and there
But my vocabulary isn’t worth more than $6
I don’t paint myself as a J. Dilla, far from it
I’m still just a fan, well, I idolise many guys”

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“I do not speak French”

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“I’ll humalong a riff, but I don’t know what it is”

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“No, yes yes, be still, my heart”

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“Everybody says, ‘yeah!’”

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“Maximum noise”


That’s something one can hear any French DJ or MC shout to warm up the audience.

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“I don’t want your fucks, your shits or your motherfuckers
I don’t want your niggas, your bitches or your suckers”


As he will elaborate upon in his last verse, while 20syl loves how English generally sounds in music, he doesn’t care for profanity or insulting words.

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“We have their ‘WC’, their sandwiches and their green ‘chewing-gum’
And they have our savoir-faire

Same as a few lines earlier with ‘stars’ and ‘fashion’, 20syl cites three more examples of English words that have crossed over to colloquial French, and talks about a French counterpart that is sometimes used as-is in English.

“WC (water closet)” is very often used to designate toilets in French; “sandwich” and “chewing gum” are transparent words in French.

“Savoir faire” is French for “know-how” or “prominence”.

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“Everybody says, ‘just give up the yoghurt’
So, in hiding, I boot up the MPC and improvise Danone
On my hexagon corner, I check out deal of cards
Between Shakespeare and Stallone, I breathe out, tiptoe
To find my ‘thing’, pull off my language
Even though my R’s ring and they chew up theirs


“Yoghurt” is used in French to designate the way one will mumble along a song when they don’t really know the lyrics but try to sound as close as possible.

Danone is France’s biggest yoghurt manufacturer.

20syl refers to his “hexagon corner” referencing the fact that France is sometimes called “the Hexagon”, based on the country’s geographical shape. As 20syl comes from the city of Nantes, which is located on the seaside just south of Brittany, one could say he lives on one of the Hexagon’s corners.

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