From Camden by way of Congo and Cape Town the musician is following in Spoek Mathambo’s footsteps with his dark mix of 80s electro and African styles, shaped by alienation, exile and a friendship with Mos Def
Petite Noir is remembering the moment he had to choose between pop music and God. Well, kind of. Then still in his teens, and known as Yannick Ilunga, the South African musician met township tech star Spoek Mathambo at a Cape Town club. “Spoek called and asked if I wanted to record some guitar for him,” he says. “But I had church band practice the same day. So I told my worship leader I wanted to go to the studio, and she said, ‘If you leave the church for this, you never gonna come back.’”
You can guess which way he plumped by the fact that Petite Noir is now signed to Domino subsidiary Double Six (“for a crazy sum”) and is about to release a compelling debut EP. God, the 24-year-old likes to think, stuck with him anyway. But the intervening half-decade has involved a serious innocence-to-experience-style journey. “Back then I was hardly even drinking,” he says. “Now I’ve seen so much, so much, so much…” Petite Noir, as you’ll gather, can in conversation be as nebulous as his bespoke tees and baseball caps are sharp. At times he seems less to be responding to questions, more freestyling languorously over his own private beat.
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by Bella Todd via Electronic music | The Guardian
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