Caroline - Practice
MC Solaar - A Modern French Poet
You may think rap music has no business even approaching your brain space. If so, I think MC Solaar will change your mind.
Born Claude M’Barali in 1969 in Senegal, raised in the southern suburbs of Paris, he is the finest lyricist French popular music has produced since Serge Gainsbourg. MC Solaar’s lyrics are studied in French schools alongside Prévert (born 1900) and Brassens (born 1921).
The song Caroline came out in 1991, when Solaar was 22. A gentle love song. A man sits on a park bench remembering the woman he has lost. The whole song is built on wordplay, puns and double meanings, images dealt from playing cards and swept up with the autumn leaves.
MC Solaar enunciates every word which for a French language learner is a gift. Millions of French people know this song by heart. The vocabulary below lets you get a little bit closer to France.
