Renewing hip-hop productions, looking for ways to stand out from your colleagues, that’s the credo of Algerian rapper Tif. Real name Toufik Bouhraoua, the 27-year-old has developed a hybrid sound between chaâbi, a traditional Algerian genre, Andalusian music and rap. On fall tour for his first album, 1.6, Tif recounts her journey as a student in France, her romantic disappointments, her conquests, his pride in having got through it without any help (Tomorrow is B3id).
Born in Algiers, to a father who was an architect for an oil company and a mother who was a school teacher, he and his two brothers were raised in social housing near Bab-El-Oued, on the outskirts of the capital. He is sometimes called Tifou, a nickname from which he removes the last two vowels to choose a rapper name, Tif: ” In addition, he explains, it was a cartoon channel with which I perfected my French. »
On the way to school, his father made him listen to chaâbi, Joe Dassin and all the French variety. But, at 10 years old, he dreamed of imitating Tupac or Booba, discovered in the soundtracks of his brother’s video games: “I rapped their lyrics like them, he remembers. My parents were surprised to hear me. Then they found pieces of paper with my texts, it was vulgar. My father lost his temper. At 16, a French manager who came to Algiers after seeing one of my videos sold them a dream… It was a joke. »
The path to hybridization
He believed in it, didn’t give up on his studies, obtained a place in a BTS in management in Lyon and off he went to France: “I also found a work-study position in a business school, I got married…” He ends up stopping classes and wandering from one small job to another. “I worked in call centers. At 21, I was divorced, I had gained 40 kilos. It was difficult for me to find myself in the girl market again. » He leaves for Paris. His roommate in Saint-Denis, Algerian like him, is a sound engineer. Tif returns to rap and, in 2020, one of his pieces, 3iniyia, is creating a buzz on the platforms.
He became friends with the rapper and actor Younès Boucif (Nezir in the series Funny on Netflix), and the latter’s brother becomes his manager. Together, they will work on his first album, with a Moroccan beatmaker, Khalil Cherradi. “In the studio, relates Tif, we’re like in a laboratory where we have the music we grew up on, the slightly wacky things we think about, and we try to mix all that. »
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