His tracks have been streamed billions of times, with Liberté becoming an anthem for Algerian freedom. And having been an undocumented migrant, Soolking’s own liberty is hard won
Thirty-year-old Algerian
Rapper Soolking was just hitting his stride before the world was put on lockdown. His commercially appealing blend of pop, reggaeton and Algerian raï (think Arabic and then add Auto-Tune) has generated a dizzying one billion streams on
YouTube, with millions of them generated in the UK; hailing from the small coastal neighbourhood of Staouéli in Algiers and now living in
Paris after time spent there as an undocumented migrant, his story crosses borders and generations.
Thankfully, the technology that has helped his
music travel also means that I can speak to him while we are in lockdown in our respective countries. Speaking from the sofa in his Paris apartment, he explains what took him to
France in 2013. “The dream was to succeed,” he says. “I wanted to succeed a bit in music, at least, but I never thought it would be like this.”