I must say I felt concerned with the translations of Solaar's rap,
just couldn't answer before since I was too busy. Since there seems to
be only a few frenchies on this list, I think I can try to do some of
it, although my english is quite poor. The only problem is I got the
fisrt LP only on tape, and I actually lost the tape, so I'd prefer
songs from the second LP (sorry, I know somebody asked for
"Caroline"...), at least for the moment. Those of you interested in
translations, please write to me and I'll see what I can do.
** BIG WARNINGS: **
1 once again, my english is poor
2 can't rememeber if the lyrics are on the booklet; if not,
there'll certainly be some holes and/or mistakes
3 as said before, I'm quite busy, so I won't translate the
whole work of Solaar
4 (most important): IMHO, a big reason to like Solaar's lyrics
is the way he plays with words, their sound and their meaning, and the
many "calembours" he does (aspects that put his work close to
Queneau's or Perec's), and all this is of course very hard to
translate (translating poetry is very hard, actually!), so all I wanna
say is that these lyrics will loose a lot in my translations
Basically, I can give you an idea about what he's talking about in the
songs, but I'm afraid you won't appreciate completely the power of
Solaar in his lyrics (good reason to learn french, isn't it? :)
.. et voila
Daniel