EMPRS is releasing its very first album, "Empereurs," on October 6th. On this hybrid, Rock and Hip-Hop record – wild, daring, and inventive – the band enlisted a dream team who (to their great surprise) agreed to participate; Slimkid3 and Imani from The Pharcyde rap on two tracks, Pavan from Foreign Beggars on another. This created a snowball effect: young French rapper Benjamin Epps, Mike Ladd, the pope of spoken word, Canadian Buck 65, Australian singer Chela, Rocket Mike aka Michael Giffts, leader of the brilliant English band Earthling (now a pillar of Tristesse Contemporaine and Camp Claude), Stephen White, a 16-year-old Polish punchliner, Checkmait, the best rapper from Kalamazoo, Wisconsin, and French actress Ana Girardot all agreed to join the EMPRS adventure.
What could have appealed to them so much about EMPRS's sound? Was it the blend of indie rock, electro, and hip-hop? Or perhaps the melting pot of influences ranging from Outkast to The Velvet Underground, from Beck to Sufjan Stevens, from the Beastie Boys to Run the Jewels…
For arrangements and co-production of their album, the five "Empereurs" chose a young prodigy from the electro-hip-hop scene: Marlin, known for his remixes (DJ Snake, Sébastien Tellier) and also a producer for Yseult, close to Naive New Beaters. Romain Clisson (Peter Von Poehl, Hey Hey My My) will mix the album.
The tracks had barely left Clisson's machines when they were already traveling: here in a documentary about a video game (FarCry 6), there in a Disney+ series starring Éric Judor (8 EMPRS tracks make up the soundtrack), or even in a commercial for a PSG sponsor…