SCH

French rap’s most bodacious voice, SCH puts out a virulent mélange of gruff, incisive couplets and pitch-corrected refrains that helped establish hip-hop as the country’s most popular genre. Born Julien Schwarzer in Marseille in 1993, SCH came to the fore with A7 in 2015, a burnished blend of guttural trap tales, countervailed with glacé contemporary chanson. He honed that emblematic union with 2016’s Anarchie and 2017’s Deo Favente. Expanding his musical universe with the mafioso concept album JVLIVS in 2018, SCH pinned his unmistakable rasp to a theatrical tale of organised crime before returning to brazen meta rap with Rooftop, an energised collection of stratified metaphors and we-are-not-the-same bons mots, encapsulated by the fuming introduction “Cervelle”. Following a starring role on the triumphant Marseille posse album 13 Organisé, SCH continued the JVLIVS saga with JVLIVS II in 2021, a brooding crime drama that augmented his reputation as one of rap francais’ premier writers.