Eddy Antoine Jean de Pretto[3] (born 2 May 1993 in Créteil in the Val-de-Marne)[4] is a French singer-songwriter, actor and rapper.
Early life
Eddy de Pretto was born on 2 May 1993 and grew up in Créteil[4][2] in the Val-de-Marne.[5] His father is a truck driver and football fan, his mother a laboratory technician and art lover.[6] He sings about his native city in Beaulieue.[7] In an interview, he described his hometown:
...a certain amount of anger, a desire to better myself. There's a bit of a sort of straightjacket in the banlieues, like it or not: we're told we're on the margin, that we'll amount to nothing, that we'll come to a bad end. Me, my head was full of dreams and a little voice told me I'd get there. The desire to overcome [it all] helped me succeed...[8]
At the age of twelve, de Pretto started lessons in theatre, singing, vocal technique and piano:[9] "I took the TV remote for a microphone and operated a halogen lamp for lighting. So my mother suggested taking theatre lessons since I didn't excel at sport."[8] He continued his education at the Institut supérieur des arts de la scène (ECM-ISAS, "Advanced Institute of Dramatic Arts") in Paris.[2]
Acting
de Pretto's first acting experiences were in TV advertisements, such as the role of a young Julius Caesar for CanalSat in September 2010,[10][11] before entering into the theatrical and film worlds: the short films Königsberg by Philipp Mayrhofer in 2012 and Vivre sa vie by Paul D. Meyer in 2013, as well as an appearance in the feature film Paulette by Jérôme Enrico in the role of "the young hippy buyer", also in 2013.
Music career
Between the ages of eighteen and nineteen de Pretto began to write songs. In his first public performance he sang R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" at his local youth centre: "I was totally weak, ... so stressed out because there was a lot of rap and I didn't fit into that genre at all", he said in an interview.[12]
de Pretto participated in the Printemps de Bourges music festival, where he won the Inouïs ("unheard of, amazing") prize,[13] and the Bars en Trans festival, and is a graduate of inRocKs Lab 2016.[2] In October 2017, he also took part in the Festival Off Off Off (Nuits de Champagne festival) in Troyes.[14]
Kid and Cure
He released his first EPKid on 6 October 2017. In the live performances of the EP he played sound clips from his iPhone connected with a cable. The only live musician at his concerts was a drummer.[2]
In mid-February 2018, he introduced his song "Ego" with "a stripped down, mechanical instrumental", which the singer explained: "I set down the possibility of becoming unhinged because of the speed at which the project is going. By dint of hearing praise, the 'excess of self' implodes, and that's the risk I'm exposing here. The simple fear of degenerating into a fanaticism of the self through social media, endearments, and all other flattering signals that create this monster of ego."[19]
On 2 March 2018, he released his first album Cure [fr], on CD, vinyl and in digital format.[20] At the same time, the clip for "Normal" was unveiled, which took on stereotypes of sexual identity, fear of the other and homophobia:[21] "An anger about people who were attacking me because they didn't like the person I embodied", he explained in the magazine Têtu.[22] A week after its release, the recording was ranked the number one best-selling album ahead of Vous et moi by Julien Doré, with 13,500 copies,[23] "driving out" Grand Corps Malade from Fnac's Top French Albums listing.[24]
À tous les bâtards
On 25 March 2021, he released the album À tous les bâtards, featuring his two previously released singles, Bateaux-Mouches and Désolé Caroline, alongside a COLORS SHOW performance of the song "Parfaitement", which was released on YouTube ahead of the album's release. The 16-track album featured an artwork given to de Pretto by a fan, the design of which shows the sketch of the artist's head superimposed onto a yellow background, a trend continued from his previous album's cover where he superimposed bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger's arm onto an image of himself.[citation needed]
Personal life
As alluded to in some of his songs, de Pretto does not hide his homosexuality: "I'm not militant. I don't want to be a standard-bearer. I just want to give an account of my life, my reality," he added in an interview.[12] He defines himself as a "non-genre" artist.[25] In the TV programme Taratata, broadcast on 15 December 2017, he explained that he was trying to examine masculinity and the hypermasculinity that made up part of his education. When Nagui asked him if he talked about homosexuality in his songs, he responded that that was in no way his goal.[26] Speaking to Les Inrockuptibles, the singer said: "I try to speak about my personal history and to normalise it as much as possible. And not to highlight it saying I'm the first queer to link rap and French chanson".[2]
J'essaie de parler de mon histoire personnelle et de la normaliser le plus possible. Et pas la mettre en avant pour dire que je suis le premier pédé qui lie le rap et la chanson française.
^"A QUOI BON". ASCAP. American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
...une certaine rage, une envie de me dépasser. Il y a un peu ce truc de carcan en banlieue, qu'on le veuille ou non : on nous dit qu'on est en marge, qu'on va arriver à rien, qu'on va mal finir. Moi j'avais des rêves plein la tête et une petite voix me disait que j'allais y arriver. L'envie de m'en sortir m'a aidé à y parvenir...
Je prenais la télécommande pour faire un micro et je tournais l’halogène pour faire la lumière. Du coup ma mère m’a proposé de prendre des cours de théâtre vu que je n’excellais pas au sport.
Je pose l'éventualité de devenir dingue à cause de la vitesse à laquelle va le projet. À force d'entendre des éloges, le « trop de soi » implose, et c'est le risque que j'expose ici. La peur simple de tomber dans le fanatisme de soi-même par les réseaux sociaux, les mots d'amour, et tout autre signe qui flatte et qui crée ce monstre d'ego.
