Two years on from his groundbreaking second album Gibraltar, Abd Al Malik is back in the spotlight, causing another major stir in the French rap world. Back in 2006, Gibralter scored a double whammy, winning both a coveted "Victoire de la Musique" award and the prestigious Prix Constantin. In one fell swoop, Gibralter rocketed the pioneering young rapper from Alsace onto the musical mainstream and proved his worth as a hugely talented songwriter. Breaking with the musical and ideological clichés of rap, Abd Al Malik chose to work with musicians from the older generation normally associated with France's 'chanson' tradition, notably Jacques Brel's pianist Gérard Jouannest.

On his third solo offering, Dante, Abd Al Malik takes his crossover approach one step further, inviting Jouannest to compose half of the tracks on his new album. Malik has also enlisted the aid of another famous French figure from the older generation, recruiting Alain Goraguer as orchestrator and studio conductor. Goraguer, who lent his legendary arranging talent to Serge Gainsbourg's early albums (and who first worked with Jouannest over fifty years ago now) organised things so that all the tracks were recorded the "old-fashioned way", rapper, pianist and orchestra all recording together in the same studio at the same time as they would have done back in the good old days of Gréco and Brel.

Old-fashioned in the making, but decidedly modern in its material, Dante opens with a radical reworking of the Roméo et Juliette story, performed as a duet with Juliette Gréco - "the best female rapper on the current French scene!" jokes Malik. Gréco joins her husband Gérard Jouannest on Dante and, interestingly enough, Abd Al Malik's wife, Wallen, was also closely involved in the making of his new album. Wallen performs vocals on Paris mais (a song directly inspired by the Claude Nougaro classic Paris mai) and she also wrote Raconte-moi Madagh, an ultra-experimental track which demolishes the borders between rock and abstract hip-hop.

The other half of Dante was composed by Bilal (Mailk's musical partner from the New African Poets collective) who draws inspiration from '50s and '60s jazz. It was his suggestion to involve the contemporary jazz drummer Régis Ceccarelli on Malik's new album as well as his father, the legendary drum maestro André Ceccarelli. Dante also brings in other great music figures from the past via samples, adding a burst of the late Serge Reggiani's vocals on Le Petit Garçon as well as a loop of the contemporary English singer-songwriter Imogen Heap's Have You Got It In You.

Breaking down musical borders and taking inspiration from right across the board, Abd Al Malik has also broken with the traditional codes of French rap. In his lyrics, Malik moves away from the discourse of hate, rage and culture clash, affirming his "patriotism" and his deep-rooted attachment to France. He refuses to enter into what he sees as the systematic disparagement of France and its history. On songs such as Circule petit, circule, HLM tango and particularly C’est du lourd - the spectacular video clip for which helped generate the initial buzz around the album - Malik launches a virulent attack on cowardly politicians and the media but also berates his young male contemporaries for not facing up to their responsibilities. In the process, Malik teaches a lesson to all those who think France belongs to them and to them alone and all those who get off on the idea of not belonging to France when they were born here.

However, it is Conte alsacien which ranks as the most groundbreaking track on Malik's new album. Partway through this track, the rapper suddenly breaks into a 'flow' in Alsatian dialect, an audacious move never before attempted in the history of French music - and a move made all the more audacious when it is a black artist of Congolese origin standing up and asserting his Alsatian identity!

Malik has obviously drawn inspiration from the great 'storytelling' tradition in songwriting (his influences extending from Bob Dylan to Notorious BIG) and the rapper claims that he admires Raymond Carver's short stories as much as the songs of Jacques Brel. But wherever his inspiration may take him, his own writing style remains firmly anchored in the French literary history, Dante containing unmistakable traces of Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and André Malraux. Meanwhile, on another track entitled Césaire (Brazzaville via Oujda), Malik pays a poignant tribute to Aimé Césaire, the famous Martinican poet who died whilst he was recording his new album. In the Alsatian rapper's eyes the man who came up with the concept of "Négritude" is all too often forgotten in the French literary canon. "It should be Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Césaire!" Malik insists.

As for the title of Abd Al Malik's third album, this is a direct tribute to Dante Alighieri (the author of The Divine Comedy widely held to be the founding father of Italian literature). An unexpected but, in fact, logical reference point for the Alsatian rapper who considers that the work of the 14^th-century poet is essentially an epic attempt to turn an ancient literary form into a modern art capable of reflecting the reality of contemporary life - a path he has chosen to follow himself! 

Given his sophisticated literary references, it is little wonder that music critics have branded Abd Al Malik as an "intellectual rapper." Asked how he feels about this classification, the rapper simply smiles and declares "I'm Malik, I'm just being myself!" Still smiling the same part-apologetic, part self-affirming grin, the rapper goes on to cite his Sufi master whom he quotes word for word on a track entitled Gilles écoute un disque de rap et fond en larmes. "When you do something in life, you have to leave part of yourself in it yet move beyond it. When you do something in life, you have to move beyond it yet leave part of yourself in it!"

Abd Al Malik - a lesson in rap, a lesson in spirituality, a lesson in life!