Seine Saint-Denis Style
Suprême NTM
How to study this song
Learning “Seine Saint-Denis Style” means 112 entries at C2- — 48 French words, 10 adjectives and 54 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. Start with the glossary: visage, retour and génération come up again and again, so they are the ones to know first. This one leans on its verbs: 54 distinct forms against 10 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the words on their own are not the problem — it is the way they are put together that takes the work.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| FR | EN | ES | IT | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| visage | face | cara | viso | rosto | gezicht | Gesicht |
| retour | return | regreso | ritorno | regresso | terugkeer | Rückkehr |
| génération | generation | generación | generazione | geração | generatie | Generation |
| soucis | worries | preocupaciones | preoccupazioni |
What this song teaches you
Level · C2-
- Vocabulary words
- 48
- Adjectives
- 10
- Word combos
- 12
- Expressions
- 18
- Verb forms
- 54
- Quiz questions
- 35
More French songs at this level
Background
About the song
«Seine Saint-Denis Style» is the fifth track of «Suprême NTM», the self-titled fourth album of the duo formed by JoeyStarr and Kool Shen, released on 20 April 1998 by Epic. It turned out to be the last studio album the pair recorded together, and it is usually counted among the classics of French hip-hop. The group had started out at the end of the 1980s in Saint-Denis, the working-class town just north of Paris, and by 1998 they had three albums behind them — «Authentik» (1991), «1993… J’appuie sur la gâchette» (1993) and «Paris sous les bombes» (1995) — together with a reputation as the most confrontational act on the French scene.
The song is an anthem to their home département, Seine-Saint-Denis, known all over France by its administrative number, 93, pronounced «neuf-trois». In the 1990s the département was shorthand in the media for high-rise estates, unemployment and trouble with the police. NTM took the label and turned it into a badge of pride. There is no story line and no social lecture here: it is an ego-trip, the classic rap exercise in which the performers boast about their skill, mock imitators and warn rivals that they are out of their depth. The chorus comes back to the idea that real talent is audible — you can tell who has the pedigree simply by listening to the way they deliver their words.
The two rappers share the verses and their voices could hardly be more different. JoeyStarr is rough, loud and theatrical; Kool Shen is precise and technical, with a faster, cleaner flow. The instrumental was produced by Daddy Jokno, of the Afro Jazz collective, on a lean, bouncing beat that leaves plenty of space for the vocals. The lyrics are credited to the two members of the group.
For a learner this is a demanding text, and an honest picture of how French is spoken on the street. Vowels and whole syllables disappear, the negative particle is almost never pronounced, English words drift in and out, and some lines use verlan, the slang that swaps the syllables of a word. At the same time the song is full of perfectly standard idioms that any French speaker uses: expressions for boasting, for handing over to someone else, for running away as fast as possible, for the finishing touch on the cake. It is also, it must be said, an explicit song, with insults and crude language that this app deliberately does not teach. What is taught here is the everyday French underneath: colloquial but real, and understood everywhere in the country.