My Purpose In Life Is Freedom
For Kimberley Kipré, singing is just like breathing, it’s vital.
Kimberley Kipré is always outstanding in any crowd she finds herself in. With her distinctive ginger hair and her big smile, the artist always comes with a positive and contagious energy that marks every soul she encounters.
Singing has been part of Kimberley's life for as long as she can remember. For her, it’s just like breathing or drinking water, it’s more than necessary. “If it’s not music, it’s not me” she would tell me during our conversation. The French and Ivorian singer and songwriter realized very young that singing and sharing her emotions through music was her truest and only call. And after some years dealing with fears and a lot of internal questioning, she is finally ready to show herself to the world, to spread her sound wherever it is welcomed.
To achieve that, Kimberley chose Abidjan – or Babi, for us the locals – as the city where she would settle and ground herself to focus on her art. A city that is part of her personal story and that helped shape the person she is today. The artist is now in that quest for the freedom that would allow her to be the most genuine version of herself, the freedom to do whatever she wants with her life, as she recalls one of her closest uncles urging her to.
We met exactly one month after she decided to leave everything behind in France and start this new and more than exciting journey in Côte D’Ivoire. We spoke about her music and where she would like to take it, her creative process and all these lessons that life has already taught her.
Why did you decide to move here?
I don’t know. I’ve always thought that you have to go wherever you are celebrated. I didn’t feel like myself anymore in Paris and Abidjan right now is where my heart is somehow at peace. I just had to come. Abidjan is definitely home but I also know you can have a home without really feeling at home, you know. So, it’s more about the energy around me here.
I was born in France, I grew up there and it’s still home for me too but now, it’s really about freedom. My purpose in life is freedom and the freedom I can feel here in Abidjan is what I’m looking for in my life.
I’m just at the beginning, I’m not completely free yet but it’s a start. I might not even stay in Abidjan. Wherever I can touch some freedom, I will go.
How can you define freedom?
For me, freedom is about less obligation and more instinct. It’s something that brings me closer to my inner child. That doesn’t mean that I am not embracing my life as an adult, but it’s about allowing ourselves to go more by our personal and natural drive. That’s freedom for me and that’s what I want to reach because when we get to this adult life, there’s a lot of our dreams that we shut down and keep asleep.
Me, I want to keep dreaming, I want the dreams to come to life. So I left everything behind in France, my job, my flat, just like that and now I’m here.
You left a whole life there, jumped in a plane and decided to build something new here. How does it feel to be starting over like that?
I’m used to saying to myself that I’d always carry my home on my shoulders, you know. So I don’t feel any sorrow or sadness. Nothing made me question this, not my family or my friends that I love so much. I have all of them and everything I know on my shoulders so it’s okay, I can go everywhere and anywhere. I’ll make drastic choices like these again and again in my life. This is just the beginning.
Is that the only reason why you moved, looking for a place that you can call home again, where you can be free?
There’s also music. I want to be based in Abidjan as I feel like there’s something I can create with my music while being here. It could be anywhere else but here, I feel like I can easily connect with my childhood’s creativity, with the simpler and truer version of myself.
Why music? Tell me more about your relationship with it.
This would be the same as asking me why I drink water or why I even breathe. That’s the kind of relationship I have with music. If it’s not music, it’s sickness. If it’s not music, it’s not me. That’s it.
There’s something vital about it for me. Music doesn’t consume my whole self but it’s definitely a big part of me I’d say. Emotionally, and maybe it’s cliché but, music is therapy. When I stop singing, it means that I’m not in a good mood. I sing anytime and everywhere. Music is by my side at every step of my life.
If you ask my family or anyone who knows me, they’d tell you that I always have a song ready on my lips and I don’t even realize it.
When did you start to sing?
My mom always told me that I started humming melodies and singing before even talking. So I guess it was always there. And as I was growing up, I realized that there was something else for me, outside of the conventional path. You know when you’re at school and you feel bored, asking yourself “what am I doing here?”. You’re there but not really and it feels somehow like a prison. It was like I didn’t belong there.
The first time Kimberley performed live was in a small pub in Ireland, when she was only 18. “Witnessing people enjoying and connecting with what you’re singing was new to me. This feeling of being able to convey emotions to someone is amazing and that was it for me” she remembers. Getting on that stage and singing in front of these strangers' faces, far from her friends and immediate family, was a unique experience for the singer.
It might sound like nothing but at that time, it was like Bercy for me. It was incredible.
The 20-something artist has already lived so many lives. Lives that were not necessarily fulfilling but still important. “I needed to take care of myself but also, [because] I didn’t have the audacity to make those radical choices for my life yet”, she tells me. From these experiences, she’d learned what she really wanted to do in her life and how she would like her journey to move forward.
At some point I saw myself evolving around people who were not dreaming anymore, people who lived in such fear that they would rather live a half lived life. There’s this bitterness about it that I knew I didn’t want for me. I didn’t want to be that person. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy but I also know that it was better to fight for something that would stay with you forever and comfort you than to live someone else’s life.
The creative boost that affected many artists during Covid visibly impacted Kimberley too and for three years now, the singer has decided to focus on her art, writing music and multiplying studio and live sessions in France but also in Abidjan. She has this gut feeling that one day, her music will go somewhere.
Now more than ever, Kimberley is ready to show more of herself, to share her music with her audience. After months of work and recordings, her first EP is now ready and will be coming soon.
I have to drop something, I want to show a part of me. It took me some time because it’s so me that it feels intrusive. Making art is somehow opening yourself and being naked. Especially when it comes to writing, you know. When you’re not writing about surface level topics, you can be a little shy about it. When you speak about love, self-love, self-confidence and whatever that is in your mind.
What message do you want to share with people through your music?
I want to share that at the end of the day, we all go through the same emotions and feelings as humans.
I was shocked when people came to me saying that they could relate to what I was singing because I was writing about very personal moments I’ve lived and how I felt in those situations. For people to relate to it made me realize that we are all the same. It doesn’t matter where you are from or how much money you have, we all go through the same things in life. Nobody is better than anyone else.
How would you describe your sound?
I never know what to say when I’m asked this question.
I’d say that it’s poetic without really being poetry. There’s something lyrical about it. There’s also something spiritual about it that I didn’t necessarily like to admit or come to terms with at first. I love it when music feels like there are voices that are speaking to you, I love layering voices and using a capella. The melody is in the voice’s rhythm.
How do you feel when you’re singing for yourself or in the studio and how is it different from when you sing in front of people?
I don’t like singing in the studio. When I’m in the studio, I feel like it has to be very rigid or strict and I’m not like that. I do a lot of improvisation, you know. The same song for me could have variations from one studio session to the other one or from one live performance to the other.
When I’m on stage, I always have some minutes of stress in the beginning, when I’m realizing that I’m about to perform in front of people. But now, the more I perform live, the more I realize that I love interacting with my audience. When I feel that the crowd is too calm for example, I’d make them sing with me, participate with the rhythm and harmonies. To know if they are paying attention, I often try to make them uncomfortable, just as a reminder that this should not be taken too seriously.
I feel sometimes that with how I sing and what I sing about, people take the music too seriously while they should not really. Let’s just enjoy, connect and have a good time.
Why do you think that your lyrics or the way you sing is taken so seriously?
Maybe because there’s this fear of speaking about certain subjects so when I sing about them, it’s automatically placed in the serious box. I feel like even the deepest themes can be seen more lightly. I would write a song with sad lyrics but the rhythm would get you to dance for example. I feel like everything can be transformed, even sadness can be transformed into something new.
As an artist, how do you know when you’re creating mainly for the audience and not no longer for you first?
I feel like it comes when an artist bases their work on what is expected from them and not on what they want to do. When for example you’ve dropped something that worked and then you try to copy and paste all the process into your next projects because people liked it the first time. When you keep going where people are waiting for you while knowing deep down that there’s nothing for you in that direction anymore.
Is it always easy to be aware that you’re in this type of situation, about to lose yourself in what people want?
You have to frequently take some steps back and be able to have a different perspective on your journey. Artists need to have self-awareness but also be aware of how people see them, then play around both of these aspects.
How do you interact with your audience to be able to know what they truly think of you?
You need to talk to people, after a performance for example, gather their thoughts and then analyze what you receive. You take it all, good and bad and you sort it out. Then you can unravel the idea people have of you and work with it.
For example, I personally feel like people see me as a neo version of a tradi-modern Ivorian singer. But there’s something very lyrical and experimental in the way I sing that is different from what or how the singers of that period were doing. I don’t think my audience gets it yet because as soon as you sing in your mother tongue, they put you in this tradi-modern box. I don’t really mind so far because I know that they will get there. It’ll take time but they’ll learn. I’m sure that we can keep educating each other.
How would you describe yourself then?
I’m an artist making music that I see as niche. My audience is very eclectic, there’s no precise age range or anything, just sensitive people coming together to listen to me without even knowing they have this in common. It’s like they recognize one another.
As a person, I am an extra-thinker, I’m unpredictable, I’m sensitive too and I love people. I used to be a little bit naive in the past and that’s why I now take the time to have a good read on the situations I find myself in. Not everyone is here for your wellbeing and you need to be aware of that.
“I’ve listened to so many things over the years, I can’t pinpoint a particular artist or influence for my art right now. I feel like it’s a molotov cocktail”. That is what Kimberley tells me when I ask what influences the music she’s now making. The artist is able to blend inspirations from diverse parts of the world to create this unique sound that only she knows how to deliver.
I remember the last time I saw the singer perform live. It was early January this year. I remember how captivating we all were, watching her singing and owning this space, taking us through this journey with her powerful voice. Kimberley has this particular way of interacting with her audience, telling us where the story she’s about to sing to and with the crowd comes from and just taking us along. There’s something cinematic and somehow intimate about it when she delivers these original songs or covers that are mostly in French but not only…
You don’t only sing in French but also in your mother tongue, why make that choice?
There’s something about respect, about the pride to be Ivorian and also about gratitude. For someone who was born and who grew up mainly in France, music was what brought me close to Côte D’Ivoire in the first place.
I sing in French, Bété and Gouro, my two parents’ tribes tongues. I love singing in those tongues. For me, it’s something very natural because I grew up listening to songs in Bété, Gouro and French. There’s something about the emotions and the souvenirs it brings to me. I want to play around and create new souvenirs with those languages and pay respect to my parents through my music.
I don’t speak either Bété or Gouro you know and when I want to use them in my songs, I ask my parents’ help. Singing in those languages is a way for me to learn them too. I want to get the exact pronunciation and meaning. I want to be understood clearly, for people speaking those languages to understand me and feel the emotions I want to convey while singing. I want it to feel legitimate, I want to honor these languages.
What’s your creative process like?
When I try to sit and write a song, it never comes. I always feel inspired when I’m experiencing some emotional outburst.
For me, it usually starts with the melody and the rhythm. It comes to me anywhere, even when I’m walking down the street for example. I’m always with my phone and when I have melodies in my head, I’d record and store them.
It takes me less than a week to write a song in general. When I have a melody in mind, I need to go back home quickly. If I stay out, it’s over. The melody doesn't last long in my head, just a few days so I need to record it as soon as I get it so I don’t lose it. When the melody is there, I just listen to it again and again, it feels like a buzzing sound in my mind that needs to come out. I’d then add the emotions I would be feeling at that moment and the lyrics would come. I simply write what comes to me. It just builds up like this, progressively.
I always start with hooks and build around it, adding some flowers here and there. My songs’ structures are always awkward somehow. I never follow the conventional writing patterns, I just write how I feel. Then you need to go to the studio and record properly.
The studio is a place where I need to work on myself more and not put too much pressure on me. As I said earlier, there’s something academic about being there that I don’t like. It makes me feel like it reduces my creativity. But I know I need to learn how to adapt.
When the melodies and texts come to you, how do you know that they are good material to work with?
If it stays for a long time and moves me, then that’s it. The good stuff always comes back to me, when it doesn’t and I just forget about it, then it wasn’t that good.
You work a lot with rhythms and melodies while creating. At what point does the beat come in?
I’ve never received a beat and then decided to add my voice on it. Most of the time, we start with the a cappella, then the melody and then we create the beat according to what we got. That’s why I’m working with only one producer right now, Dayu. We have a great connection.
All my songs are first in an a cappella version with a lot of voice layering, which I love so much. For this first project, Dayu and I worked on the tracks remotely for a year while I was still in France. We would communicate via video calls. I would ask him to reproduce melodies that I had in my mind and he would also add his personal touch on it and then we would have something.
Why do you think your sound has a spiritual dimension to it and why were you reluctant to embrace it?
I think it’s spiritual because I do it with that spiritual dimension inherently. I don’t follow any logic or rationality when I create. This buzzing sound I mentioned always feels like it’s coming from elsewhere you know. You could wake up and have something in your mind that wasn’t there the day before for example, it just creates itself, on its own before your eyes, just like that. It’s something you can’t explain and I believe in how singular or unique this sound is.
That’s why in the past, I used to be afraid to show it or embrace it. I was genuinely wondering if my music could even get people's attention, move them. It was only me and my thoughts. But I also firmly believe that we all need to be surprised a little bit. We all need to experience new and different things sometimes.
I’m at the beginning of my journey as an artist and I’m already so proud of the process and what I’ve been able to accomplish so far. It’s a way for me to learn about myself as well and discover who I am. I can’t wait to share it. I don’t know how it will be received but I’m happy.
I think it’s really important for artists to be personally satisfied with the art they create and decide to share with their audience.
Exactly, otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense.
With this rather impulsive or intuitive process, how would you be able to work on a longer project such as an album for example. A project which could come with deadlines or other production requirements to take into account?
Well, I guess I’ll have to call the buzzing sounds!
I would need to put myself in an environment allowing me to create, change my routine and adapt to be able to work on these types of projects. That’s what being rigorous means. Not everything can be intuitive, you know. Plus, my phone is filled with thousands of melodies and texts that I can still use, play around and create with.
Abidjan’s creative scene is growing and blossoming right now. How do you fit in that environment now that you’re here? Do you feel welcomed?
I think it will come step by step but for now, I’m a little bit in my bubble. I’ve always been like this even though I know I should be more open. I think it will come naturally with time. I’m not looking for something trendy, I’m looking for emotions, it’s all about the feelings. And to be honest, the Ivorian scene is just one of the many I want to reach. I want to be part of all the scenes that are able to have a meaningful impact on me in all Africa, Latin America or even the Caribbean. I don’t have limits because music travels and I’m sure that, even if you don’t understand a language, you can be moved by it. I was.
Abidjan is where I create right now and then from here, I can spread my music in every direction.
There’s this mainstream scene here with popular styles like rap or coupé-décalé and then you also have the alternative scene, with so many creative people too. I love seeing that scene evolve, it’s really amazing. I’ve just arrived so I’m still getting familiar with the creative environment here. Though I do notice that there’s a lack of places where people can have access to these alternative sounds or where artists evolving in those genres can express themselves, at least on a regular basis.
How could we resolve the lack of infrastructure available for young artists here in Abidjan?
We could create structures and concepts to shed more light on these artists and give more visibility to this scene. Something that would be our own and that would be based on our realities here and the equipment we could have access to. For example something like what Tiny Desk or Sofar Sounds do.
I don’t think we need that much, you know. We can’t compare what and how we live here to other scenes around the world. We can create unique and beautiful things with the little that we have and we have a lot already. I think we will be freer and able to allow ourselves to create from the place we are at now the moment we will be able to stop comparing ourselves to other people.
Let’s talk about your upcoming project. What can we expect from it?
You’re going to dance and you’re also going to reflect as much as I do. The full project is ready but first, I want to introduce myself to people. I’m going to drop two singles beforehand just to say “Hi, I’m Kimi!” and then I will offer you my project, called Makha which is my name in Bété, my father’s tongue.
Why Makha?
It’s my first project so it made sense to self-title it and introduce myself properly. I used to not like this name but at some point, I decided that I should learn to love it and respect it. Makha could be translated as “Do you have something like this, you?”
When a parent names their child like this it’s to show how proud they are and basically show off a little, teasing other people around. And I feel like we all have something special you know, each of us are someone’s treasure but it can take time to realize it just as I took some time to love my own name.
This project shows this process of figuring out your own worth. Even when you do so, the work on yourself is not done, you have to keep going. You go through some introspection, some doubt, some self-awareness too and then you find what drives you in life. That’s what Makha is about.
Where do you see this life as a musician going?
To the most unexpected places. I really think I’ll be surprised by what comes next. I don’t want to have too many expectations because I don’t want to be disappointed. But I know that something good is coming. I’ve always dreamed about it and I know it will come.
Any final words?
I think that we should be a little stubborn when it comes to our art. It’s okay if some people don’t seem to understand, not everybody is supposed to. You know that there are people who are moved by what you do so you just have to keep going. Being stubborn is the key I believe.
Follow Kimberley on this journey and discover more about her art here !
Nice interview. I really like Kimberley and the first time I saw her I told her she looks like my favorite spanish singer, Concha Buika. looking forward to hear her new music.