[Portrait to be found in the Spring issue, on newsstands or by subscription.] Last year’s finalist of the Star Academy, Ebony is now carving her own path. She offers an eclectic music in both her sonorities and her subjects, which range from hell to paradise. Her first album, Menelik, is released this Friday, April 24.
It was at the Têtu Awards 2025 ceremony, last December, to which the former contestant of the Star Academy had been invited to present the Revelation of the Year award to her classmate Marguerite, that Ebony decided to assert her belonging to the queer community, at Konbini’s microphone. “I don’t put any particular label on who I am or who I want to love, I don’t impose limits on myself”, she details when we meet for our interview.
As with many young people of her generation, the 21-year-old singer does not cling to labeling her sexual orientation so much as affirming her freedom: “The freedom of gender, to love whom you want, to express your appearance as you wish. This freedom abolishes all the codes that have been imposed on us since the dawn of time”, she adds. The apple did not fall far from the tree. “My parents have always encouraged me to be who I wanted to be, without thinking, continues the young woman, seated on a large leather sofa in the label’s offices. For example, they never pushed me into the arms of a boy.” She recalls evenings spent watching RuPaul’s Drag Race when she was a child, with her father who, like her mother, raised her with open-mindedness and acceptance of others.
This need for freedom is reflected in her music, which she struggles to qualify. Perhaps Ebony finds herself in the alternative genre, broad enough to reflect the eclectism of her early tracks? “That would be the most logical box, even if I don’t want to put myself in any”, she laughs. A bit like Theodora, who just won four Victoires de la Musique with her double album Méga BBL, which blends influences with abandon. “Today, what works is what Theodora offers: total artistic freedom where we try not to confine ourselves to a single thing”, Ebony affirms. We’re tired of redundancy! Her success shows that the Francophone public is ready for a new musical era.”
A Splash of Electro in Bouyon
Like her elder by a year, Ebony grew up under the influence of American icons such as Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. Michael Jackson, too, the idol of her father, who is none other than Guadeloupean singer Thierry Cham, a key figure of the zouk scene. Antillean roots (her mother is Martiniquaise) she honors from her first single, “Rage”: “I wanted to mix several styles, with electro sounds over a bouyon rhythm that nods to my origins, she explains. Caribbean, and especially Antillean, inspirations are always present in my music.”
With this track whose lyrics are as incisive as its tempo, Ebony evokes a feeling that is often experienced by the youth with acute clarity. “It’s a track about the fury to win, about pushing beyond limits, and it asserts that external judgments have no impact on my intention to move forward”, she defends. A fury she herself had the chance to feel, for example when she left the Star Academy château, after spending three months there without her phone. She discovers then that her passage on TF1 did not generate only messages of love from fans, but also the now inevitable flood of hate, racist in this instance. “It’s really a track born of frustration. I would compare it to a spit: it came out as it had to come out, because it had to”, she concludes in a calm tone.
Another extension of that approach is heard in “I Don’t Care”, with a contagious energy, and which can also be read as a nice middle finger to her detractors. In a verse, the young woman judges herself thusly “perhaps a little too black for Marine voters”… Not a reference to Marine Delplace, her Picardy teammate who beat her in the Star Academy finale, but to the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen. “I was thinking about the harassment I had suffered on social networks, and it turns out that the majority of the people who hate me share posts from the National Rally, she explains. I wonder if there’s a link between these two bits of information!” And adding, after another burst of laughter: “I think we’re living in a time where one must stop treading lightly, especially with that topic. When it comes to spewing awful things, racists don’t hold back. So why, in return, should we refrain from pointing out their behavior?”
Yet Ebony does not intend to write only in reaction to political current events. In January, she released “Mon paradis,” a lighter, more aerial pop song about a conflicted love. As many titles join the roster of those that will appear on her debut album, Menelik, which she is finalizing at the moment of our interview. “I knew I wanted to make an album directly, not an EP; five or eight tracks weren’t enough,” she explains. I needed a long format to be able to tell my story with it.” A confidence that does not fail to recall the assurance of her idols, including a certain Rihanna, who fills her eyes with stars. “But Rihanna has set aside music to become a businesswoman, she notes. I clearly don’t intend to do that! Aren’t good songs more eternal than diamonds?
