A dazzling figure of French rap, Diam's has become Mélanie Giorgiades again and has left everything to adopt a spiritual life, with her husband, her children... and with respect for the Muslim religion and its precepts. Portrait.

There are artists who mark an era. Diam's, which celebrates its 42nd birthday on July 25, 2022, is of these. The Little Suburb forever marked the history of French rap. Three albums, over a million records sold, dozens of hits, two Music Victories , a sharp, committed pen that transcends generations, then a journey through darkness. For more than ten years, Diam's is once again Melanie Georgiades . She says she was 'saved by Islam' and built her family life away from show business. Confide, she no longer does it through her songs, but in books and in her documentary Greetings , acclaimed at Cannes Film Festival last May... That's what we learn there.

Diam's, the skinned alive

Born in 1980, in Nicosia, capital of Cyprus , Diam's arrived in France with his mother at the age of 3. After the separation of her parents, she spent her childhood in the department of Essonne, in Brunoy, where she suffered from a suffocating loneliness . With her mother, she maintains a relationship full of modesty, distance, empty of 'I love you' as she writes...

Contacts with her father, who has returned to live in Cyprus, are limited to a few calls, before becoming increasingly rare... until the complete rupture. Between an absent father and a mother in love with her job in a record company, the Little Suburb , only daughter, cultivates a deep malaise.

Diam's: suicide attempt and rebirth

What keeps her going: rap. 'Rap had become my passion, there are no other words to describe the link between this music and me. It was my obsession, as if my life had taken on all its meaning there', she says in her autobiography. Only, she does not know what words to put on her suffering. At the age of 15, she attempted suicide by ingesting a large dose of drugs.

' I was walking (...) because my friends didn't want me to die. But I was walking to go where, to do what? At that time in my life, I tell myself that death is better than what I am living “, she confided in her documentary Greetings .

That's when Diam's was born. 'Diam's', for diamond. 'I come across the definition of the word diamond, and I learn that a diamond can only be broken by another diamond and that it is made only of natural elements', she said on Zicline. 

Diam's, full rooms at the psychiatric hospital

Passionate, she wrote her first texts, posed on compilations and made a name for herself in the world of rap until then closed to women.
From success to success, Diam's reaches the heights . Its springboard? The hit of summer 2003 DJ . TV shows, radios, concerts, queen of the Top 50, the young rapper won everything... until the apotheosis: the phenomenon In my bubble .
Diam's jumped with The Dumpling , dream with Young lady , cry with Night confessions , engage with My France To Me, then Diam's freaks out!

' Although I had become famous, I sometimes cried alone like a child going to bed. (...) The loneliness and silence became so distressing that I preferred to escape them by forcing myself to sleep', she confides. Diam's continues to stay in psychiatric hospital , them 'fits of madness' , she even sobbed her dismay at the Victoires de la Musique in 2008. Neither shrinks nor drugs cure Diam's psychological distress...

Help of Islam

Diam's says that one day, one of her friends (of Muslim faith) disappeared to pray. Unconsciously, the rapper follows her, and everything changes. Thanks to this prayer, the fragile and often devastated young woman feels alive again. Diam's then flies to Mauritius with her friend Vitaa . AND lle s'y convert to l'islam . ' If I hadn't opened the Quran one evening on a beach in Mauritius and found meaning in my life, I think I would have really fucked myself up ', she confided in her documentary.

Today, a decade after her rebirth, Mélanie Georgiades lives thousands of miles from gray Paris, with her husband the former Franco-Tunisian rapper Faouzi Tarkhani , and his three children, Maryam (10) Abraham (7) and Luqman (5) . Her motherhood, her family life and this God who revealed himself to her will have allowed Diam's to find peace...

Source journaldesfemmes.fr