Ana Tijoux French Rapper With 827K Instagram Followers

Early life

Anamaría Tijoux Merino was born on 12 June 1977 in Lille, France. Her parents were Chilean exiles who had left their country after the 1973 coup, and her mother is the sociologist María Emilia Tijoux. The family moved to Paris in 1978, and in 1983 they traveled to Chile, where she first met the grandparents and relatives who had stayed there.

She went back to Chile with her parents at fourteen and received a scholarship to a private school for French families in Vitacura. After school she studied design at university and worked part-time as a waitress.

Career

Tijoux began rapping after meeting Consuelo Vergara in 1988, who taught her. In 1995 she formed the group Los Gemelos with the rapper Zaturno, and in 1997 she gained wide attention through her work with Los Tetas. That year she also helped form Makiza with Seo2, Cenzi and DJ Squat. The group released the independent album Vida Salvaje in 1997, and in 1999 signed to Sony Music for Aerolineas Makiza, which included the hit "La Rosa de los Vientos". The group's lyrics avoided the violence common in rap at the time. After the early success Tijoux felt overwhelmed, stepped back from music and returned to France, where she held jobs as a waitress, a school inspector and a pollster, among others, before going back to Chile. Makiza reunited in 2004 and released Casino Royale in 2005, then split for good in 2006.

Her solo career opened in November 2006 with the single "Ya no fue". In 2007 she appeared on "Eres para mí" with the Mexican singer Julieta Venegas, a song that did well across Latin America. Her first solo album, Kaos, followed in September 2007 on the independent label Oveja Negra. Its single "Despabílate" was nominated at the Latin MTV Video Music Awards.

Her second album, 1977, appeared in March 2010 and was named for her birth year. It returned to her hip-hop roots, with autobiographical lyrics delivered in Spanish and French. The record was picked up in the United States by Nacional Records, and Tijoux performed at South by Southwest and began her first tour of North America. Radiohead singer Thom Yorke recommended the title track on a list of favorite songs in 2010, and the song also appeared in the video game FIFA 11 and in Breaking Bad.

She later released La Bala and the Elefant Mixtape in 2011, Vengo in 2014 and Vida in 2024. In 2014 she was named "Best Rapper en Español" by Rolling Stone after a showing at South by Southwest, and she worked with the Uruguayan musician Jorge Drexler on the song "Universos paralelos". In 2020 her song "No estamos solas" became the theme for La Jauría, the first Chilean original series on Amazon Prime Video.

Recognition

In November 2020 she was included in the BBC's 100 Women list, which noted her involvement in campaigns against inequality and oppression.

Public roles

Tijoux speaks in her music and in public about marginalization, identity and colonialism, and she describes herself as a feminist. Her song "Shock", from La Bala, became an anthem of the student protests in Chile in the early 2010s over the cost of higher education. In 2014 she released "Somos Sur" with the British-Palestinian rapper Shadia Mansour, and in 2020 she recorded "Rebelión de Octubre" with MC Millaray about the 2019 Chilean protests. In 2022 she signed the Musicians for Palestine pledge, committing not to perform in Israel.

Personal life

In February 2019 Tijoux married the French musician Jon Grandcamp Jr. She moved back to Paris that June to settle there permanently.