Rilès

Rilès, whose real name is Rilès Kacimi, is a French rapper, singer, songwriter, and producer — one of the most singular voices of the new generation of European hip-hop, known for his self-produced, bilingual catalogue and for an artistic identity that lives as much in his visuals as it does in his music.

Rilès was born on April 12, 1996, in Rouen, France, into a family of Algerian descent. From an early age he was drawn to music as a complete craft — not just the writing, but the production, the engineering, the visual direction, and the brand. That total-author instinct would become the defining feature of his career.

Beginnings on his own terms: Rilès first emerged in the mid-2010s building everything from his bedroom studio in Rouen — writing, performing, producing, mixing, and shooting his own music videos with no label, no manager, and no industry backing. From day one, the entire operation has been independent.

His breakthrough came in 2017 with the now-legendary RILÈSUNDAYZ project — a year-long performance in which Rilès released a brand-new track every single Sunday, fifty-two weeks in a row, with full visuals to accompany each one. The series turned into a phenomenon online and built him a dedicated international audience while major labels watched from the outside. The compilation that followed, “WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE” (2017), confirmed him as one of the most disciplined and ambitious independent artists France had produced in a decade.

He followed it up with “Survival Mode” (2020) — a more polished, fully-realised studio project that saw him sell out venues across France and Europe, again entirely independently. His sound, sung and rapped almost exclusively in English, sits at the intersection of hip-hop, R&B, soul, and electronic music — built on dense, layered production and deeply introspective lyrics about ambition, mental health, identity, and the pressure of doing everything alone.

In 2024 he released “Ignisophia,” his most conceptual project to date — a sprawling, philosophically loaded record that doubled down on his identity as both a musician and a visual artist, framed by a striking cinematic art direction across artwork, music videos, and live show.

Beyond the discography, Rilès has built a reputation as a genuine artist-in-the-total-sense — designing his own album covers, directing his own films, producing every beat, owning every master, and protecting every detail of his creative output. His brand RILÈSUNDAYZ, born from the original Sunday-drop project, has since become a creative house under which he releases music, visuals, and apparel directly to his community, with no intermediaries.

In 2025, La Pépite 47 worked with Rilès on an artistic performance project in Paris — a piece that sits closer to fine art and visual storytelling than to a traditional concert recap, capturing the conceptual, cinematic, and uncompromising aesthetic that defines one of the most singular independent artists working today.