C.P. Company presents Paris Mon Amour, the new chapter of Eyes on The City, the cultural project featuring Irish artist Rejjie Snow.

Walking in the streets of the French capital, Rejjie speaks about the deep link between him and the city: how important it has been for its creativity process and how it influenced his relationship with art.

Joshua Gordon, who has been directing the previous chapter in Dublin, follows Rejjie through the streets of a less-known Paris, far from the Tour Eiffel and the classic stereotypes related to the city.

It is a more authentic, a more realistic, point of view of the Ville Lumiere: a tour between the banlieues, graffiti artisits and how important the graffiti art has been for Rejjie’s artistic education.

The French capital has come to live inside Rejjie’s music, its presence is heavy throughout last year’s debut album Dear Annie, on which the rapper wedded the whip-smart lyrical sorties and Irish-American brogue that have always marked him out from his peers with a newfound loverboy edge. “Going to Paris in my formative years really defined a lot of my understanding of the female,” he says. “Parisian women are so strong and powerful. My first time there, I saw them painting graffiti, driving buses – leading, I guess, in ways I hadn’t encountered before.”

‘Mon Amour’, a duet with Parisian singer Milena Leblanc, is the most obvious ode to the City of Lights.

Whether exploring it with his friends and a marker pen, solo with just a baguette for company, or with the girl who left enough of a dent to get a debut album dedicated to her, Rejjie can say that he is now able to walk through that second, living Paris.

The one that remains off-limits to tourists, away from the dead-eyed ersatz city haunted and defined by the past. It’s a Paris of his own, one he’s still exploring but that he says he wants to be buried in; even if it’s North Dublin that will always feel like home. “This trip with C.P. Company has been great,” he says. “For me, it’s all about the memories right now, and this for sure was a great memory”.