Si c'était le dernier [English translation]

As I'm nearing thirty, I fear to be in my fifties,

but only God knows whether I'll make it to my thirties,

so my future and my dreams are put on ice.

Right now, I have quarantined my scars.

I write this song like the end of a carreer.

I came, I saw, I conquered1 then I went into reverse.

If this was my last song, I would like people to remember

that behind my scars a queen was hidden.

This is my mea culpa, my eyeliner is not smudged2, no

And if tears mess up my makeup, know that my hart does not hesitate.

I am upright and passionate, dreaming of a passionate love.

And you, my heart SOS SO do3 you love me?

I have seen the world inside and out

Craving for stitches

They got the better of me in the end, my damned wounds

I am living on the fringes of this world

since I tasted hell.

It is so dark at the bottom when you're lost without lanterns

I have bent one knee to the ground at the eand of year 2007.

They said Mel4, it's either the mental house or the coffin for you

Unbelievable: me, the warrior, I stopped a bullet, right in the head

A bullet in my spirits, I blew a fuse or so they say

I took ten steps toward God since I went down, or so they say

They even say I'm getting better since they let me down.

'Cause that's how life goes, when youre OK you've got lots of friends

then as you fade out, you hear a voice that says you're alone, Mélanie

Rise up for the sake of you mother, at least do that for her

Rise up for your bros and sis who like your poems and go

Hoyo in the concert halls at night

Hoyoyoyoy when you sing, you little suburb girl

You hear a voice that says "fight on,

at least for him.

Maybe he is the only one, maybe the father of your daughter".

And then the voice speaks less often and you collapse.

There are no more MTV-awards in the hospital to help you as you sink.

Coz I admit it, yeah, I had a stay in the loony bin.

There, where happiness is to be found in pills and injections

There, where you're nothing but a patient, nothing but a fucking prescription

In the Vésinay or in St Anne5 you might have come across my ambulance

I saw shrinks play God and pretend they could read my heart

There, where eyes roll upwards after 9 PM

Alone in your room, when you must fight you lower your sights:

these fucking drugs came and stole my strength6

little by little, they came and fried my brain.

These medicaster shrinks saw my shining euros

Liars, the whole of them, hope smugglers.

I just had a heart too big for a too delusive future

Take this song as a shell in your face or a bombshell7

You won't end my crushes8 with loxapac

antipsychotic, antidepressant, anti anti

No wonder you're crazy: you're too kind, kind

Really I'm just like anybody else

half wisdom half anger

They said you have a lifelong disease

you have a bipolar disorder.

Me, like an idiot, I bought that so I swallowed it

I saw a stuff that could soothe my heart at the bottom of a cup

My face distorted by my demons

Yeah, I blew a fuse

Amazing how many people love you as you hit rock bottom

They feel good when you collapse because they immediately feel strong.

Now when I was making the crowds jump

they were just dying

yeah, dying of jealousy,

therefore happy to see Diam's die

And even if that was true, Mélanie rises up.

Today Mélanie is high, I call that my second birth

When my belly9 is full,

my heart is filled with gratitude.

In the end it's always the same people,

the true people who back me up.

Those who love me equally when I cry for joy or sorrow.

I write this song as if it was the last of my life.

Need to spit out what I have to say, need to tell you about my crisis

Right now down below if I swear I'm allright

that's because you can see Sébastien right behind me all the time.

Let me pay a tribute to all these men and women who cheer me up

The only ones who can really say they are close to me

One day I changed my number without telling anyone

And that's when I saw who tried to know what I had become

Often I ask myself "what would you have done if you were Diam's?"

Would you have drunk champagne or bought yourself tears?

Would you have take advantage of your fame to snub your audience?

Or understand that with your cockiness you could help Africa?

Tell me, what would you have done if you were me?

Would you have spent all your money in luxury or worked in the shadow, tell me?

What would you have done? What would you have done?

As for a single punch10 everyone sues you?

What would you have done?

Buy a bigger plasma screen? No way: I already have a movie theater at home.

They are so nice, according to them you should look like everybody else

Let me explain: I am not calibrated, I am too plump

What would you have done in my shoes? You would have quit rap?

Granted, in this business there are few lasting relationships

WHat would you have done if it was your last show?

Ask for millions € or ask for Hoyoo Hoyoyoyo?

This is what I ask for

Hoyoyo

Not that the audience accalims me

but that it sings with me our common sufferings.

You and me we are alike, we pump up the volume

I don't hear a thing, I am deaf when cunts are jabbering,

when mass media hound me to discover what I'm hiding

I gave them my pen, they went after my hand

I held up one to them, then they tasted my fist.11

I am a rap singer, not just a singer, hey

Let that be clear

I am a mean girl, not a singer

So I don't owe you anything

Me, I am gentle, I rarely get angry

But my mom said "respect yourself and you will be respected"

I look at them as they fight

to come out of the dark

They have no idea of the problems glory brings

A sword of Damocles above your head

You never walk avay unscathed from glory or suburbs12

Even worse when you have no brother, no father and you're alone

Soothing your despair to avoid drawing a gun

THe more I know men the more I risk going to jail

So the less people I see the less bruises I get

I would like to be an exemplary women

I confess it

Nevertheless, if you hit me I will not turn the other cheek

No, I have hot blood, vithout carribean stuff

I am just the offspring of the hell of a warrior (woman)

I am the daughter of an armor13

The grandmother of French Rap14

Today I am at peace, therefore I can help

Plead guilty if however I dragged people into sin

As I was talking about suicide or my problems

It is like I did not understand why you cling to life

Yeah, I know how it feels to be nothing but emptiness, nothing but wrinkles,

no more tears, no more laughter, no more rage in your guts

Nothing left to boost you

You gobble [pills] to get yourself unstuck

but your uneasiness is not cured, you are simply drugged

Standing next to the depressed people

Standing next to them beacause no soul on Earth will be able to help you

Seek peace inside of you

I know you would like someone to free you,

to understand you as you bleed

and life has no taste anymore

You must know that, in the hospital, it's like I lost my memories

Therefore from the past I keep only what gave me hope

I understand the world now15

I understand the cunts16

In the end we will all be held accountable

So I hurry to be a loving daughter

For the one who carried me for 8 months in her womb

She, who suffered like a martyr the day of delivery

Has well deserved that I cover her with diamonds

Yeah, I hurry to be an adult to help my little sisters

Even if I look more like Peter17 in the tour bus

I love speed and waiting, being straight and crooked

for I am the temple and the gun18

As soon as I sing rap, because I don't speak that much now

This is quite a big ego-trip, yeah

This is my most beautiful song

I got smashed by the locomotive running at full speed

Emotional, I got stuck by human stupidity right in the mouth

I am too fragile for this world

So sometimes I run away, and if I happen to fall, well, I get up again and I fight

THere is no room for the weaks and life is a struggle

Wanna be a star? Kwon that the life od a star is a slut.

She robs you of your money, robs you of your moral values

Drags you away from the moon in worthless VIP parties

Consider me as a traitor

I have infiltrated the system

Today I am ready to defend myself, only on the stage

And no matter if I sell a lot less records

Yeah, I take that risk to get away from this business, yeah, yeah

I want to become a normal person again,

who walks around without 10.000€ in her pocket

I am too simple for them

Me, I don't like tinsel

Do you want to know what I truly love?

Get lost, you jerk!

Let me live a quiet life, let me stay simple

Drop it, no need to become famous to stay humble

Lacking love, I chased after recognition

Then me, the little jewel, I flirted with indecence

I write this song as if I were still down there

Nedd to spill out my guts

Need to tell you my fights

I am healed, thank God19 I can see again

I perished but I prayed therefore I found back my ability to write

Me, who spent the year 2008 without writing a single text,

I found back my team and the love of kilometers

I went down, you can see that,

so everything is clear

Why I withdrew, why I went to Africa

Yes, I understood I had a heart, but not only to die

That there I had brothers and sisters, kids to feed

That all this glory is useful if it can be put to use20

to get out of the black hole a lot of kids who dream of growing up

My greatest pride is not to be a legal French citizen

But to be the foundation of a project whose president I am

This starts now

Now it's working

I put up a front21 from Senegal to Cameroon

In 2009 I took a trip to Algeria, Mali, Morocco

Ivory coast, Gabon, Tunisia

I sure hope with time we will help men

take care of childrends from Madagascar to Comores

This has started for the rest of my life, if God allows,

She was plain, this girls, she was sad and withdrawn

You will know more if you look for news on the Internet

before the Big Up foundation and the Big Up project

If this was my last song, I would like people to know

that my audience is helping freely as it buys it from the stores

Me, with the money of the people I want to become a saciour

So if you must set an example, I am the first to donate

If this was my last concert

I would like the stage to allow me to carry a personal message

Yeah, I would like my audience to know I love them

Lost in my problems as I am afraid to loose you

And if this was my last song

I vould like people to remember me as a little girl who dreamed to be a queen next to the king

If this was my last angry outburst, I would accuse France

who will pay for her repression as she will lose her children

If this was my last rhyme, I would sing rap like noone else

For today I prefer to live and give courage to men

If this was my last party I would meet with my friends

would cook a miserable mess of a cake so that they make fun of me all night long

If this was my last "I love you" I would say SOS to you

Will you find the bottle I threw into the Seine?

If this was my last hug, it would be for my mother

And I would tell her that I was good, it was just as well without a father.

If this was my last glance it would aim for the moon

It that has lit up my writings and my readings

And if Death came and said "You have but 20 minutes left"

Well, I would have wished22 for peace

and sung rap for 10 minutes...

1. the usual French translation of "veni, vidi, vici"2. "mel" is slang for "rimel" (eyeliner). "mel ne coule pas" sounds a bit like "mea culpa" in French3. "est-ce" sounds like the spelling of the letter "S", so it's like "SOS" was repeated4. short for Mélanie, the first name of Diam's5. two well known mental institutions in or near Paris6. lit. "came and cut my legs off", that's a common French expression7. the French plays on "pavé dans la gueule" (a cobblestone thrown in your face, a reference to the famous 1968 demonstrations where cobblestones were taken from the streets and thrown at anti-riot units) and "pavé dans la mare" (lit. "a cobblestone (thrown) into the pond", figuratively a bombshell)8. some pun here with "coup de coeur" (impulse or crush) that means literally "heart blow". The sentence could be read as "you won't parry the blows from my heart"9. the expression could be understood as "being satiated" (full belly) and "being pregnant" (full womb)10. No idea what she means there. Diam's was never sued for assault as far as I know. Maybe she speaks about one of her homies, but frankly I did not bother to check11. the French is miserable too12. tess: shortented verlan form of téci -> cité (suburb district)13. If she says so...14. if Diam's is the mother of French rap, Justin Bieber must be the father of Chinese punk-rock15. That's what I call miracle pills16. Make that double-miracle pills17. ???18. This lot of crap does barely make sense in French too19. typical Muslim saying20. and useless if it can't, I guess21. I suspect either a typo or Diam's using "contenance" without knowing the meaning of the word22. and a last grammar error for the road