IAM to conquer the Vélodrome in 2025 in a spirit of “party” and “communion”

“A big dream in a big box” for IAM: the Marseille rap gladiators will crowd for a concert event on Saturday June 28, 2025 an arena of their size, the Stade Vélodrome, a first in their career. And don't tell them that this poster represents the meeting of two monuments of the Marseille city. “Monument, it’s a bit frozen, it’s not us…”, concedes Shurik’n, to AFP, alongside the other pillars, Akhenaten and Kheops.

“It’s exhilarating,” says the other MC and leader Akhenaton. “What did we say? Ah yes, a big dream in a big box,” laughs Kheops, DJ. “We get asked regularly – when are you doing the Vélodrome? - whether it comes from Marseille fans or elsewhere, develops Akhenaton. We postponed it many times, hesitated to do it, now it’s the right timing, it makes sense.” “For us, it’s a necessary step,” says Shurik’n. It's even obvious, since their first album, On the Planet Mars (1991), that they made it sound like the “planet Marseille”.

IAM is therefore added to the list of city rappers who have transformed the Vélodrome into a concert stage, such as SCH, who performed in July 2023 in front of 53,400 fans and Jul, who performed there in 2022 and has just announced a new concert in May 2025. Tickets sold out in record time.

“The Vélodrome is a challenge, but it’s good, we like it, we’re not the good type, we have two hours, set the alarm,” laughs Shurik’n. “We always entered the stage with pressure, in small venues, we go at it with the bayonet, the arena side, it is always present with us,” agrees Akhenaton. Their latest album, released at the beginning of February, HH History (for Hip-Hop History), is full of tracks where fifty-year-olds unleash their competitive spirit. Like the song The second is the first of the losers.

For the OM football epics stadium, the group will think of its show in “terms of images, paintings, it's like the work of a director” says Shurik'n. “We will want to do everything, even cloning, Jean-Luc Mélenchon did it well, why not us?”, says schoolboy Akhenaton, in reference to the holograms used for the meetings of the leader of LFI during the campaign of the last presidential election.

“In the stadium, it has to be a celebration and a communion,” he continues more seriously. We understand between the lines that the group will line up without blinking their biggest hits, like Je danse le Mia, which they rarely do. At the Olympia, IAM played Le feu, a hit that had been left out of its set list for a long time.

With Kheops, we must expect the orthodoxy of the hip-hop pioneers: a DJ who not only throws the loops but also “scratches” on his decks. When asked about his memories of the Vélodrome, he turns to Akhenaton to talk about their adolescence as fans of the club in this stadium. “We arrived at 3 p.m., for a match at 8 p.m., to be well placed and we had the sun in our faces all afternoon (laughs).”