Marie-Pierra Kakoma (born 27 May 1996), known professionally as Lous and the Yakuza, is a Congolese-Belgian singer, rapper, songwriter, model, and artist. She rose to prominence after the release of her debut single "Dilemme" in September 2019, which was followed by "Tout est gore" in December 2019 and "Solo" in March 2020. Her debut album, Gore, produced by el Guincho, was released on 16 October 2020. Lous was born Marie-Pierra Kakoma in Lubumbashi, Zaire (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) on 27 May 1996. Her parents were prominent doctors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the time of her birth. Her Congolese father was a gynecologist, and her Rwandan mother was a pediatrician. Kakoma's mother was imprisoned in the Congo for two months during the Second Congo War in 1998 due to her ethnicity. After her father secured her mother's release, she fled to Belgium with one of Kakoma's sisters. Kakoma and the rest of her siblings joined their mother in Belgium two years later in 2000, while their father remained in the Congo. The family relocated to Rwanda in 2005 before permanently returning to Brussels in 2011. Kakoma's interest in music began at a young age while she was surrounded by music due to her father's interest in the European classical works of Mozart, Chopin, Vivaldi, and Beethoven. She began writing her own music at the age of seven. Upon her family's relocation to Belgium at the age of 15, she began writing letters to Columbia Records in the hopes of being signed to the label. At the age of eighteen, Kakoma was disinherited by her parents for wanting to be a singer, rather than a doctor, and at the age of nineteen, she was kicked out of her home. In the period of homelessness that followed, she lived on the streets for several months before settling in a music studio, where she would sleep and record music, while commuting back and forth between a variety of service jobs. Over three years, Kakoma recorded 52 songs, comprising seven EPs. In 2016, she appeared in the music video for "BruxellesVie" by Belgian artist Damso. Kakoma adopted the moniker Lous and the Yakuza from an anagram for soul, the source of her musical passion, and Yakuza, Japan's organized crime syndicate, the name of which she uses to describe her "crew" of collaborators whom she relies on create her music. Lous was first discovered by her manager, Miguel Fernandez, after he found her releases on the internet. Beginning in 2017, she realized her passion to create an album, enlisted many of her close friends to form a supporting band, and began performing at bars and nightclubs in the Brussels underground culture. In late 2017, Lous was invited to perform an acoustic set for La ChillZone, after which she was signed to Columbia Records through Sony Music in France, at the age of 22. On 15 June 2018, "Le Ridicule Ne Tue Pas" was released, a collaboration between Lous and the Yakuza and the French electronic group BSSMNT. ... Source: Article "Lous and the Yakuza" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
