Evening Standard

Virtually famous

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IN CASE you need a break from all that grime you’re listening to, nip over to France where “Afro trap” is all the rage. The man of the moment is Mohamed “MHD” Sylla, a Parisien of Guinean and Senegalese heritage who began putting home-made music videos on YouTube in 2015, while working as a pizza delivery man.

The music is terrific fun, uniting danceable beats, emphatic rapping and up-to-the-moment electronic­a, and addictive enough to make his debut album double platinum in France. But it’s the clips that are really distinctiv­e. A camera floats around the streets, mostly in one take, while Sylla and friends jostle and dance around it. His signature manoeuvre, as seen by more than 35 million YouTube viewers in the video for Afro Trap Part 4 (Fais Le Mouv) (“Make the Move”), involves tick-tocking the hips like a pendulum while playing an imaginary banjo.

It has been copied in public by the likes of Drake and former Chelsea footballer Didier Drogba — it’s apparently just the thing to do upon

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