The 2025 edition of talent contest Les Francouvertes ended on an apparent truth: the light belongs to those who create it collectively. Muhoza, crowned the grand winner of this 29th edition, on May 12, 2025, doesn’t wear the victory as a solitary trophy, but rather as a pact for the future, sealed with his crew – a fresh breath of air in Montréal’s ever-evolving hip-hop landscape.
“It’s kind of like my whole life is changing,” confides Déric Muhoza Eloundou, still moved by the echo of that moment. The 21-year-old Montrealer, born to a Father from Cameroon and a mother from Rwanda, grew up in Ahuntsic, and now lives a life shaped by discipline, and hard work in service of his craft.
“I work from Thursday to Saturday and the rest of the time, I’m in various studios. That’s what this last year has been like for me,” he explains. But now, there’s more room opening up. “I can focus on music without having to tightly manage my expenses. I can focus entirely on writing. Managing a budget and all that dulls your creativity.”
What he offered throughout Les Francouvertes wasn’t just a performance; it was a living re-creation of his 2022 album, Bijou. “What we brought to the stage was the album incarnated,” he says. “We re-built the whole thing live, and added a few new songs.” The process came together with many hands, in a hierarchy-free alchemy. “We jammed, everyone threw out ideas, I was scribbling lyrics on the side,” Muhoza recalls. “Every musician had a say. They’re all deeply musical minds. Me, I could never explain what a pentatonic [scale] run is – but they know, you know?”
His crew of five are friends, and brothers in sound. Most of them met at Cégep Saint-Laurent, but the stage bonded them forever. “They’re geniuses, hands down,” says Muhoza, recalling a rehearsal shaped by a storm: “Seventeen inches of snow had fallen in just two days, and still, they all showed up to rehearse.”
Muhoza embodies the quiet strength of a YouTube kid who was beatboxing at four, and diving into breakdancing without ever having taken a single class. He was already participating in talent shows while in primary school. The spoken word has always been his strong suit. “I was good at French from the moment I started writing,” he says. “That just made me want to do it even more.”
Select the image to access the Francouvertes YouTube video of Muhoza
Rap, for him, is a space where all textures converge: scratching, sampling, rhyming. Meeting Kanuk, a beatmaker and early ally, was a turning point. “From the moment I met him, he had this incredible sampler,” says Muhoza. “That’s where I learned everything.” Together, they’re charting a path that blends Montréal’s back alleys with the jazzy pulse of the ’90s.
What about writing? Silence is non-negotiable. “I need stillness. No music. In a park, on my roof,” he says. “I don’t like writing when there’s music playing.” His inspiration comes from real life: “Stories from my day-to-day, from the people close to me.” His ambition is both simple and immense: “I want people to feel like it’s real. That my sound is full of truth – and so are my words.”
As a matter of fact, Muhoza has decided to take his quest for precision even further. “I enrolled in the creative writing program at UQAM [Université du Québec à Montréal],” he says. “I’m starting in the fall.” The rapper, who says he’s still finding his voice, plans to work on his singing with Carson, one of the crew. “It’s funny that I won a song contest, because I’m not actually that great a singer,” he says with a laugh.
The day after Les Francouvertes, he rested, but the day after that, he was already writing again; the momentum was still the same. “We’re going to show up for each other even more because now we know it’s possible,” he says, inspired.
When asked about his musical inspirations, Muhoza mentions Theodora, RauZe, Mike Shabb, Anderson. Paak and… Ariane Moffatt. “Me and my co-workers at Kitchen Galerie are totally obsessed with ‘Je veux tout’ by Ariane,” he says “It’s a song I just can’t stop listening to. It’s all there, in that one song. When it’s prep time in the kitchen, it’s all about Ariane Moffatt!”
Muhoza’s future is being written collaboratively. He dreams of working with Mike Shabb and Nicholas Craven, of continuing to enrich Kanuk’s beats, and of shaping his own voice through Carson’s. He talks about soul, about truth, and about expanding his range. “I feel like I’m still lacking in soul,” he says. “With ADISQ’s new Album of the Year – R&B/Soul category, I think it’s important to explore everything that’s possible within that genre.”
Muhoza doesn’t come from nowhere; he comes from everywhere. From packed snow on the sidewalk; from grainy, archival hip-hop footage; from songs hummed while peeling onions. He’s living proof that you can build a musical cathedral… if you choose the right people to build it with.