M. Pokora
French postcard, no. AA3.
French singer and songwriter Matthieu Tota (1985) is commonly known as M. Pokora or Matt Pokora. In 2016, he became a coach for The Voice Kids France and The Voice: la plus belle voix.
Matthieu Tota was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1985. He is the son of professional footballer André Tota and Brigitte Tota. His parents divorced in 1998 when he was 13 years old. Pokora was troubled by the divorce of his parents and remained greatly attached to his mother after the divorce. He lived with her in Strasbourg before renting a personal flat in Paris. As a child, he studied in an elementary school in Hohberg, and later at Collège Paul-Émile Victor in Mundolsheim, and Lycée Aristide Briand in Schiltigheim near Strasbourg. When he was younger, football was his first ambition and he wanted to become a professional player. However, he later opted for music. Tota explained the origin of his stage name Matt Pokora in an interview during the TV documentary Mise à jour (2010). He was searching for an artistic name and happened to be talking to his grandmother of Polish origin and the importance of humility came up. He asked her "how do we say 'humility' in Polish language," and she said "pokora". Tota immediately decided to adopt the word as his stage name, and shortened his first name to Matt. He earned some public attention as a member of French R&B group Mic Unity. In fall 2003, Pokora participated in the third season of Popstars, a French talent reality television show. The concept was to present possible candidates the winners of which would take part in the formation of a boy band or girl band. He was a crowd and jury favourite, and became a member of a boy band called Linkup formed with Lionel and Otis, two other winners in 2003 Popstars. The female winners were formed into another group Diadems formed of Marylore, Angel, Pookie, Ophélie and Alexandra. In the final showdown, the boy band including Matthieu Tota won the series over the girl band Diadems, who ended up runners-up. Their first Linkup single 'Mon Étoile' was very successful topping French charts, and the debut album 'Notre Étoile' was moderately successful. However the second single release 'Une seconde d'éternité' was much less successful despite good sales. The band tried again their hand in a collaboration with the British boy band Blue making a bilingual English/French version with Blue based on the latter's song 'Bubblin''. The bilingual English/French Blue/Linkup version was entitled 'You & Me Bubblin'. Soon afterwards, Linkup disbanded due to poor performance of sales on releases.
In 2004, soon after the break-up of Linkup, Matt Pokora started working preparing for a solo career collaborating with the producers Kore & Skalp. Under the stage name Matt Pokora, he released his first eponymous solo album originally entitled 'Matt Pokora'. In 2005, he was forced to change his chosen name after a lawsuit from French R&B singer Matt Houston. As a result, he changed his stage name to M. Pokora and re-released the album as M. Pokora. The debut single from M. Pokora was the very successful 'Showbiz (The Battle). It was a Top 10 hit in France, and also charted in Belgium and Switzerland. The second single 'Elle me contrôle' featuring Sweety reached #6 in France and Pokora received two NRJ Music Awards for the single. Yet a third successful single was released called 'Pas sans toi'. The album released on Universal was certified gold. He also started collaborating with Hakim Ghorab who became his long-time choreographer and took part in many of his music videos. Pokora also developed a close collaboration with music video director Karim Ouaret who directed most of his successful videos. In January 2006, his second album 'Player' was released topping the French chart. For producing the new album, he collaborated with Belgian producers Bionix, Rachid Mir and Christian Dessart mixing R & B with pop and crunk'n b, and artists Red Rat and Zoxea and geared toward the younger and feminine fan brackets. He also enjoyed great popularity with gay audiences. The first single from his second album was the very successful 'De retour' featuring Tyron Carter. That was followed with single 'Oh la la la (Sexy Miss)' with Red Rat. During a concert organized by NRJ Radio in France, he met Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin and Martin asked M. Pokora to make a collaboration on Martin's hit 'It's Alright'. The result was a bilingual French/English Ricky Martin/M. Pokora release also entitled 'It's Alright' that sold more than 100,000 copies. Finally, a last single from the Player album followed called 'Mal de guerre', which was a relative success. M. Pokora released Player in a second edition in March 2006 with the bonus track added of the duet with Ricky Martin. To promote the album and capitalise on its success, M. Pokora engaged in a tour of more than 30 French venues under the title 'Player Tour' that culminated in a big sold-out concert at Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy. At the end of the tour, a DVD containing materials from the shows was marketed under the name 'Player Tour Live'. The DVD also included a photo book and memories from the tour. Pokora also created his own label M2theP Entertainment, signing his protégé, the rapper Tyron Carter. In addition to being featured on 'De retour', Tyron Carter released 'Ne me dis pas' that featured M. Pokora, a Top 30 hit, followed by an album 'Mon hold-up'. His song 'Get Down On It' appeared on the soundtrack of the animation film Astérix et les Vikings/Asterix and the Vikings (Stefan Fjeldmark, Jesper Møller, 2006).
After the Player Tour, M. Pokora left Universal and signed with EMI France. Also desiring a more international profile, he went to New York and created contacts most importantly with R&B producers Ryan Leslie and J. R. Rotem. The result was his third album 'MP3' (2008), containing 14 tracks, including 12 in English. The title of the album was a play on his name Matt Pokora (MP) and the number 3 (his third album) but also referring to the popular gadget MP3, the audio format for consumer audio storage. Pokora promoted the launching of the album with a prerelease of single 'Dangerous' featuring American hip hop artist Timbaland and Sebastian, Timbaland's brother and the timing of the release was picked to coincide with the NRJ Music Awards of 2008. The album reached #7 with estimated physical sales of 200,000 copies and additional downloads of 151,000. The album was certified gold. The album also did well internationally charting in Finland, Germany, Mexico, Belgium and in Poland where he won the Polish Eska Music Awards as the 'International Pop Artist of the Year'. After the success of 'Dangerous', Pokora released a second single 'They Talk Sh#t About Me' that features the young English rapper Natalia Kills credited on the release by her stage name Verse. The single unlike 'Dangerous' (that had reached #1) was not played heavily on French radio because of English language content and managed to reach only #24. A third release from MP3, 'Catch Me If You Can' failed to make it to the French charts, but was successful in Poland reaching #11. The follow up "Through The Eyes" was also a relative success in Poland reaching #31 in the Polish charts. To coincide with MP3 release, M. Pokora launched his Catch Me Tour 2008. He also toured Belgium and Switzerland. A fourth studio album titled 'Mise à jour' was released in 2010. The lead single 'Juste une photo de toi' was a big hit. The album includes collaborations with Wayne Beckford, Gee Futuristic, X-Plosive, Astro Boyz, Tarz, STX and Bionix. During the NRJ Music Awards 2011, the song was chosen as "Song of the Year" in addition to M. Pokora being chosen "French Male Artist of the Year". An English version titled 'Updated' was launched in 2011, containing 11 songs, mostly adaptations of the French language hits on 'Mise à jour'. His cover of Jean-Jacques Goldman, Carole Fredericks and Michael Jones classic 'À nos actes manqués' became the number one physical single sales and reached the Top 10. It was followed by the albums 'Mise à jour Version 2.0' (2011) and 'À la poursuite du bonheur' (2012). The latter album entered the French albums chart at number two. In 2011 he won season 1 of the TV show Danse avec les stars (the French version of 'Dancing with the Stars') with his partner Katrina Patchett. M. Pokora's next studio albums were 'R.E.D. / Rythmes Extrêmement Dangereux' (2015) and 'My Way' (2016). The latter topped the French Album Charts in its initial week of release. Pokora also has an acting career. In 2011 Pokora voiced Duncan Rosenblatt, the main character of Firebreather, in the French dub of the Cartoon Network movie. M. Pokora also appeared in the lead role of Robin Hood in the French stage musical Robin des Bois (2013), with musical mise en scène by Michel Laprise and text and music by Patrice Guirao and Lionel Florence. The soundtrack for the musical was released on Capitol Records / EMI and reached number 3 in the French album charts and number 4 in the Belgian (Wallonia) francophone Singles Chart. He also appeared in the film Robin des Bois, la véritable histoire (Anthony Marciano, 2015). In 2016, he became a coach for The Voice Kids France and The Voice: la plus belle voix/The Voice: the Most Beautiful Voice (2016). In 2019, he acted the lead role in the TV film Le premier oublié/The First Forgotten (Christophe Lamotte, 2019) with Muriel Robin. Since 2017, Pokora has been in a relationship with Christina Milian. Their son Isaiah was born in 2020. From the start, and over many years, M. Pokora has been a great supporter of charity causes particularly HIV/AIDS and children charities.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
More, more, more? Take a look at our postcard albums Vintage Pop Stars, French Pop Stars, British Pop Stars, and American Pop Stars!
M. Pokora
French postcard, no. AA3.
French singer and songwriter Matthieu Tota (1985) is commonly known as M. Pokora or Matt Pokora. In 2016, he became a coach for The Voice Kids France and The Voice: la plus belle voix.
Matthieu Tota was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1985. He is the son of professional footballer André Tota and Brigitte Tota. His parents divorced in 1998 when he was 13 years old. Pokora was troubled by the divorce of his parents and remained greatly attached to his mother after the divorce. He lived with her in Strasbourg before renting a personal flat in Paris. As a child, he studied in an elementary school in Hohberg, and later at Collège Paul-Émile Victor in Mundolsheim, and Lycée Aristide Briand in Schiltigheim near Strasbourg. When he was younger, football was his first ambition and he wanted to become a professional player. However, he later opted for music. Tota explained the origin of his stage name Matt Pokora in an interview during the TV documentary Mise à jour (2010). He was searching for an artistic name and happened to be talking to his grandmother of Polish origin and the importance of humility came up. He asked her "how do we say 'humility' in Polish language," and she said "pokora". Tota immediately decided to adopt the word as his stage name, and shortened his first name to Matt. He earned some public attention as a member of French R&B group Mic Unity. In fall 2003, Pokora participated in the third season of Popstars, a French talent reality television show. The concept was to present possible candidates the winners of which would take part in the formation of a boy band or girl band. He was a crowd and jury favourite, and became a member of a boy band called Linkup formed with Lionel and Otis, two other winners in 2003 Popstars. The female winners were formed into another group Diadems formed of Marylore, Angel, Pookie, Ophélie and Alexandra. In the final showdown, the boy band including Matthieu Tota won the series over the girl band Diadems, who ended up runners-up. Their first Linkup single 'Mon Étoile' was very successful topping French charts, and the debut album 'Notre Étoile' was moderately successful. However the second single release 'Une seconde d'éternité' was much less successful despite good sales. The band tried again their hand in a collaboration with the British boy band Blue making a bilingual English/French version with Blue based on the latter's song 'Bubblin''. The bilingual English/French Blue/Linkup version was entitled 'You & Me Bubblin'. Soon afterwards, Linkup disbanded due to poor performance of sales on releases.
In 2004, soon after the break-up of Linkup, Matt Pokora started working preparing for a solo career collaborating with the producers Kore & Skalp. Under the stage name Matt Pokora, he released his first eponymous solo album originally entitled 'Matt Pokora'. In 2005, he was forced to change his chosen name after a lawsuit from French R&B singer Matt Houston. As a result, he changed his stage name to M. Pokora and re-released the album as M. Pokora. The debut single from M. Pokora was the very successful 'Showbiz (The Battle). It was a Top 10 hit in France, and also charted in Belgium and Switzerland. The second single 'Elle me contrôle' featuring Sweety reached #6 in France and Pokora received two NRJ Music Awards for the single. Yet a third successful single was released called 'Pas sans toi'. The album released on Universal was certified gold. He also started collaborating with Hakim Ghorab who became his long-time choreographer and took part in many of his music videos. Pokora also developed a close collaboration with music video director Karim Ouaret who directed most of his successful videos. In January 2006, his second album 'Player' was released topping the French chart. For producing the new album, he collaborated with Belgian producers Bionix, Rachid Mir and Christian Dessart mixing R & B with pop and crunk'n b, and artists Red Rat and Zoxea and geared toward the younger and feminine fan brackets. He also enjoyed great popularity with gay audiences. The first single from his second album was the very successful 'De retour' featuring Tyron Carter. That was followed with single 'Oh la la la (Sexy Miss)' with Red Rat. During a concert organized by NRJ Radio in France, he met Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin and Martin asked M. Pokora to make a collaboration on Martin's hit 'It's Alright'. The result was a bilingual French/English Ricky Martin/M. Pokora release also entitled 'It's Alright' that sold more than 100,000 copies. Finally, a last single from the Player album followed called 'Mal de guerre', which was a relative success. M. Pokora released Player in a second edition in March 2006 with the bonus track added of the duet with Ricky Martin. To promote the album and capitalise on its success, M. Pokora engaged in a tour of more than 30 French venues under the title 'Player Tour' that culminated in a big sold-out concert at Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy. At the end of the tour, a DVD containing materials from the shows was marketed under the name 'Player Tour Live'. The DVD also included a photo book and memories from the tour. Pokora also created his own label M2theP Entertainment, signing his protégé, the rapper Tyron Carter. In addition to being featured on 'De retour', Tyron Carter released 'Ne me dis pas' that featured M. Pokora, a Top 30 hit, followed by an album 'Mon hold-up'. His song 'Get Down On It' appeared on the soundtrack of the animation film Astérix et les Vikings/Asterix and the Vikings (Stefan Fjeldmark, Jesper Møller, 2006).
After the Player Tour, M. Pokora left Universal and signed with EMI France. Also desiring a more international profile, he went to New York and created contacts most importantly with R&B producers Ryan Leslie and J. R. Rotem. The result was his third album 'MP3' (2008), containing 14 tracks, including 12 in English. The title of the album was a play on his name Matt Pokora (MP) and the number 3 (his third album) but also referring to the popular gadget MP3, the audio format for consumer audio storage. Pokora promoted the launching of the album with a prerelease of single 'Dangerous' featuring American hip hop artist Timbaland and Sebastian, Timbaland's brother and the timing of the release was picked to coincide with the NRJ Music Awards of 2008. The album reached #7 with estimated physical sales of 200,000 copies and additional downloads of 151,000. The album was certified gold. The album also did well internationally charting in Finland, Germany, Mexico, Belgium and in Poland where he won the Polish Eska Music Awards as the 'International Pop Artist of the Year'. After the success of 'Dangerous', Pokora released a second single 'They Talk Sh#t About Me' that features the young English rapper Natalia Kills credited on the release by her stage name Verse. The single unlike 'Dangerous' (that had reached #1) was not played heavily on French radio because of English language content and managed to reach only #24. A third release from MP3, 'Catch Me If You Can' failed to make it to the French charts, but was successful in Poland reaching #11. The follow up "Through The Eyes" was also a relative success in Poland reaching #31 in the Polish charts. To coincide with MP3 release, M. Pokora launched his Catch Me Tour 2008. He also toured Belgium and Switzerland. A fourth studio album titled 'Mise à jour' was released in 2010. The lead single 'Juste une photo de toi' was a big hit. The album includes collaborations with Wayne Beckford, Gee Futuristic, X-Plosive, Astro Boyz, Tarz, STX and Bionix. During the NRJ Music Awards 2011, the song was chosen as "Song of the Year" in addition to M. Pokora being chosen "French Male Artist of the Year". An English version titled 'Updated' was launched in 2011, containing 11 songs, mostly adaptations of the French language hits on 'Mise à jour'. His cover of Jean-Jacques Goldman, Carole Fredericks and Michael Jones classic 'À nos actes manqués' became the number one physical single sales and reached the Top 10. It was followed by the albums 'Mise à jour Version 2.0' (2011) and 'À la poursuite du bonheur' (2012). The latter album entered the French albums chart at number two. In 2011 he won season 1 of the TV show Danse avec les stars (the French version of 'Dancing with the Stars') with his partner Katrina Patchett. M. Pokora's next studio albums were 'R.E.D. / Rythmes Extrêmement Dangereux' (2015) and 'My Way' (2016). The latter topped the French Album Charts in its initial week of release. Pokora also has an acting career. In 2011 Pokora voiced Duncan Rosenblatt, the main character of Firebreather, in the French dub of the Cartoon Network movie. M. Pokora also appeared in the lead role of Robin Hood in the French stage musical Robin des Bois (2013), with musical mise en scène by Michel Laprise and text and music by Patrice Guirao and Lionel Florence. The soundtrack for the musical was released on Capitol Records / EMI and reached number 3 in the French album charts and number 4 in the Belgian (Wallonia) francophone Singles Chart. He also appeared in the film Robin des Bois, la véritable histoire (Anthony Marciano, 2015). In 2016, he became a coach for The Voice Kids France and The Voice: la plus belle voix/The Voice: the Most Beautiful Voice (2016). In 2019, he acted the lead role in the TV film Le premier oublié/The First Forgotten (Christophe Lamotte, 2019) with Muriel Robin. Since 2017, Pokora has been in a relationship with Christina Milian. Their son Isaiah was born in 2020. From the start, and over many years, M. Pokora has been a great supporter of charity causes particularly HIV/AIDS and children charities.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
More, more, more? Take a look at our postcard albums Vintage Pop Stars, French Pop Stars, British Pop Stars, and American Pop Stars!