Two sketches in Marseille became the verse and the chorus
On 13 January 2017, Kid Francescoli released The Player, sung with Julia Minkin, on Yotanka Records. The track runs 4 minutes and 4 seconds. The album Play Me Again followed on 3 March 2017, and this song is track 3. Kid Francescoli is Mathieu Hocine, a producer from Marseille who started the project in 2002. Minkin, a singer from Chicago, began writing with him after they met in New York. Their previous album, With Julia, had carried the single Blow Up. The Player was the first piece of the new record to be heard.
Hocine and Minkin wrote it together. The album notes credit the two of them on every song except Les Vitrines, Moon and Come Online, which add other names. They recorded and produced Play Me Again in Marseille with Simon Henner. Antoine Thibaudeau mixed it at Rumble Sound Studio. Darius van Helfteren mastered it at Amsterdam Mastering. Hawaii & Smith made the sleeve. The publishing is Alter K. Hocine has said that on this album the split was close to even: he wrote the music, Minkin wrote the words. She had come to Marseille for the tour. Before that, they had sent files back and forth. In the room, the work changed.
The Player is two unfinished pieces joined up. One became the verse. The other became the chorus. You hear an electronic beat, a bass line, and Minkin’s voice in front, with Hocine close behind. The chorus is the part that repeats. It is brighter than the verse, and shorter. On the same album, Les Vitrines is the only song sung in French. Bad Girls leans on Minkin’s voice in a slower R&B shape. Moon (and It Went Like…) runs six and a half minutes and has very few words.
On Play Me Again it is almost 50/50. I wrote the music and Julia wrote the words. I could almost call it a duo now.
(Mathieu Hocine, Made in Marseille, 2017)
The phonographic copyright on the Yotanka release is 2016, the year of the recording, even though the album reached the public in March 2017. The single arrived about six weeks before the album, as a digital file on Yotanka. It was a French independent release, played on the Play Me Again tour, with Mathieu Chrétien on drums for the shows. A filmed session at the Marsatac festival in 2017 keeps the same shape: Minkin singing, Hocine on the machines.
Years later, another song from the same album, Moon, spread on TikTok and passed tens of millions of views. That is a different track, from 2020 onward. The Player is the one that opened the campaign, in January 2017, built in Marseille from two sketches. The version to hear is the album take of 3 March 2017, the four-minute recording mixed at Rumble Sound.
Marc G. | 10 October 2026
|
Heard The Player a thousand times. This reminded me why it stuck. Also the comments section on old forums was wild about this. Needed that.
Sofi | 11 October 2026
|
People sleep on how weird The Player actually is. This article gets it.
Noah | 12 October 2026
|
The production notes here made me replay The Player twice. Nice catch. I told my coworker and they shrugged. Their loss.
Sam W. | 13 October 2026
|
Still puts The Player on whenever I need a reset. Never gets old. Also the comments section on old forums was wild about this. Anyway.
Elena N. | 14 October 2026
|
Short take: the groove on The Player still feels unfair. I told my coworker and they shrugged. Their loss.
Jacques | 14 October 2026
|
Not my usual lane but The Player got me. Fair enough.
Aria | 15 October 2026
|
Not overrated. If anything people forgot how tight The Player is. That is all.
Ivan | 16 October 2026
|
I show The Player to friends who say they hate that era. Works every time. Coffee got cold while I finished the article. Acceptable. Fight me.