La Formule Secrète takes its name from an Assassin track. Behind it is Jérémy, who has loved French rap since the early 2000s and came to it through writing: in high school, while studying poets in French class, he realised some rappers wrote like no one else. He started the YouTube channel around the Covid period, with one idea: take apart what makes an artist singular, and talk about the rap that came before, not only what is out this week.

He describes his method: old magazines from his collection, archive sites and forums, then his own reading of the work. He keeps his freedom of tone. Many rap media, he says, cannot criticise an album because they need to stay close to artists and labels, and short formats push everyone towards the same empty words. He prefers videos of at least 15 minutes, because a one-minute anecdote is forgotten as soon as you scroll.

With Nikkfurie and Abdallah, he talks about the « permanent present », the pressure of rules that change all the time and that nobody announces, and the doubts of anyone who creates on the side of a job: time, money and fatigue. He sees a way out when even a tenth of his 3,000 subscribers find his work through a release date or a collaboration rather than an algorithm.

He also explains what he likes about HYK: like crowdfunding, but everything stays on one profile, from a video two years old to the latest one. Nikkfurie praises his documentary on La Caution, which is on his HYK page with his other videos.