The French idiom Ă petit feu literally translates to "over a low flame". It's used to describe something that happens very slowly and gradually, often in a painful or torturous way, like something being slowly cooked.
In the song, Jul uses this powerful imagery to describe a relationship in crisis, singing "On se déchire à petit feu" (We're tearing each other apart slowly). This phrase perfectly captures the slow, painful burn of a love that is falling apart due to constant arguments.
French rapper Jul gives us a super honest look at a relationship that's going through a rough patch. He's not trying to be a perfect hero here. He admits he comes home late at night and that his girlfriend tells him, "Je sers Ă rien" (I'm useless). When she gets mad, his solution is to escape into video games: "Alors j'allume FIFA" (So I turn on FIFA). It's a real and sometimes funny look at how guys can mess up and avoid their problems.
But even with all the fighting, this is a love song at its core. The main message is right in the title: "C'est dur d'aimer" (It's hard to love). He knows they hurt each other and contradict themselves. Yet, in the very next breath, he tells her, "Tu sais que je t'aime Ă l'infini" (You know I love you infinitely) and wants to be with her his whole life. The song is all about that contradiction: love is messy and difficult, but he's not giving up on it.
Julien Marie was born in Marseille in 1990, and he started writing rhymes at twelve before taking the stage name Jul. He grew up in a working-class family with Algerian-Kabyle and Corsican roots, and the city's southern French slang and street energy shaped the way he raps and sings. He cut his teeth with the local crew Ghetto Phénomène before striking out on his own with the 2014 album Dans ma paranoïa.
Since then Jul has built one of the biggest catalogs in French music, releasing an album most years and landing nearly every one in the top ten, with several reaching number one, including La Zone and My World, the record that won Urban Music Album of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique in 2017. He leaned into Auto-Tune long before it was fashionable in French rap, pointing to Future as an influence on his melodic, half-sung delivery. By his early thirties he had sold more than five million albums, making him the best-selling rapper in French chart history, and he still records constantly from his own label, D'Or et de Platine.