"Aiguisé comme lame
Pointu comme un couteau
Chauffé comme une flamme
Et puissant comme un fusil d'assaut."
-- Raggasonic
Maybe I should have made the title of this a little less specific, but there it is. I'm listening to some hardcore gangsta rap by DJ Cut Killer (avec le Funky Family) and I don't understand it, but I get it.
As I sit here completely engrossed in a funky beat, I know without a shadow of a doubt that whatever it is they are saying in French is as trashy as a rat smoking crack in the sewer. But since I can't really understand a word of it, it's just cool. Every inch of the flavor is translated through the music, the beats, the intonation, the edge, the phrasing - you can taste it but you can't name it. Every once in a while the rappers get bilingual and I have to cringe for a moment, but most of the time... nah.
I've been a fan of French Rap since '93 when I first encountered MC Solaar. I was walking about aimlessly, trying to pick up intellectual chicks somewhere in the Boston metro area when I heard something over the speakers in a record store that stopped my heart. It turned out to be DJ Jazzy Jay's collection including Menelik, Democrat D, Sleo, Sens Unique Posse, Moda & Dan (my favorite cut) and of couse the one and only MC Solaar. And for my own memory, Michael, you did know Solaar before you knew Francine Mondon. Oh her? She was the cutie law student from West Africa studying in London. Her brother was making a killing in mudcloth and kente. Ahh single life amongst the New World Africans of the 90s... but I digress.
Several years ago, the Spousal Unit went to Paris to hang with our cousine. She brought back Raggasonic and the fire was rekindled. Here was profanity I could blast in my new 8 speaker Turbo Beetle without a stitch of guilt. I have long liked the mix of flavor and mental gymnastics that this kind of music brings forth as well as the mau-mau effect it can evoke at the suburban stoplight. While I am way too mature and sophisticated for that kind of posturing now (as an august member of the Republican Club), on occasion I will lapse.. like every spring and summer afternoon when the sun is shining, my rims are clean and my windows are down.
My all-time favorite? IAM's Le Feu. It is one of the best party raps since K7's 'Come Baby Come'. Also Poussiere d'Ange from Raggasonic is the bomb. Straight out of <strike>Compton</strike> Le 19eme Arrondissment. WHAT!?
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