Eddie

We are continuing on our mission with another three-letter group: NTM. This time we trade the heat of the south of France to the heat from the part of Paris with the worst reputation, Seine-St-Dennis or le 93 (9-3). Formed by Kool Shen and JoeyStarr, this group is with IAM, one of the first to bring french rap to international light. Today, we will be looking at their fourth and last album:

Suprême NTM -1998

Same thing here, we will look at a couple of song, and I'll break the flow by introducing some french tidbits here and there. Let's start with the first song after the intro.

Back dans les bacs

Here we are introduced to Kool Shen and JoeyStarr's rapping. They are wildly different from one another, where Kool Shen is clear and calm, JoeyStarr is a bit more raw and aggressive. The latter sounds like he always has a ton of phlegm in his throat and play on that during the album. This song is basically them just hyping themselves up, and propping up the album and their rapping after being absent for 3 years. They are celebrating the release of their album which is “Back dans les bacs” (back in the “bacs”, “bacs” are containers where CDs are sold in France). They also explain why they rap and reaffirm their devotion to hip hop rather than money. As for the music, for the rhythm it's your usual big bass, snare, high hats and some kind of synth for the melody. It is as expected, repetitive, but they play with the layers to keep it interesting. We're off to a good start: it's energetic, fun, and the rapping, if less technical than IAM, still flows well.

Laisse pas traîner ton fils

As for “Petit Frère” from IAM, this song is about the banlieues in France. Where “Petit Frère” was addressed to the elder siblings of the little bros, this song is addressed to their parents. The tittle roughly translates to “Don't let your son down”, but the phrasing “laisser trainer” in french is something we would use for dirty laundry, in the sense “don't leave your dirty laundry on the ground”. They start by explaining that with the year 2000 coming, the youth of this generation wasn't given the same deal as their elders, and the world is more hostile towards them. There is no work available, the system is broken and not working in their favour. The young folks coming up in this climate are silenced and ignored. The only possible way out for them, in their own eyes, is the streets, which are dangerous for multiple reasons, explains Kool Shen. He exhorts parents to listen to their kids, and give them the love and attention they deserve. JoeyStarr has a more personal relationship to this topic, as he explains, with his father being abusive and pushing him away, onto the streets. His father was always saying horrible things to him, assaulting him, leading JoeyStarr to seek validation in the streets. But to stay in the good grace of the family you make on the streets, you need to prove yourself, and — as Kool Shen relates — you have to be ready to do anything to retain their approval. The rest of the song continues in this fashion, warning about the dangers of pushing your kids away while the streets welcomes them. As far as rapping is concerned, Kool Shen gets a bit more technical and poetic here, aligning alliterations, metaphors, comparisons... It flows well and is contrasted by JoeyStarr's style, which is definitely more raw — some would say sloppy —, and maybe more expressive. It is surely less technical and melodic, but works as a “pouring my heart out”. On the beat: the bass is tight, and although the progression is simple, it works. For the melody, this is also repetitive, but works well as it doesn't step on the toes of the voices. Speaking of voices, there are some welcomed female vocals during the refrain, which bring some refreshing notes of melancholy/despair. There isn't much else I can say about the instrumentals in this style of hip hop anyway; the voices are at the forefront and the music serves the voices. The music can't do anything too crazy.

Aparte: JoeyStarr – a piece of shit

You can't really sing about being raised on the streets and having a terrible father, leading to needing to be violent and kinda fucked up, and not be violent and kinda fucked up. But we mustn't forget that JoeyStarr's upbringing and the abuse from his father are an explanations for his behaviour; not an exoneration. His condemnation with Kool Shen was the first one he had (see in the next song), but from 1999 and onward, he kept backsliding into actual crimes: he beat up his girlfriend, an air hostess, a random bystander, his ex, he owned a non-sterilised pitbull which almost ate someone else's dog, dealt cocaine, weed and possessed multiple firearms (firearms are almost completely forbidden in France), beat up another girlfriend, owned a protected animal — a tiny monkey which he beat up too... To a certain extent I can understand the will to separate the art from the artist, but nah. If the crimes had just been getting into fights with the police, dealing drugs and idk robbery... sure. But assaulting his girlfriends, women in general, abusing animals and endangering other people's animals is absolutely unforgivable. He unfortunately has somehow acquired a semblance of forgiveness in France; he is invited to talk shows, awards ceremony, does movies, voice acting for major roles... And every time some journalist asks him about his crimes, especially the domestic violence, he spews some bullshit like “sure, I hit her, but you have to be two to dance the tango”, implying that whatever girlfriend was asking for it/deserved it. This shows that he is absolutely not apologetic for what he has done, and deserves no forgiveness nor sympathy.

On est encore là, Pt 1 & On est encore là, Pt 2 (We're still here)

In this song, which is sorta in two parts, we will talk about a then, and now, relevant and fun topic in french hip hop: censorship! A song in one of NTM's previous albums, had ruffled a couple of feathers in the police (there is a joke here that I need you to understand; in France, the police is referred to as chickens instead of pigs. Police->Chicken->Feather, get it?) and they had been trialed and convicted of “outrage à la police” or in english “offense to the police”. Six month of prison time (three unsuspended), 50 000 francs fine — old french money before the euro — or 17 000CAD today AND prohibition from performing for six months was their sentence. This is crazy for such a mild song. In “Police”, they say that cops are often racists, violent, drunk and mentally challenged. The gist of the song is about how prejudiced the police is, how officers don't suffer consequences for any wrongdoing, and how they are actually just working for anyone high enough in the socio/political hierarchy. Good things that's not the case today :) In any case, let's move away from NTM and look at France in general

Hip Hop and censorship in France

In the homeland, for audio/visual media, the censorship regulatory body is the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (The Higher Audiovisual Council) or CSA. For as long as I can remember growing up, I always used to hear on the radio/TV about some artists getting in trouble with the CSA ever other week. To be entirely fair to the CSA, it is not complete censorship, stuff just can't be shown on TV or listened to on the radio (public or private). They also don't have any right to look at the content before it hits the TV or radio, they just act after the fact, based on reports. However, whether they ban something or not from the radio or TV is pretty arbitrary to say the least. In general, the enforcement of the laws is more than biased. Hip Hop artists get tackled all the time for what they say in songs, but racists saying shit on TV or the radio don't get flack. At the same time that NTM was convicted, the leader of the far right party in France said that “races were not all equal” (it is to note that using the word race for humans in France has a far stronger racist undertone than in english). The same person had also said that the Holocaust and gas chambers were just a minor detail in History and didn't get in trouble with the CSA or justice. The group we looked at in part one, IAM, also complained about this hypocrisy in “Dangereux” (also in the album I reviewed), where they said that everything that the journals, the TV and the radio were allowed to do and say was prohibited for them. One of the singer of IAM, Akhenaton was also summoned by a judge at one point for his lyrics.

Back to the song: after a really short intro, we are greeted with some hype. Big but non-intrusive bass, some nice strings, some piano in the background. Rhythmically cool and melodically interesting. Kool Shen starts rapping with communicative conviction. Obviously, he starts addressing the censorship of their song, and explains that if you're not already part of the established media, they will try to sink you. Nevertheless, he thanks those who listen, and those who despite the possible censorship continue to rap. After the refrain, JoeyStarr laments that they (the establishment) try to silence them, when him and Kool Shen are speaking for the people who can't. He wants to be allowed to speak, as it is the only thing he knows how to do to make things better. Kool Shen takes over and speaks about their condemnation, and the general hypocrisy, with other people saying much worse yet not getting in trouble. He also touches on the — then — recent surge in support for the far right across France, and says that it also affects the left, which becomes more and more right wing. To illustrate this, he points out one new law passed by the then “left wing” government, a law that restricts immigration further.

Let's judge the album as a whole: Length is good in this one, there are technically 16 songs, but there is an intro, outro an intermission and a song in two parts. This brings this album to 12 songs, which is more reasonable. Those make the album about 50 min long which is a good length, long enough to be able to get in the groove, but not too long that you wish the album ended already. It's a whole 20 min shorter than the previous album we looked at. Although I almost like this album on average more than the last one, it doesn't reach the heights of “L'école du micro d'argent” when it's good. One thing setting it back in my opinion is the mixing/mastering; the voices of JoeyStarr and Kool Shen do not cut well through the mix. It's not that they are drowned by the instrumentals, everything is clear and intelligible, but they just don't cut clearly above it. “C'est arrivé près d'chez toi” is a prime example of that, with the trebles spikes just way too loud compared to the voices. JoeyStarr's voice is also deeper than Kool Shen, but is mixed at the same level, and sometimes gets a bit drowned out by the bass. Speaking of JoeyStarr, he really is not on par with Kool Shen. His texts aren't as good, his rapping isn't as good, to top it off, he's an asshole. Despite those flaw, this album stills gets the second-highest seal of approval from me. I will however not buy it, not to support what I discussed in the aparte on JoeyStarr. I skip nothing here, every song is good, and when the album ends, I almost still want more. 17/20 Note: for those of you that find the french language off-putting but still want to experience NTM, they collaborated with Nas on a version of “Affirmative Action”.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie