The 33e edition of the Francos ended yesterday as it began: with a concert by Loud Lary Ajust. The trio — who broke up after the mini-album Corrugated in 2016, but had never dissolved — first offered a sold-out concert at Club Soda on June 9 to finally present the last show of the festival on the main stage and thus strongly underline the tenth anniversary of the album release gullywood. The gloomy weather did not get the better of the motivation of the musicians and their fans: this concert was exuberant.
On stage, rap in its purest form. Two MCs, their microphones and a DJ, that’s all. The ten years of experience that separate the recomposed trio from its beginnings speak for themselves; Loud and Lary led the crowd, which in the area closest to the stage happily leaped as they once again heard the classics from the trio’s debut album.
In the introduction, as in the opening of gullywoodthe magnificent Outremont to set the tone and make us smile again as on the first listen ten years ago, followed by Hero, it was already off to a flying start. The only decor, a black background, the title of the celebrated album written in large white letters as on the Californian mound. The title track followed, its bassline plowing the field of fans past the rappers, then bouncing it Candlewood SuitesXavier Caféine (with an excerpt from his song Montreal (this city) in introduction), the epileptic groatsthe jagged funk of James Hyndman Money, Intro + Get and Cody Bangers. End of the first chapter of the evening.
It’s in BlueVolvo, a song taken from the album of the same name and performed at the very end of the show yesterday, that Lary Kidd revisits formative memories of youth: “We sang Kanye 808′ / Me I said all the time that I compare myself to Lil Wayne”. In 2008 appeared two classics of modern American rap, 808 and Heartbreak by Kanye West and Tha Carter III by Lil Wayne. Four years later, Loud Lary Ajust burst in with this gullywood which, at the time, sounded like the most modern record the Quebec rap scene had to offer.
We still remember Loud Lary Ajust’s first concert at the FrancoFolies — was it in 2013? — on a small stage planted where the Esplanade Tranquille was recently inaugurated, then a vacant lot covered with gravel. It was 11 p.m., probably a weeknight. A monster crowd in front of these greenhorns distributing verbal slaps and thunderous basses. It was electric. Feverish, we were, from the stage to the adjacent alley. This trio had succeeded in doing what the new stars of American rap Future, Waka Flocka Flame or 2 Chainz, to name a few, were already doing successfully: big dirty trap. But in French, with very Quebecois coronations. It was practically unprecedented, and above all so relevant. A star in the sky to guide the scene: we too, in Quebec, are as good as they are in the South.
With Dead Obies and Alaclair Ensemble, Loud Lary Ajust has opened up a new avenue for the local rap scene, and that’s a lot of what we were celebrating yesterday. The guys continued the concert in the timeline, then presenting songs from the EP Oh my God ! released in 2013, the swaying rhythm and 1980s synths ofONO until the cracking trap rhythm of the title song, Lary kneeling in front of the monitor to chant: “It’s this fucking Montrealness that made me what I’ve become / A little fucker arrogant who wants everything on the menu. His backside was on fire, as usual, as Loud paced the stage with such a calm yet authoritative manner. Ten years of experience, that gives quite a concert.
When diving into BlueVolvothe mound at the top of which DJ Ajust was enthroned turned out to be… a blue Volvo, the stage prop setting the scene for a spectacular finale: Nothing is going anymore, hold my drink, Slow death, then the title track. As a reminder, XOXOthen Falltheir famous collaboration with Karim Ouellet, to whose memory Loud Lary Ajust dedicated this show.