The prolific Montreal rapper Marie-Gold has been having fun for a few years with a slightly larger-than-life persona, that of La Baveuse, whose friendly and colorful swagger she made shine on her previous album, Welcome to Baveuse City. Now the artist, who proudly wears her engineer’s ring, completes the loop of this adventure with a new mixtape darker, Back to Baveuse City.
This second musical component was to appear two months after the first disc, but the work was not finished. This is what is done, a year later. And the two parties were intimately linked, notes Marie-Gold. “I found in my notebooks a page with the list of songs by Welcome… and of Feedback… all written before the first one even came out. The two clearly went together. »
One is therefore the continuation of the other, but also the complement, as the cover of Back to Baveuse City, where the flirtatious city of the first opus is now engulfed in flames – it borders on the premonition with our skies of smog. “I wanted to show a kind of nemesis, explains the rapper. Hot and cold, black and white, yin and yang… I wanted there to be two chapters to Slobbery City. »
On this suite, not everything is dark, but Marie-Gold offers several slower or introspective pieces, such as On the moon, Tired Or At the shrink. To reinforce this impression darkshe also removed a few pieces that were too reminiscent of the sparkle of the first part.
Marie-Gold, in the city Chloé Pilon-Vaillancourt, will repeat it often during the discussion: Back to Baveuse City is not a “real album”, but rather a mix tape, a more informal delivery. Ordinary mortals will see nothing but fire: the songs are well produced, well delivered, well linked, with a few more interludes – she doesn’t care about it herself on the introduction.
The rapper admits all this and half-blames a perfectionist side. But she persists: “I don’t want to defend it as an album. If I am to release another album, it will be much more worked, she explains. Feedback… it’s more a compilation of bangers [de bons morceaux] in the universe of Slobber City, whereas, for me, a record would be my best texts, my best musical sequences, my best beats, and above all it would be a coherent project from A to Z.”
quest for authenticity
The sequel for Marie-Gold remains to be invented, but it will take place outside the universe of Slobbery Cityof which this new part ends with the play Farewell, in order to complete everything. The rapper wants to be more herself, more vulnerable, and less in the icing of the Baveuse. That immediately said, she backpedals a bit. “Here, I’m working on more emo songs, and it’s more me. But, afterwards, there is the reflection: is it because it’s sadder that it’s not you anymore? Is sadness more an emotion of truth than pleasure, mockery, levity? »
In any case, the 30-year-old artist, who graduated as an engineer from the École polytechnique last year, now has less desire to smash everything and wants to leave her trappings of arrogance in the locker room. This mutation will even be at the center of a short film, The deconstruction of Baveuse City.
“I’m stepping out of the character of the Baveuse, among other things, because it’s important for me to reconnect with my interest in science and to work in engineering, and therefore inevitably that forces me to make art that’s a little different,” admits -she, also explaining “to be more at peace with a lot of things” and to have a lesser appetite “for controversy”.
Instead of forcing things, Marie-Gold will let them come to her more. It’s a bit like this that she sees her professional ties with France, where she has spent a lot of time in recent months, among other things to work with beatmakers. “I found it super inspiring to record in studios where the rappers I listen to go, it creates an extraordinary creative atmosphere,” she says. But we work well, we make featuring, we have a press agent on site, but I’m not in “break through France” mode. »
If she knows that she will return for her future compositions to more “old school” rhythms, similar to those of her first EP in 2018, she will not blow more than enough on the embers of creation to accelerate the combustion. “It’s when music is a hobby that I’m more creative, not when I have to make songs,” she explains. And I always said to myself that there was so much music coming out that if I wasn’t inspired, I wouldn’t be releasing music. »
The rest, certainly, will be carried by wisdom.