Even before having listened to his third album, the cover already speaks to us. Loud, pensive, his gaze concealed by the shadow of the backlight, his head uncovered, without his eternal cap. The album is called No promise, if not that of opening a new chapter in his fruitful career. The rapper sends a clear message: “I think I got tired of what I was doing before — not that I’m denying my previous albums, they were perfect for when they were made, they were even needed at that time- there, in Quebec rap. »
“My new album was as much about thinking about the state of the industry as it was about how I felt back then,” adds Loud, acknowledging that the world has changed a lot. from All women know how to dance, and him too. Through its ten songs, a more reflective, less triumphalist climate is established. The news weighs heavily, this pandemic from which it is difficult to escape, this damn war, the disordered climate – “and what is happening in Montreal”, adds Loud, thinking of these gunshots which resound almost daily.
“Perhaps it was the pandemic that gave me the luxury of being able to step back and think about what I wanted to do, abounds Loud. No one imagined that I would take three years before offering a new record. So, at the beginning, the songs took a direction that one could say in the continuity “of his two previous records One year record (2017) and All that for this (2019), “not just aesthetically, but also with this intention of having hits to continue running the machine. But I didn’t like anything.”
With his accomplices Ajust and Ruffsound in the musical composition and production, they could, “mechanically”, refill the tunes that are danced. They started doing it, “but something was wrong. Alongside these early songs, we worked on others that ultimately set the tone for the record — album cuts more than singles, something like a more classic rap. We recorded Uber Eats Freestyle and, immediately, it clicked: that was our vision of the album. »
So, don’t look too much for catchy choruses on No promise, which however does not lack feverish songs. With their accelerated soul voice samples, provider and Hold-Up evoke composer Kanye West’s twist on Jay-Z’s classic The Blueprint (2001), “one of my favorite rap albums of all time,” Loud said. He flirts with the boom bap sound on Oil painting — a song that revisits his origins through the graffiti he practiced as a teenager — then returns to modern grooves on minimalists Corner in the shade, Nothing less and No promisealmost drill, in any case in its taciturn atmosphere: “I think about my mistakes of the future, I retain nothing from my lessons of youth / I’m such a mess, I’m such a monster / I’m just a product of my environment / I’m just a rapper who became the narrator of a generation that is bored to death. »
Colors
It was early morning on this Thursday when Loud had invited us to meet him on the roof of the downtown hotel where, later in the evening, a good hundred friends and collaborators met for a nice session of listening to his new album. It was also a hot day, the first of the season; the blazing sun obliges, the rapper wore it, his cap.
Perhaps it was the pandemic that gave me the luxury of being able to step back and reflect on what I felt like doing. No one imagined that I would take three years before offering a new record.
She displayed her colors, those of the Montreal Canadiens. On No promisewe will discover the song #10composed then recorded a few days after the death of Guy Lafleur, added in extremis to the nine others of the album: “I come from where the vagabonds put bags in their white stockings / My English is joual, my accent is serious , we rap in our own language,” he says with angular delivery, placing the words like a bricklayer erects a wall.
“We have our own #10, we represent Guy Lafleur de lys. Loud is speaking here as much to his Quebec admirers as to his European fans: “I had in mind the song Number 10 of Booba, about Zidane”, specifies the Montrealer in reference to the success of fifteen years ago of the heavyweight of French rap. Other big names have also worn it, this number: Messi and Maradona from Argentina, Pelé from Brazil “and we too have a number 10”, boasts Loud, who has just returned from France where he is. went to shoot the music video for the title track of his new album, among other projects on his busy schedule.
Tributes
The rapper’s posture changed on No promise. The boastful phrase expert who brings his competitors back into line with less puffiness and instead pays homage to those who allowed him to reach the top of the Quebec rap pyramid, starting with his parents who “dressed him like winter until I was 22 / Proved to me that we could do anything as long as we work hard / Everything I know about the grind, it comes to me from them”, he raps on providerin opening.
Tribute also to the allies without whom all this success would not have been possible; the veterans. SP, from Sans Pressure, makes an appearance through an excerpt from an interview he gave almost 20 years ago. Imposs (Muzion), featured with rookie Raccoon on Win Win, is heard at the end of the album. Also, old friends Lary and Ajust from LLA, with whom he will mark the tenth anniversary of the album’s release at the Francos. gullywood, now considered a classic of Montreal rap, a landmark album, explains Loud, because it was conceived without censorship, “with this transparency that can only exist at the age we were, before everything became too big, before ‘we start thinking about how to present ourselves. There was something even purer in creation, without a marketing plan. »
Today, everything is thought out, right down to the album cover. “I don’t know if the pandemic has anything to do with it, but I have no appetite right now for dance music and too much fun — finally, we had fun with this album, but otherwise, without the colorful and sunny pop side. That’s not it, the mood, and the cap is gone at the same time. »
“I would say thatNo promise is a more polarizing — but not maddening — album,” adds Loud, without even trying to allude to nothing less, his duet with White-B who is currently serving a sentence in an Ontario prison. “Not disturbing, but less accessible. I feel that the potential audience for this album will be more niche, but those who are going to like the album will like it even more than the others, and I like that idea. »