Yes McCan returns when we no longer expected him. Oh ! Sorry: we’re now calling it Yes* — yes, with the asterisk at the end. Because everyone just called it Yes, anyway, he justifies, and the asterisk, “it’s to be found more easily by doing a Google search”. Five years after becoming known as an actor in the popular TV series Runawaythe ex-Dead Obies attempts the solo musical adventure a second time with Lonely Hearts Club, the fruit of a clearly unfinished quest for identity that took him from Valcourt to Brussels, via Paris and Marseille, and the pop, punk and new wave of his former musical loves. Whoever loves him follows him.
Jean-François Ruel, alias Yes*, claims to have not been able to complete a new song in four years. “I felt stuck,” he admits. I felt like it was no longer working for me here. I got to the point of wondering whether or not I would stop making music. » During our conversation, Ruel calls his absence on stage, on record or on screen “hibernation”, then “sabbatical”.
I felt like it was no longer working for me here. I got to the point of wondering whether or not I would stop making music.
Sabbatical? No doubt, but a little forced. In 2018, he left the Dead Obies, the influential rap collective which saw him born in the public eye, to try the solo adventure, offering the same year a first album, YES (everything, everything, everything, everything), which didn’t make so many waves, a bit through his own fault, he admits (“After three concerts, I told my record company: we’re stopping everything. I closed my Instagram account and joined in hibernation”). At the same time, he emerged as an actor, playing the role of Damien in Runaway (VAT). Two seasons and it was over; the phone didn’t ring afterwards, he regrets.
Ruel went from light to darkness. Anyone would question themselves after that, but what’s more, the pandemic showed up, in his face as much as in ours. “When we were finally able to take out our passports to leave the country, I took a ticket to Belgium. » Why Belgium? To go elsewhere to see if he would find his way there, let’s understand. To find a certain Prinzly, he says, “a Belgian composer and director who worked with Hamza and Damso”, two heavyweights in French-speaking rap, originally from Brussels.
“Prinzly, in 2018, was the only one in French rap to do this kind of American-style production – the sound of the percussion, his swing, this richness. » He found it, in his studio; three models emerged from the collaboration, including that of To pretend — more sung than rapped, paradoxically devoid of percussion, except in the explosive last measures. “These were the sessions that provided the spark for the creation of the album.”
These were the sessions that provided the spark for the album’s creation
Another song bears the signature of Prinzly, the composer who spoke to the microphone: Big Pharma, to which Hubert Lenoir also collaborates. The bomb of the album, rap, equipped with a chorus (sung by Lenoir) which is embedded, epic, overloaded synths, flashes of the frequentable and maximalist Kanye West of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010).
Lonely Hearts Club initially turns out to be a pop record. After the powerful and taciturn title song (produced by expert beatmaker High Klassified), he wanders between singing and rap on Many Menpushes the chorus to the new wave Rolling Stone (surprising, satisfying), and even more pop on Poison, with young local talent Yuki Dreams Again. Pop-punk? And why not, on Problemsbefore returning to a tasty melodious trap groove entitled Ten.
Throughout the twelve new songs produced by the Frenchman Nutone (collaborator of jazzman Ibrahim Maalouf, among others), we discover a disc as impactful as it is disjointed which nevertheless contains, in terms of music, as much as the narrative framework, a common thread, ensuring the rapper-singer-actor. ” The link [sonore] of the album is the sound of the beating of a heart”, which we hear from the opening. An episode of “arrhythmia occurs during the song pulpy fictionwhich is the heart of this love story woven together, but which serves as a general metaphor for the concept of being a outsider and to seek his place in the world.
“I can’t even explain to you how this album was made,” continues Yes*. For me, it’s a transitional album — I remember the Flower Boy by Tyler, The Creator. The album of a guy who opens lots of new doors, but doesn’t dare to step into them yet. Maybe that’s where I’m at. I just made a project, and I’m glad I put in all the work to make it happen. »
I can’t even explain to you how this album came together. For me, it’s a transitional album — I remember Tyler, The Creator’s Flower Boy. The album of a guy who opens lots of new doors, but doesn’t dare to step into them yet. Maybe that’s where I’m at.
Incidentally, Lonely Hearts Club appears as the Bonsound label marks the tenth anniversary of the classic Montreal $ud, by the Dead Obies, by reissuing the album, double vinyl format, with a refreshed cover. Water has flowed under the bridge since Yes* left the group, a gesture which had cast a chill in his relations with former colleagues. The guys have since found each other, he assures.
“With VNCE [Carter, compositeur et DJ], I train every week. The guys came by my house recently. Between us, things are going well; for a long time I had to bear the responsibility in the eyes of the world for having “broken” the group, but my departure, and the passage of time, has settled certain things,” says Ruel, who does not rule out the possibility of seeing them one day again all gathered on the same stage.