There’s a refrain on Made in Paris the place Pi’erre Bourne repeats, “J’adore bitch, pardon my French” 16 instances. One other track referred to as “La Loi, C’est La Loi” has an artificial accordion line that appears like a token French man strolling into an episode of Spongebob. Twelve out of 17 track titles are in French. Get it?
That is “The Pi’erre Bourne Album You’ve Come to Count on: Paris Version.” Pi’erre can nonetheless pen a Pi’erre track stuffed with dazzling manufacturing and endearingly unusual writing that can make you ask, “Is that this good or unhealthy?” (If heads have been debating your rap expertise for six years, likelihood is you’re good—simply ask Silkk the Shocker.) There are hookup tales, outdated flames, dates at Purple Lobster, a reference to the “soss financial system” that he by no means elaborates on. Barely a minute into the album, Pi’erre compares his dick to a Twinkie.
It’s all good enjoyable should you’ve purchased into Pi’erre’s solo profession, however that is additionally why Made in Paris feels regressive. Nearly each track may’ve been plucked from the slicing room ground of an earlier Pi’erre album; some actually had been. It’s a cut-and-paste meeting that doesn’t add sufficient soss to the catalog to justify its existence.
Let’s face it: Pi’erre Bourne’s in all probability acquired some Illmatic syndrome. The place do you go after making each among the previous decade’s defining beats for Playboi Carti and the vibe-out basic The Lifetime of Pi’erre 4? On his earlier album, the polarizing Good Film, Pi’erre painted a extra advanced self-portrait, tapping into the dancehall he soaked up on lifelong journeys to Belize to convey new shades of grey in life. (His uncle, who seems on the Made in Paris intro, was the late reggae and dancehall artist Cellular Malachi.) Good Film was a bizarre, uneven album, sizzling and stormy like a New York summer time; it got here out throughout COVID and is mostly thought to be his worst, however I’ve grown to understand how its stilted, four-on-the-floor simulacra maps onto his mundane relationship drama.
Forged towards the response to that report, Made in Paris looks like a course correction, leaning exhausting on Pi’erre’s tried-and-true sounds—lion roars, 808s that absorb all of the airspace, somber chords that pulse like a heartbeat—because it settles into its groove. Gaudy transitions, too, though uneven mixing prevents them from touchdown fairly proper. The 2 singles “Blocs” and “Pop” had been boring selections to advertise the report, each staid and inoffensive in comparison with the majority of the fabric right here. Neither is as sticky as “Temps de Chasse,” a ballad stuffed with scrumptious keyboard stabs the place our Parisian expat delivers the hilariously nonsensical quip, “The grass ain’t greener on the opposite facet/Lady, it’s purple in my place.”
