Son, that track is fire! are you French?
Can you recommend a classic French hip hop album that's on par with Prose Combat? As you can tell, I'm a huge MC Solaar fan. I don't understand a word, but his vocal delivery is so special and the beats are so fantastic that it doesn't even matter. His voice is pleasant to my ear. But a lot of French rappers, even IAM... their voices are too abrasive.
I need pleasant vocals and pleasant beats (the beats - something the French are great at)
I've heard the following:
L'école du micro d'argent
some Supreme NTM singles but no albums: I like "Fievre" and "Tout N'Est Pas Si Facile" a lot
Si Dieu Veut... by Fonky Family
Some album by Sleo (the one with Je Lance Les Des on it)
Bad Boys of Marseilles by Akhenathon
Thanks homie!
Nah I'm Belgian-Centralafrican but french-speaking and spent a lot of time in France...living in Paris right now...
Here are a couple of albums I would recommend :
Iam : L'Ecole du Micro d'Argent is one of the best HH albums PERIOD for me. Right there with 36 Chambers or Illmatic as far as I'm concerned. Been listening to it like every other month since it came out in 96. The album before (Ombre est Lumière) is great too
Akhenathon : Méteque et Mat, Sol Invictus (first two albums) the rest is still good but I feel them a lil bit less
Shurik'n (also from IAM): Où je vis
DJ Kheops (DJ from IAM) : Sad Hill (compilation with the best rappers from the late 90s imo)
You can go ahead and listen to Fonky Family's first two albums ("Si Dieu veut" is the first and best imo, then "Art de Rue")
"Chronique de Mars" : Compilation of MCs from Marseille (that they called "Mars"). This is a 6 min track about smoking weed
La Rumeur : basically their whole discography
Fabe : same
Lunatic (Booba's original group): Mauvais Oeil . You could compare them to Mobb Deep in the sense they represented the more grimy style, but with more "conscious" stuff too. Basically Booba was the grimy one and Ali was the street scholar. Some argue it's the best "street" album ever (IAM was kind of in another lane). Dope album. Make sure to listen to "Seul le crime paie" which was not on that album but was/is a huge french HH anthem.
Mafia Trece : Loose-knit group/posse of various solo MCs, groups, etc. Only one album, one of the best imo.
Oxmo Puccino : Ran with the whole Black Mafioso style. Dope, still active today. Considered as one if not THE best lyricist in French HH. "Opéra Puccino"
Arsenik : "Seules quelques gouttes suffisent" members of the Secteur Ä posse, also one of the biggest albums. Lino still has a strong solo career.
Then you have various compilations, for example "Time Bomb Vol. 1" which was a losse-knit group with Oxmo Puccino, Booba, Pit Baccardi (another artist you might want to check out)..."Premiere classe Vol 1" was dope too, you can also check out Doc Gyneco's "Liaisons Dangereuses" which was an ambiotious project were he got tons of MCs and also regular french artists on and did something quite unique imo.
All of those are from late 90s-early 00s, I kind of lost touch afterwards. Abd-El-Malik (former rapper from the group NAP) went into spoken-word/slam, it's really good but something different. Oh yeah and then the whole Mafia K'1 Fry clique, they did some compilations, also had solo artists (Kery James) and groups (113).
There's a nice lil revival going on now, I really dig this track from a couple years back
Here's another totally different track that has been making noise in France lately, instru kind of has a edm vibe to it. More of the "commercial/turn up" style, he ain't saying shyt but the instru bangs
Voilà