// POOLSIDE CONVO //
Meditate at the Home in Pompeii
Recently, a few folks have asked me how I enjoyed the handful of years I lived in Paris — a stock answer I sling around is, “High highs, low lows.”
In a sense, April was an apt microcosm of that: a sensational tour through the continent with Caleborate, traveling with friends and peers who inspire me, seeing new cities, smoking too many cigarettes, having long conversations with people bucking limitations and really #doingthedamnthing… bumping up against the burning of a thousand year monument just steps from where I lived in the Marais. For better and worse, nothing is sacred.
High highs, low lows.
Shout out to our homeys in Europe who came through / facilitated / enjoyed Caleborate’s wild romp — we had fun, we had fun.
Here are some tight photos from the fashion photographer Polina Vinogradova, who captured the show in Copenhagen.
// Elixr News: New Caleborate x Blackwave, “Home” //
Complex premiered the Belgian duo Blackwave’s tag team effort with our fav Californian Caleborate, a guitar strummed, vibey rap reflection on belonging in this uncertain world. It’s good.
Listen on all DSPs here, or on Spotify here👇.
// A Crash Course on Right Now in Francophone Rap //
The French brother duo PNL dropped perhaps the most epic music video in French music history. It was shortly before we hopped over there for a few shows with Caleborate, and the country was abuzz with these two brothers from the suburbs sitting atop the Eiffel Tower like no other artist — certainly no other rapper — ever has. With insane indie promo (they rented a championship parade style bus and performed through the Champs Elysées, there was a “PNL” option on Uber that gave free rides to riders who listened to their album), Paris was captivated.
The track/vid/album is smashing all kind of records: they’re the first French group to rise up to #30 on Spotify’s international charts (no wonder y’all don’t know much about these French artists if they’re not cracking the top 30, tbh), with 12M Youtube streams in the first 24 hours, the most streamed French group in a week, and the first indie French group to go Diamond. Wow.
The video is truly amazing (an Uber driver legit insisted on showing it to us upon landing in Paris), but also insightful was this tweet that gives keen insight into the “other” rap scene operating robustly, in parallel, to the Anglophone world.
#1 trending on Youtube in France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Morocco. #2 in Algeria.
A widely tossed around industry truism is that France has the second largest hip-hop scene in the world. Sure, maybe, but from our experience, the UK is the easy first choice for a new American artist coming to Europe. The French market has such a strong focus on Francophone rap that it ends up relatively siloed from the global scene -- unlike London or even Amsterdam, where English is widely spoken. On the other hand, this allows a French-speaking rapper to be simultaneously introduced to the entirety of the Francophone rap world when they emerge. It’s a 6-for-1 when you drop a French-speaking project — just see the above countries that trended for PNL, not to mention the possibility of hitting across Francophone West Africa.
Perhaps no other country’s scene has taken better advantage of that than Belgium. Peep Youtube’s editorial ’French Rap Hitlist’ -- it’s largely French, but Belgians nab incredibly prominent placements throughout, including the top result.
The young Belgian star Damso went diamond in France on his 2017 album Ipséité, and his 2018 effort Lithopédion sits at double platinum. He leads the charge of buzzing Wallonians (who only make up half the country, opposite the Flemish side who rap in both Dutch and English), from Hamza (generously dubbed “the Belgian Young Thug,” whose album hit #2 in France) to Romeo Elvis (#6 in France) to Caballero et JeanJass (#8).
Not to mention the king Francophone of them of them all: Stromae, the only French speaker to nab a Kanye feature and perhaps the biggest international pop act saying ‘oui oui’ of the last decade. Not French, but Belgian!
Jean-Claude Van Damme : Not French, but Belgian!
The creator of Tintin : Not French, but Belgian!
I digress.
There’s a more complex story here re: the impact of colonization on the European rap scene, with dozens of the most successful Francophone rappers being 1st/2nd/3rd generation French and Belgian citizens of Northern and Western African descent, and that these resulting national identities are largely arbitrary shakes of dice stemming from centuries of natural resource-plundering empires -- but I’ll let that slide for now.
Listen to more French rap -- it’s good, complex, diverse.
GUEST PLAYLIST CURATOR
Max Walker-Silverman, Filmmaker
Max is an old Coloradan dog who has learned new tricks. I knew him in college, when we acted and edited an arts magazine together. Ah, college.
Today, he’s in the final throes of NYU Tisch’s graduate film school. He made a beautiful movie, Lefty/Righty, about a divorced cowboy (played by the buzzing Lewis Pullman) spending a day with his estranged 6-year-old daughter. It’s great. The film snapped up a couple of awards, and will make its festival debut out at the Edinburgh Film Fest this June.
The Telluride native passed along a playlist that carves a nice path from folk to salsa to reggaeton.
“The central theory of filmmaking is that two shots put next to each-other mean more than the two shots themselves. The cut, the space between the two, holds a meaning of its own,” Max writes. “Like so many people I listen to music while on the move: in the car where I grew up in Colorado, in the subway where I live in New York. Movement is about two places and the space between them, which is to say it's about place and no-place-at-all.
“Generally speaking that place that's no place is where these songs come from. Karen Dalton came from Oklahoma and wound up in New York and sounds like it. Richie Ray grew up New York Puerto Rican and found his most loving audience in Colombia. Rosalía, Spanish, tapped Colombia's J Balvin in Miami for her elegant dive into reggaeton.
”All of which is to say: this playlist is a little like movement; movement is a little like a film. It's starts one place, winds up somewhere different. The thing that matters is what happens in between.”
Link here, or stream below. . Find Max on Instagram.
4 Tracks To Listen To
Follow the taste triangulation. Or trust us.
"Coconuts" - Frankie Stew and Harvey Gunn
IF YOU LIKE: GARMS & TRAINERS x uk rap x mura masa
"Jet Black" - Anderson .Paak x Brandy
IF YOU LIKE: funk x kaytranada x california
"Georgia" - Kevin Abstract
IF YOU LIKE: jpegmafia x outkast x dylan brady
"7.65" - Zola
IF YOU LIKE: french rap x bailé x offset
Full playlist of every track featured on here or here 👇
recent euro tour announcements
oshun // june & july
gunna // drip or drown
slowthai // summer festivals
octavian // summer festivals
jimothy lacoste // summer festivals
blackbear // september & october