Peppered throughout this quasi bar-lounge area are a number of bodacious women-some who came to work, others who came to lay in the lap of luxury, if only vicariously. He’s surrounded by a large crew of his closest comrades, most of whom are employed by the Moroccan native himself. French is reclined on a chestnut leather couch, hands between his legs, which are splayed to his liking, taking up much of the seating space.
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The scene is all too familiar something out of your favorite rap video or cult classic film, á la Belly or Paid in Full maybe. “Right this way, please.” We head toward the stairs leading to the bottom floor, as I hear the sounds of muffled voices within earshot. A brief exchange transpires and, at a moment’s notice, I’m being asked to trail behind someone who is leading me directly to where Montana is holding court (finally). But it’s perplexing that a project this market-tested came out so flimsy.I pace the room blindly for some time – anxious and nearly vexed – before meeting video director Mayjik, who warmly welcomes me to the set of French’s “Whiskey Eye”, the opening track to Jungle Rules, his long-awaited sophomore studio album. As a grab-bag of singles made for Hornblower cruises and thirty-second timeouts at Madison Square Garden, MONTANA is effectively too big to fail.
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“Hoop” sounds like a Quavo throwaway, and the Blueface and Lil Tjay feature “Slide” only perks up when the beat is briefly switched out for the “ Serial Killa” instrumental halfway through.įrench can be enigmatic, in that his strengths and shortcomings tend to blur together: He’s a citizen-of-the-world dabbler at best, at worst an uninspired cover artist. “No Shopping” and “Lockjaw,” both singles from 2016’s MC4, reappear on MONTANA, as does the Drake duet “No Stylist” from mid-2018.
“Writing on the Wall,” a delectable serving of Hot 97 kibble, stands tall among Montana’s considerable singles catalog, with a Cardi B verse that ends with her “Rollin’ down the freeway, talkin’ ‘bout a three-way/Started workin’ out but he gon’ eat me on his cheat day.” The Swae Lee-featuring “Out of Your Mind” aims to recapture the magic of “ Unforgettable” and gets most of the way there, whereas “Wiggle It” conscripts City Girls for a tried-and-true barnburner.ĭespite the second disc’s upbeat highlights, it’s clear the well runs dry before the album’s over. It’s star-studded, dancefloor-ready, vaguely Caribbean. The eponymous opener finds him “masturbatin’ on a scale for a hundred million, asking God how we made it” he’s “militant like the Middle East” and “Big like the kid from Bed-Stuy.” There’s a lot of empty space in his bars.ĭisc 2 is the big-tent attraction, picking up where 2017’s Jungle Rules, a trap-lite affair headlined by various Migos and Sremmurds, left off. This can hardly be said of MONTANA, in which wealth’s depiction is surface-deep and kneecapped by French’s autopilot punchlines. “That Way,” a reimagining of Das EFX’s “ Looseys,” neither reinterprets nor builds upon the 1992 original, and French stumbles over Cool & Dre’s stuttering beat on the listless “What It Look Like.”Īlthough Montana has a habit of sounding like a guest on his own tracks (you’ll be forgiven for failing to notice that he even clocks in between Kevin Gates and Kodak Black on “Lifestyle”), his better mixtapes feature moments in which opulence is less a taunt than an honest tribute to peers who never got to enjoy it. The title track’s smoky chords and weeping guitar build to one of his signature second-verse beat switches, but lacking a bright narrator like fellow Fraud clients Curren$y and Action Bronson, the unwaveringly lethargic tempo makes a slog of MONTANA’s front nine. Whatever the joke is, Fraud’s always in on it, and his expansive productions comprise a self-referential universe reminiscent of a Tarantino flick. Montana’s longtime producer Harry Fraud, an acolyte of melodramatic ’80s rock and contemporary foreign pop, helms Disc One. It’s possible that no one was exactly clamoring for a French Montana double album in 2019, even if, at 67 minutes, MONTANA’s two-disc packaging is simply a stylistic choice.