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 known as “La Loi, C’est La Loi” has an artificial accordion line that seems 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 Anticipate: 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 abilities for six years, chances are high you’re good—simply ask Silkk the Shocker.) There are hookup tales, previous flames, dates at Crimson 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 if you happen to’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 flooring 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 obtained some Illmatic syndrome. The place do you go after making each a few of the previous decade’s defining beats for Playboi Carti and the vibe-out traditional The Lifetime of Pi’erre 4? On his earlier album, the polarizing Good Film, Pi’erre painted a extra complicated 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 Cell Malachi.) Good Film was a bizarre, uneven album, scorching and stormy like a New York summer season; it got here out throughout COVID and is mostly considered his worst, however I’ve grown to understand how its stilted, four-on-the-floor simulacra maps onto his mundane relationship drama.
Solid towards the response to that file, Made in Paris seems like a course correction, leaning laborious 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 file, 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 aspect/Lady, it’s purple in my place.”
