After completing the short four-date tour for the album "1993... J'appuie sur la gachette" in May 1994, the group Suprême NTM returned to the studio in early June to prepare their third album. DJ S left NTM and the group now looked for another DJ and producer. Kool Shen and JoeyStarr turned to former Assassin member DJ Clyde for several productions, assisted by DJ Max. The rapper and producer of Assassin Solo also left his group at the same time and joined the recording of the album along with The LG Experience and Lucien who connected NTM with the Beatnuts, with whom they had already collaborated two years earlier. Badbreak & AL.X were the main guests on the album and would later form the group Psykopat.
Lyrically, the album addressed socio-conscious and political themes, looked back on its youth with nostalgia and paid homage to hip-hop, while also addressing light-hearted topics. In this project, JoeyStarr changes his delivery style, getting closer to ragga, and Kool Shen's style also changes, becoming more stable and regular: both are able to adapt better to the rhythms chosen by the producers, who slow down compared to the past, maintaining jazz, soul, funk touches and a hard, rough, raw nature that perfectly matches the rapping of the two performers.
Promoted by the promotional single "Tout n'est pas si facile", the album was released in March 1995, published by Epic and distributed throughout the European market by Sony. The title is a double reference to both bombs and spray cans used by graffiti artists. Five other singles were released, "La fièvre" (which achieved good success and contributed to the national fame of the group), "Qu'est-ce qu'on attend", "Come Again 2 - Le retour", in 1997 "Affirmative Action Seine-Saint-Denis Style Remix" and in 2000 "Pass pass le oinj".
In April 1995, NTM began a national tour, joining DJ James after DJ Clyde decided not to perform live. After completing the tour, the boys took part in several festivals, including the "Concert des Libertés" in July 1995: when Suprême NTM were preparing to perform the song "Police" from their previous album, they decided to point out some police officers present at the festival. The officers reported them and the rappers ended up in court, sentenced to three months in prison, later reduced to two, with a fine of 50,000 francs and a six-month ban from exercising their duties due to their comments against the police present at the concert.
In early 1996, the members of Suprême NTM went on another tour right after finishing the previous one, where they performed another concert at the Bataclan during the summer, which was filmed, distributed on VHS and broadcast on Canal+. During the same year, they created a remix of "Come Again" with Big Red and released it as a single (the fourth from the album). Later, Columbia Records contacted the group to make a remix of a song by one of their most famous and talented artists, Nas: the song was "Affirmative Action" from the New York legend's second album, "It Was Written", released a few months earlier.
Both Nas through Columbia and NTM through Epic were under the same label, Sony Music, and the collaboration was born with the sole purpose of substantially increasing the sales of the Queensbridge emcee's new album in France and making him a commercial force in the thriving European rap market as well. Suprême NTM would also benefit from this as they would get some attention in the United States and even beyond their national borders. The boys accept and sign the remix, deciding on the production and removing the original verses by Cormega and Foxy Brown to make room for their own, adding a hook.
They are then joined by Nas in Paris to complete the remix: the young emcee from Queens gives his blessing to the remix and they also decide to make a music video in New York, however, once they arrive in the States, on the day of the shooting Nas shows up six hours late and the other star of the song AZ, the famous only guest on Nas' debut album "Illmatic" and who arrives on the wave of the success of his debut studio album "Do or Die" (1995), refuses to let Kool Shen get into his car because he's white and refuses to collaborate with the group.
The video isn't shot, Kool Shen & JoeyStarr return home empty-handed and totally disappointed by the two legends of New York: the boys don't give up and ask Sony to shoot a video clip anyway in the suburbs of France, in their town of Seine Saint Denis, with the presence of Nas, the label accepts and convinces Esco to fly overseas to shoot what is considered one of the most iconic music videos in the history of French hip-hop, completed in 1997 for what is actually the first NTM song I have ever listened to and one of my favorites, keeping practically unchanged the original production conceived by those sick geniuses of Trackmasterz with that hypnotic plan laid down by Dave Atkinson.
The album became the group's biggest success, achieving gold certification in a few months and selling over 100,000 copies, platinum at the beginning of 1997 for three hundred thousand copies and in the following years it exceeded half a million. Very positively received by critics and the public, it's considered one of the best albums of French hip-hop.
Rating: 8/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment