Excuse My French doesn’t sound like your typical debut album for a rapper out of New York. French Montana, a Bronx transplant by way of Morocco, debuts an album packed with a lot of energy delivered via loud rapping and club beats. Almost immediately from the first couple of tracks, it sounds like an unpolished Miami rap album, in the vein of Rick Ross and Scott Storch. This should not come as much of a surprise to any listener or music fan, as French Montana is heavily connected to Rick Ross, with the album being co-produced by Ross’ Maybach Music, as well as, P Diddy’s revived Bad Boy Records.
Montana has been in the rap game for quite some time, and his “cocaine mixtapes” and DVD’s have been circulated on the streets of New York City for the same amount of time. However, French’s introduction to a mass audience came with his first major single, “Pop That”, which featured heavyweights; Drake, Rick Ross, and Lil Wayne. The glamorous poolside video for the track officially announced French as a mainstream artist, and the buzz for his debut album took off from there.
Although this is French’s debut studio album, the collections of songs still resembles a mixtape. One of the reasons, of the 17 songs on the album, only four of them have French as a solo artist. Excuse My French is loaded and often cramped with featured artists. This is a typical move for new artists, either from the record company who fears the artist cannot carry a solo album by their self, or from the artist who feels more comfortable with big names accompanying them on their tracklist.
In Excuse My French, it is hard for the listener to get a real feel for French Montana, the solo artist. When an album has so many featured artists, the songs have themes, as evident by the beat and the hook, but the verses tend to be all over the place and lack a consistent tone.
Not to say, Excuse My French is a bad album, it’s just very genre specific, the newly titled “swag rap”. This album is great for pool parties, see “Marble Floors” and “Pop That”, and can be great for clubs and aggressive get-togethers in general. However I doubt many hip hop fans will want to nod to this while walking down the street to catch the subway in the morning.
.jpg)