There’s a chorus on Made in Paris where Pi’erre Bourne repeats, “J’adore bitch, pardon my French” 16 times. Another song called “La Loi, C’est La Loi” has a synthetic accordion line that sounds like a token French guy walking into an episode of Spongebob. Twelve out of 17 song titles are in French. Get it?
This is “The Pi’erre Bourne Album You’ve Come to Expect: Paris Edition.” Pi’erre can still pen a Pi’erre song full of dazzling production and endearingly strange writing that will make you ask, “Is this good or bad?” (If heads have been debating your rap skills for six years, chances are you’re good—just ask Silkk the Shocker.) There are hookup tales, old flames, dates at Red Lobster, a reference to the “soss economy” that he never elaborates on. Barely a minute into the album, Pi’erre compares his dick to a Twinkie.
It’s all good fun if you’ve bought into Pi’erre’s solo career, but this is also why Made in Paris feels regressive. Almost every song could’ve been plucked from the cutting room floor of an earlier Pi’erre album; some literally were. It is a cut-and-paste assembly that doesn’t add enough soss to the catalog to justify its existence.
Let’s face it: Pi’erre Bourne’s probably got some Illmatic syndrome. Where do you go after making both some of the past decade’s defining beats for Playboi Carti and the vibe-out classic The Life of Pi’erre 4? On his previous album, the polarizing Good Movie, Pi’erre painted a more complex self-portrait, tapping into the dancehall he soaked up on lifelong trips to Belize to convey new shades of gray in life. (His uncle, who appears on the Made in Paris intro, was the late reggae and dancehall artist Mobile Malachi.) Good Movie was a weird, uneven album, hot and stormy like a New York summer; it came out during COVID and is generally regarded as his worst, but I’ve grown to appreciate how its stilted, four-on-the-floor simulacra maps onto his mundane relationship drama.
Cast against the response to that record, Made in Paris feels like a course correction, leaning hard on Pi’erre’s tried-and-true sounds—lion roars, 808s that soak up all the airspace, somber chords that pulse like a heartbeat—as it settles into its groove. Gaudy transitions, too, although uneven mixing prevents them from landing quite right. The two singles “Blocs” and “Pop” were boring choices to promote the record, both staid and inoffensive compared to the bulk of the material here. Neither is as sticky as “Temps de Chasse,” a ballad full of delicious keyboard stabs where our Parisian expat delivers the hilariously nonsensical quip, “The grass ain’t greener on the other side/Girl, you know it’s purple in my place.”
I’m equally intrigued by the sheer magnitude of some of these songs. “Retraite” folds three beat switches into three electric minutes, ending with a blown-out coda in step with the new generation of rage freaks. (In addition to the artists on his SossHouse label, Pi’erre has recently worked with buzzing chaos agents like Diorvsyou and Sk8star, so this tracks.) “Toot It Up” is like a Jodeci instrumental from hell, with cranked-up bass that fully submerges Pi’erre’s vocals—a disruptor like his collaborator Young Nudy would’ve given this one the spark it deserves. (I must instead recommend Queens rappers Shawny Binladen and Big GLTAOW’s own Paris sabbatical record, G’s in Paris, made with French MC Jwles.)
It is refreshing to hear a producer like Pi’erre, now a decade into his career and inspiring a wave of new artists, still totally committed to a world of sound, textures, and vocal ideas he can confidently call his own. There is virtually zero trend-chasing on any Pi’erre album, including this one. But the risk in making music to please diehards, the type of fans who’ll point out every kink and flaw in the CDQs versus the “OG versions,” is that you end up making fine, failsafe albums like Made in Paris. You make “L’amour,” which sounds like if the TLOP5 cut “Amen” was left out on the pavement for a few hours. Even though he recorded it overseas, on Made in Paris you can hear Pi’erre retreating closer to home.
