Here’s a guess: if you can’t promise that your blockbuster rap album will outsell the National and Darius Rucker, you don’t have a blockbuster rap album. And, as such, you do not get a blockbuster rap album budget. It’s rare when Billboard statistics can prove anything these days, but in the case of French Montana’s Excuse My French, its meek first-week numbers are an echo of an apathetic reception, the dull thud of a sunk cost. And since Excuse My French does absolutely nothing to make French Montana look interesting, it’s safe to say that the record failed in its one and only goal: to make French Montana look like a star.
This isn’t all that surprising considering that his 2012 mixtape Mac & Cheese 3 achieved the same result as loudly and expensively as its commercially available follow-up. But you can understand what people see in French Montana, as he does give you the raw material of a 2013 rap icon: fluent in regional microtrends and stylistically fluid enough to involve himself in them, "New York" enough to keep local tastemakers satisfied, all while carrying an air of self-aware absurdity. You can get all of that from his Twitter feed; his actual music just ends up putting his shortcomings in sharp relief. His flow conflates loopy rapping and off-key singing similar to Future, but Pluto somehow felt more earthbound than Excuse My French. Nobody that Montana threatens, fucks, robs, or peddles bricks to is granted any sort of humanity. Which isn’t a huge problem, since he’s often been welcome on Rick Ross’ fantasy island. But whereas Rozay has developed a character through vivid imagination and exaggeration*,* Montana doesn’t express enough individuality in his music to even be a caricature. Which itself isn’t a problem, as Montana’s emotional blankness puts him within the range of Chief Keef, but whereas the latter is fueled by nihilistic defiance, French just sounds listless and bored.
The bigger issue is that unlike any of the aforementioned, Montana has no real idea of how to put a song together. As proven by “Stay Schemin’", “I’m a Coke Boy", “Pop That", “Shot Caller” or anything else that’s willed its way into becoming a hit, when surrounded by the right team, Montana can impress himself on a track without stealing it. But left to his own devices, he raps the same way the guy in your freshman dorm played guitar, absent-mindedly moving from one unrelated riff to the next, fixating on familiar phrasings, and just basically annoying the hell out of you. Some decent one-liners are sprinkled throughout, and somehow, hearing him do his trademark “hah?” is about the only thing that never becomes tiresome. Otherwise, any French Montana verse is the sound of time being killed bar by bar.
Nearly a year old, “Pop That” is wisely and somewhat desperately included-- there’s no way Excuse My French will result in anybody’s first-time legal ownership of the song, though you figure its 37 million YouTube views will yield something. Not surprisingly, the noxious lifeblood of “Pop That” courses throughout Excuse My French. Every beat seems to be modeled after it, so whether it’s Young Chop’s domineering synths or Rico Love’s piano-laced and pathos-laden boom bap, it all pounds like Miami bass. Mixed and mastered without nuance or mercy, the relentless blare of Excuse My French becomes a paradoxically ambient experience. Think Music For Airports, except for situations if you’re engulfed in volume: sitting next to a guy on the subway whose headphones function more like a boombox, trying to have a conversation in a restaurant that allows the decibel level of a nightclub, being stuck in a cab blasting Hot 97 during rush hour traffic.
I can’t verify that Montana’s indifference infects the massive roster of Excuse My French any more than I can find concrete scientific proof that yawning is contagious. But the results make the question of correlation or causation a moot point. When the Weeknd’s sexual politics on “Gifted” are somehow less reprehensible than yours, that’s a problem. When “Trap House” finds Rick Ross so disengaged that Birdman manages a more complex rhyme pattern, that’s a problem. When an appearance from ACME-brand rapper Ace Hood feels like the first time in 20 minutes your blockbuster rap album has shown a pulse, that’s a problem. When you decide “Fuck What Happens Tonight” also needs Mavado, a clearly pre-“No Guns Allowed” Snoop, and a typically authoritative Scarface verse that could not be more out of place, that’s a problem. And when you let DJ Khaled yell at the beginning of that same song to justify his place in the credits, that’s a problem. This is the point in the review where you might expect me to say “this is everything wrong with hip-hop in 2013,” but that might’ve been the case if Excuse My French had sold a ton of copies and could be taken as a mandate for more of the same. Instead, forcing French Montana into that #1 spot and having it come off like a transplant rejection actually lets us know the genre’s in fine health.
