Prejudice is scary.
A black woman on the cover and hip-hop inside=automatic impression she is an American. Especially if I didn’t have any advanced knowledge about the artist. I was having a good vibe with the music first and after a few songs, I was like, wait a minute, this is not English! I looked at the titles. Some sounded like French. Melodies sounded like French. I listened to the songs more carefully. Even I didn’t have French 101, I figured that most lyrics weren’t French. Reading the lyrics on Genius and checking the artist’s Instagram resulted to find out that the artist, BabyJoy, was from Germany. According to the introduction on her YouTube page, while she is based in Berlin, her mother is from France and her father is from the United States.
Troubadour, which consists of 7 songs, is a hip-hop album for deep listening, not for being party animals, other than paying attention to the German lyrics. Music is more melodies-oriented in contrast with American hip-hop that has more importance on beats and rhymes. And thank God each song has different melodies and flavors. For those who are bored with the majority of current American hip-hop lacking the originality over the same music, this is fresh material.
The impression of melodies is more French rather than German. Though occupied by the simple wet and dark melodies overall (the lightest is “Vergessen” duet with a fellow German rapper, Dead Dawg), each song is decorated with chic accents, like French fashion. Piano tunes beautifully add melancholic accents on jazzy “tourme en rond”….piano, on hip-hop! “Vergessen” is fashionably chanson fused. If you seek artistic a la mode to music, Troubadour is a digging discovery. Language doesn’t matter even if you can’t understand ( I can’t understand, either, even I took the beginner German course in a college). Good music is good music. Music has no borders.
RELEASE DATE (US): 02/26/2021
OVERALL POINTS: 87/100
- Songs: ★★★★+1/4
- Originality: ★★★★
- Thrills: ★★★★
- Song orders: ★★★★★
- Vocal: ★★★★+1/2
- Background: ★★★★+1/4
- Sound: ★★★★+1/4
- Production: ★★★★+1/2
- Strong songs: “Dein Vibe”, “toume en rond”, “Ensemble”, “Vergessen”, “lies”
EXTRA (NOT COUNTED TOWARD THE OVERALL POINTS)
- Title: B
- Album cover: C
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