Fake For Real

We got in touch with Mac Lethal after reviewing his album, Men Are From Mars, Pornstars Are From Earth, on the French side of our Website, and just before the beginning of Scribble Jam 2002. He finally came back as the winner. This was a good opportunity for us asking him how Scribble Jam 2001 (where he finished second) had changed his life, what he expected from his recent victory and what he was currently working on.

It seems that you had to search among instrumental works if you wanted to find the best French albums for 2001 in the hip-hop affiliated category. After Tacteel’s Butter for the Fat (admittedly an EP), it’s Abstrackt Keal Agram’s turn to find their place a bit late in our end of the year best-of.

We discovered The Lost Children of Babylon about 4 years ago through their participation to the Jedi Mind Tricks' The Psycho Social... classic album. But their first full-length album released a few months ago revealed quite a different nature. Dealing with Ancient Egypt's mythology, The Equidivium is full of esoteric lyrics inspired by Malachi Z. York's Nuwaubu teaching. We asked Cosmic Crusader from the Lost Children to tell us a bit more about this, the excellent production of the album and the group forthcoming project.

The beginning of the year 2001 has been quite unsurprising. The same day, hip-hop’s two most anticipated albums came to our ears, and came up to all expectations, setting to reach the top ranks in our end-of-the-year playlists. In the US, The Cold Vein gathered what Vast, Vordul and El-P could do best. Here in France, within only ten tracks, Asphalte Hurlante (Screaming Asphalt) by La Caution annihilates and destroys all at once the much too self centered French rap scene.

An interview of Company Flow with us was planned two years ago, when they came and visited us for a show in Southern France. But finally, Montpellier was too far from Paris and we missed them. At this time, Bigg Jus had already left hip hop’s new wave leaders and started working on other projects. Today we see this interview of him as a kind of revenge, even if we deliberately decided not to question him too much about his former crew. The time has come now for Subverse and the rapper’s solo album, and this new story seems as promising as the previous one was.

Apparently Halifax, Nova Scotia, is quite a rich scene with plenty of hip hop artists of a new kind. Revealed after Buck 65 and Sixtoo - both of them affiliated to Anticon - here is Kunga 219, author of the brilliant Tharpa's Transcript and the adept of poetical rap with slow and melancolic atmospheres, just as his fellows. We wanted to know more about him and invited Kunga to answer our interview.

After some singles and one great EP (Live from Area 51), The Masterminds have finally released one of the good albums of the Summer 2000, The Underground Railroad. A bit curious about this group (Kimani, Epod et Oracle), its album and their impressive guests list (Mr. Khaliyl, L-Fudge, Mr. Lif, J-Treds, Shabaam Sahdeeq, Mr. Complex, J-Live, El-P), we tried to know more about them. We've been lucky : Kimani and Epod accepted very quickly to answer our questions.

A few weeks after the release of its successful Loud Mouth single, and just when his album Music to Drink by is released, Louis Logic tells us about his career, his vision of hip-hop, the next Jedi Mind Tricks album and many others things. Meeting with a nice rapper.