There’s hip-hop and then there is French hip-hop. Some, if not all, might say it just a matter of style but it is undeniably true that Smokey Joe & The Kid have style and they display it all through their album “Running To The Moon”.
It helps that they draw from far far more than the usual samples in their musical larceny and thus manage to imbue their music with a sense of the past without it ever making too obvious that the past has been ransacked. “Bank Holiday”, for example, mixes samples from old films with the kind if laconic female vocal that could only ever be continental. It’s an infectious combination but, that said, Smokey joe & The Kid also know the value of counterpoint and throw in a Pesci quote to add menace to “Funny Guy”. That’s reverential to the point of invention.
Far too clever to be just another hip-hop act, Smokey Joe & The Kid show that style is, as always, where it is at.
The album is available from Bandcamp.