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In the early 2000s, around the time of the First Ivorian Civil War, a group of expats dealt with the unrest back home by putting that shit on. The original members of La Jet Set spent their nights dressed to the nines, blowing racks in Paris clubs, a lifestyle that eventually bled into their uptempo and excessively flashy dance music—Rico from Paid in Full would have approved of all the foreign cars, designer suits, and gold chains—later known as coupé-décalé, one of the significant West African genres of the 21st century. Jeune Morty, who was born in Daoukro in the Ivory Coast but raised in the Paris neighborhood of Choisy-le-Roi, is nostalgic for that era of his childhood. For the last few years he’s been uploading lush, fragmented swag rap to SoundCloud that’s as much about flaunting as getting in touch with his roots. “Music allows me to stay connected to my culture,” he said in an interview conducted in French. “When you arrive in the West, the world moves differently. You can quickly lose your way.”
Following last year’s tight and concise Eponyme, Jeune Morty Vol. 1 is Morty’s tripped-out collage of all the reference points that shaped him. The sound skips around from misty plugg to Friendzone-ish cloud rap to Conglomerate-style moshpit tunes, by his go-to producers such as vkkng, brak3, and others; the early coupé-décalé influence is more present in the vibe, with Gucci belts and Ferraris and parties that feel like a distraction from the struggles of coming of age as part of an immigrant family in France: “I gotta change countries, this one set me up” (“Faut qu’j’change de pays, celui-là m’a tendu”), he raps on “Autre Chose.” That numbing effect is heightened by his smeared flows and glazed Auto-Tune raps that pull as much from the stoned cadences of Keef and Durk as French duo PNL. On first listen those static vocals can cause the tape to blur together as a series of random and unemotional sketches, but sort of like a xaviersobased project, the heart beats once you start catching the little stylistic flourishes inside of the mess.
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For example, the church bell ruckus of “Djossi” could be written off as DJ L pastiche, but it comes alive when Morty is hit by a sudden burst of emotion and pleads, “I try, I try, I try” (“Je m’essaye, je m’essaye, je m’essaye”) in the same under-the-breath way Thug once chanted “Givenchy” (he might be a bigger Thug nerd than the ØWay boys). Following his stream of consciousness isn’t the point, yet you can feel Morty working through his thoughts in real time, even if there’s a language barrier. On the dreamy “Tapper,” there’s a moment when he’s struggling to figure out a phrase in English, then says fuck it and sticks with his Ivorian dialects: “Do-don’t care, I’ll say it in Dioula/Badjudji if you talk about me” (“Ba-, balek, j’vais l’dire en dioula/Badjudji si sur moi tu kouma”).
Vol. 1 is such a scatterbrained hodgepodge that a lot of the time it feels like you’re in his brain. Here’s “Shrooms,” the kind of crossfaded joint you used to find on vintage Wiz Khalifa tapes; Morty also happens to compare himself to Guy Môquet, a French communist executed by the Nazis, and to Puss in Boots. Right before that is “Boubou Star,” where over crunchy 808s he daydreams about the days when he was a kid eating plates of rice and dancing with his cousins. Skip around and there’ll be bogus time-to-grow-up Nettspend rage (the OK-produced “Katy Perry”), then a glitchy and unexpectedly sweet Pink Tape-coded pop-punk experiment (“Stéréo”), and then a check swing at the sort of textbook French drill Kaaris churned out a decade ago. DJ Crystallmess drops and mix CD tags pop up every now and then, so faded and hushed that I kept thinking I was hallucinating them.
It’s a lot, but Morty’s so casual about the chaos that it goes down easy. None more than “Ivoire Feeling,” a flex anthem shouting out Ivorian stars and guys from the neighborhood who he used to tear up the clubs with, while the vkkng beat layers a coupé-décalé rhythm over the whimsical synths and Morty’s too-cool hums. It’s smooth and fun as hell, particularly if you watch the music video where Morty—with the cars, the girls, the designer—shimmies around with original La Jet Set affiliate Lino Versace. Blocking out the bullshit with a globe-trotting history lesson in swag.
