FRENCH MONTANA, JUICY J & PROJECT PAT - Cocaine Mafia

I wish I was back in 2011. I would love to live this year again, when rap albums were boring, but we didn't give a damn, since week after week, Datpiff delivered mixtapes that were worth the best of them. I wish I could reexperience this time when, in the wake of Waka Flocka, hip-hop was hot again. When it was spontaneous, and dangerous. When it rejuvenated and sounded like a perfectly imperfect novelty.

I would appreciate that, like in these days, old-timers such as the Memphis rap veterans realize that Academy Awards and respectability have no value. That on the opposite, they mummify them. That sometimes it is better to go back to the source, to the first hours of their career, when they really became the legend that they are. I wish that, every day, nice encounters take place between rappers from New-York and the dirtiest South, like the one that happened that year, on this mixtape from Juicy J, Project Pat, and French Montana.

This collaboration between the Coke Boy and the Three 6 Mafia family - logically called Cocaine Mafia - is released by the end of a busy year. In 2011, indeed, Juicy J has proven he was revitalised through his second Rubba Band Business mixtape, and the first Blue Dream & Lean. Around the same time, his big brother has released a new album, Loud Pack. As for French Montana, he is in the middle of his Coke Boys series, and a few days earlier was distributed Lock Out, a collaboration with Waka Flocka. Cocaine Mafia is released after all these materials. And there, despite their high productivity, none of the rappers has lost his energy yet.

The lyrics are about the usual Three 6 Mafia stuff. They are about guns to action, haters to silence, profitable prostitutes, lustful strippers, and venal women who know how to be desired. They talk about bundles of cash as high as the sky, about money that, of course, rules everything around them, and drugs that take them high, or make them rich. This is the horrific music of Memphis, but with the Moroccan's voice, and wild and emphatic sounds à la Waka Flocka, at their heights with bangers like "Catch Ya Later".

The ode to drugs and strip clubs "Weed & Hennessy", the outrageous hedonism of "Money, Weed, Blow", the original version of "Choppa Choppa Down", Akon's hook on "Self Made", the whirling sounds of the well-named "Helicopter", and the death threats on "If It Comes Down To It", are all delectable. We enjoy how our coke mafiosi use a sample of Diana Ross on "Morning Paper", or another one, from Guwop this time, to mark the beat on "I’m Gutta Brah".

We appreciate Lex Luger's intervention on "Is You Kiddin Me?", a track that is so typical of his style, with its octave shifts. We prize the contribution of Harry Fraud, by then an up-and-coming producer, on "Do It" and "Full Of Everything". And also, there is this featuring from DJ Paul, and another from Gucci Mane – in person this time – on "Straight Cash". All of this is so 2011. All of this is so good.

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