4 out of 5

Label: Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi

Produced by: ?

With (presumably) rapper Dees Chan striking a dramatic pose and sporting a mask while a superhero spotlight beams in the back, the album title – translating to Panic in Rapville – broadcasts in comic book / horror font… there can be assumed to be something of an MF Doom vibe hereabouts. Indeed, the French Chan, working with DJ Fan covers a lot of ground by co-opting something of a classic hip-hop cadence (with lots of multi-tracking of his own vocals as a hype man), but letting the various moods of the music guide him between more aggressive spitting, laid back drawl, and boom-bap flows. The beats / production are pretty digital, but go deep, dropping in some familiar scratch patterns across scattered (but not overused) samples, and grooving beats, with much bleep-bloop flourish.

Chan isn’t a flashy rapper, but plays with his skills wisely, annunciating hard when it has effect, and letting it roll elsewhere, working with Fan and the production to get the most out of the words or tunes as needed, so that Panique sur Rapville never hits on a dull track or gap where the flow stops.

That lack of flash does mean you have to work for this a bit, though. Beyond the battle-style raps of opener Saint Graal, it might take a few spins to dig out how nicely varied much of backing beats are, and thus how skillfully Chan navigates that, not stepping on the music, but not resting on the laurels of it either. It’s probably best, then, that this is a fairly short listen, as it means investing that effort doesn’t take much time, and once you get a read on it – closer Rien ne va plus is one of the best examples of the music’s relative density – you’ll have the time and energy to give it another deserved go.