Forgive me if I’m committing the sin of self-promotion, but I’d like to add an annex to my piece last month about the MET’s class-focused New Acquisitions show. There’s a trio of music videos—with soundscapes evoking hoods all across the world—that could have added a contemporary flash to that MET show.
“Ghetto Phénomène” Houari’s Le Chant des Ra ta ta—with its bass pace, main string riff, and Houari’s amped but unvocodered voice—was a constant on my Marseille rap playlist. Yet I didn’t realize the song was more than just catchy until I watched the video.
A masked rider pulls up on Houari, who’s caught off guard. The rider makes a jokey gun sign and Houari recognizes a friend—shared “wallah’s” bless their daps. When the music starts, Houari is posted up in front of his Banlieue’s towers. Next he’s at his block’s corner store (alimentation général neon-glows behind). He’s with his guys (“J’suis avec ma clique”). They’re smoking, revving motorcycles, and drinking (prominently water and coke—staying halal?) They jump, stepping to the beat—one guy even gets sturdy. Houari puts his arms around this dreaded brother. The camera zips to who’s next in the crew, but Houari pauses “pour le ghetto, combien sont parti trop tôt” (“for the ghetto, how many have passed on too soon”). Houari hasn’t made it out yet. Le Chant des Ra ta ta (the song of the bullets)… He tells us he’s gonna get that “fils de puto.” But the first lines of Houari’s song, “Je suis dans la merde, pas à Marbella” (“I’m in the shit, not at Marbella”) aren’t the last word. There may be no “beaches or bitches,” but he’s got his boys.
***
Fuerza Regida x Grupo Frontera urge a lover to come back in their hit Bebe Dame. In the music video, though, the group’s front men seem to be singing for each other and for the group of dancing friends packed into the studio. The band mix in with this mixed-age crew. There are shufflers and real dancers—one makes space in the circle to show off his sturdy. (The move has gone international, spanning genres). The salsa duet gets hotter. The accordion player shakes his music maker. The sturdy mover pulls out some more flair—his version of the worm. A homie in a wheelchair rolls in for the video’s last scene. And you know these guys kept it going for a long time after the cameras shut off.
***
“My Block,” the first song in Scarface’s Tiny Desk performance puts his Houston spin on Houari’s and Fuerza Regida x Grupo Frontera’s communal ethos even as he matches the craft of Bebe Dame’s corrido masters. The genteel NPR surround is far from Scarface’s 5th Ward, but his evocations—
My block, where everything is everything, for sheezy
My block, we made the impossible look easy, for sheezy
My block, I’d never leave my block, my niggas need me
—come through, thanks in part to the tightness of his “backyard band.” Scarface honors each of his musicians and gives them time to shine. He calls and responds with the charming vocalists; shouts out “sneaky” Mike Dean’s keyboard flutters; exhorts his smooth guitar player to drop his years and get to the quick of a song (“C’mon, let’s go!”). In raps between his rap songs at the Tiny Desk show, Scarface goes deep into particulars of his home-town hustlin’ and music-making. He recalls his pre-Scarface kiddie nickname, “Shamrock,” and an older friend, Black June, who’d “still try to tease me.” The Tiny Desk version of My Block cuts short. In the original, Scarface gave us more details about lost Viet Nam vets and gossipy Ms. Mattie. But he also went wider: “On my block, it ain’t no different than the next block.” He held that understanding of the urban commons yet localized his love:
“Oh, my block, I wouldn’t trade it for the world
‘Cause I love these ghetto boys and girls.”