Yes Mccan became known within Dead Obies thanks to the remarkable album Montréal $ud, launched 10 years ago, and the group’s appearance on Tout le monde en parole, in 2016. Jean-François Ruel, in his true name, became famous in 2018 for his role in the series Fugueuse, which has just been released on Netflix.
Despite past successes and his notoriety, the artist decided to reinvent himself under the name Yes*. We have to admit that Club des Cœurs Solitaires (CCS), the first offering of its new identity, has not completely convinced us.
Let’s start with the positive. First, the album opens in a beautiful way with the title track co-produced by High Klassified. Then the whole thing sounds very good. Almost entirely produced by nu_tone, CCS is precise and powerful. Jules Fradet’s mixing certainly has something to do with it. Some songs, including Rolling Stone and Big Pharma, on which we hear Hubert Lenoir and Prinzly, skillfully layer a multitude of sounds and should be electrifying live. We also like the transitions between songs, the interludes and the different sampled extracts.
The atmospheres of CCS are varied: trap (Many Men, Tiffany, Dix), retro pop à la The Weeknd (Poison, Pulp Fiction), indie rock (Bûler, Problem). The cohesion does not suffer too much, but the quality of the pieces is uneven. We feel the desire to please everyone, but we still have to master all our styles.
The point is the great weakness of CCS. Yes* writes quite well and delivers their rhymes well – Magnum Freestyle is a good example. What he says, however, is generic and lacks authenticity. His stories of broken hearts may be real, but they seem more like a vapid translation of Drake’s. The famous Toronto MC’s ordinary misogyny is rarely criticized, with the result that it is imitated. So, Yes* is comfortable rapping “She’s a feminist, but she likes it when I slap her” about Tiffany, and several other similar lines throughout the 12 tracks.
He is far from being the only rapper to unashamedly throw out this type of phrase, but this speech does not fit at all with the promotional campaign which preceded the release of CCS. Yes*’s artistic approach seemed thoughtful and innovative, but the final product does not live up to the quality of its marketing.
