Jusqu'à L'amour

Description

Jusqu'à l'amour is the second album by the Boulogne-Billancourt trio Les Sages Poètes de la rue, released three years after Qu'est ce qui fait marcher les Sages ?. It came out on June 3, 1998, just in time for good weather and a glorious start to summer. One of the very rare double albums in French rap, Jusqu'à l'amour spans twenty-four tracks, lasts over a hundred minutes, and could thus easily lend itself to the game of the ideal tracklist. However, and this is perhaps the real achievement, it's hard to imagine the work with six fewer tracks that would make it, as the saying goes, "a solid eighteen-track album." At no point does this choice of a two-volume album seem like an indulgence, satisfied with hurried tracks just to make up the numbers. The distribution of roles is clear: Melopheelo is the wise man, Dany Dan the poet, Zoxea the street. As is their custom, the "Boulogne-Billancoureurs" talk about love and art over bright and refined instrumentals. A positioning, almost a DNA, which even then seemed a little anachronistic, harking back more to the early 1990s and Native Tongue than to Mobb Deep or Boot Camp Clik, major influences on the French scene at the time. Les Sages Po' would always continue to defend a certain right to good humor and candor in rap. "Currently, it seems like you absolutely have to denounce things. We are artists, we are free. Basically, music is made for you to have a good time," Dany Dan humbly declared to Groove in 2002. Mission accomplished: he and his group have given us a great number of good times throughout their careers, and Jusqu'à l'amour is particularly full of them. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its release, Diggers Factory is honored to celebrate this work of French heritage with an exclusive and remastered CD reissue.