Following “Solstice,” a concept album and dystopian nod to 1984, Lala &ce releases her third LP: a set of tracks that feels far more fluid and intimate, leaning into live performance.
For those who have tracked her since the early days with the 667 crew and, above all, since her breakout mixtape (the timeless and prophetic Le Son d’après, 2019), Lala &ce kept her music shrouded until the release of her debut album, Everything Tasteful (2021). Cryptic phrasing, treated vocals, a laid-back vibe, water- or glitch-inspired productions, hidden beneath the cyberpunk imagery of a concept album (Solstice, 2023), the artist, just past thirty, always appeared vaporous and elusive beneath a multi-layered veil of filters.
Yet the artist who had come to symbolize a certain French rap avant-garde was, in fact, plotting her escape from it. Tapping into the new London scene (the crownless king Lancey Foux at the helm), keeping an eye on the shifts in US rap, and curious about the sonic experiments of other alternative scenes, she gradually built a path to independence for her third album, aptly named Oasis. The vision, ultimately, isn’t distant from what she described on Solstice, her previous record that carried echoes of Orwell’s overhyped 1984 and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, but stripped of all showiness and dystopian grandstanding: Oasis as a self-contained, intimate space and time.
At its core, escapism is central to this new album, presenting a plan to drift away and disconnect that she sprinkles through the lyrics (the single Plus en ligne) and even into the absurd ((Cerveau lent)): “Are we in the final season of Black Mirror?” A program that ends up seeping into the very essence of her music; the cybernetic woman breaks the armor and the wholly digital texture yields to organic productions that feel almost made for live performance.
An Island of Her Own
Rather than drawing from the new subgenres of English- and American-language rap that have fueled part of her success (jerk and plug are common examples), Lala &ce renews her modus operandi and crafts a patchwork of references that evoke rawness, sensuality, and spirituality at the heart of the record: here the grunge aesthetic emerges, she revels in the electro-electric distortions of the Dijon/Mk.gee duo or the autotuned gospel of Kanye’s 808s & Heartbreak or Jesus Is King.
A setting where rap, R&B, and dancehall (a remarkable sequence of Longtime with Sonny Rave and the smash 100 Piments) flourish freely, liberated from constraining rules: “Fast-food music on fait pas ça ici/ma place est à la cuisine donc je cook,” she quips with casual swagger. A perfect turn to free herself, once again, from industrial and gendered injunctions, to craft a sensual and moving record before riding away toward her cherished Oasis.
Oasis (SPKTAQLR / Sony Music). Out on March 13.
