Pi’erre Bourne. Photo by Visuddhi Ung
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In an early episode of Dexter’s Laboratory, the young protagonist crams for an impending French test by reprogramming his brain the night before. Spoiler alert — the only phrase he learns is omelette du fromage (cheese omelette), but somehow, that’s all he needs to ace the exam, impress a couple girls on the playground, and ward off his opps. The Francophile aspects of Pi’erre Bourne’s long awaited Made In Paris are similarly cursory and rote, yet equally successful. From its Frenglish tracklisting to its chintzy incorporation of “French” sonic motifs, MIP’s Euro-fetish stereotypes are honestly charming — I’m surprised Pi’erre didn’t don a beret on the cover.
So naturally, “La Loi, C’est La Loi” opens with an accordion riff straight from the banks of the Seine, collapsed into plush chords and thumping 808s. Melodically and structurally, Pi’erre’s songwriting elevates every track on MIP, but that never gets in the way of cutting a catchy hook or throwing off a ridiculously horny couplet: “She want the banana / swing her way like Tarzan,” he drawls early on.
Well, okay — really most of his raps on the album are about getting laid, and “La Loi” truly hits its stride on the chorus when Pi’erre crows, “she gon take the train for this dick, yeah.” I’ve been a committed fan of his solo music for five years and still can’t quite explain how Pi’erre makes lines that read so terribly on paper thrum to life on the track. But he does, and so these songs are vibrant and sumptuous even when he throws off a couplet like, “Fuck this bitch like Duck Duck Goose (Okay) / Got me feelin’ I heard a Who (That Who).”
Anyway, the loose concept of “La Loi, C’est La Loi” is that Pi’erre is in a long-distance situationship with an Italian woman, who doesn’t really believe him when he says “I miss you” but still hops on it like a feature and spins on it like a Beyblade (his words, not mine). If you take the song’s title as a reference to the bumbling 1958 French-Italian comedy The Law Is The Law, you might conceptualize Pi’erre as trapped by bureaucracies that threaten to take away his livelihood, which might not be too far from how the Queens producer feels, given the frequent false starts and label complaints of the album rollout. But that’s just speculation — on “La Loi, C’est La Loi,” rolling your pain into a spliff sounds as easy as smoking one down to the roach.
