During an interview with Complex, Bronx, New York rapper French Montana clarified comments he made several weeks ago about lyrical rappers being broke. According to French, his comments were “flipped” and made to sound completely different.
The rapper went on to explain what he really meant when he stated that “All lyrical rappers I know are broke,” during an interview with Power 105’s Angie Martinez in July. While explaining his remarks he also criticized today’s rappers for their lack of character.
“They took it and flipped it a whole different way,” French Montana said. “What I really meant to say was ‘If you don’t have a business mind then you just rapping’…Rap is only 20 percent of what you doing. Cause you can go and read a book and write exactly what’s in that book in your song. And people gonna think you’re a genius. You’re not a genius. It was in a book…What I love about rappers and rappers I fell in love with my whole life is that I seen them go through the same struggles. I seen it from Tupac. That’s why a lot of these rappers don’t have character.”
Among the artists who criticized French following his “lyrical rappers” comments was Detroit, Michigan emcee Danny Brown. Brown questioned why the rapper would promote a lack of lyricism in Hip Hop, during his own interview with Complex.
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“To the French Montana thing, my whole point of it is just that I wouldn’t want to promote that to the kids,” Danny Brown said in August. “Cause what does that leave for the future of Rap music as a genre if you tell them that ‘You don’t have to be good. You don’t have to be a great rapper to make money out of this.’ You know? And I think that’s just a total wrong way to look at it.”
French Montana also offered an update on his upcoming album, Mac & Cheese. According to the rapper, he’s about 75 songs in and plans on narrowing that number down to 12 to 14 records.
“I’m about 75 songs in,” he said. “Probably like 12, 14. So, just putting ‘em together…I feel like the Excuse My French album was more dedicated to being—You know, your first deal you try to do something, something for them. You try to do something for them. You try to do something for them. You ain’t really like took what got you to this point to make the album. Not saying it’s not a good album. It’s the best album I could have made at that time. But I also had this Mac & Cheese series that I was doing that I wanted to do an album just like that. So, that was the difference between this one and that one.”
Lastly, French confirmed that he still speaks to Max B and later spoke on the inspiration for the DJ Mustard-produced, “Don’t Panic.”
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“Mustard had did a couple of joints on my mixtape,” Montana said. “But this one I just kinda wanted to like [get] somebody from New York taking the L.A. sound and blending it together…I saw 2 Chainz did it with ‘I’m Different.’ Coming from down South. To me it’s about doing new things…I just wanna do new things and touch new ground.”
