Queen Bertrude — Luv

"Luv": the title of the first album by Queen Bertrude, a collective of rappers and DJ from Brooklyn, sounds like an injunction. A virile appeal to love, a booster shot against the savagery of the world, a tribute to "MKLVFKWR" by Public Enemy : the album is a thundering cocktail made up of a riot of beats on top of which snuggly fit a flow of samples (up to 11 layers!), a virtuoso and complex construction tinged with melancholy. Yet it is with a battle song that the LP opens. "Fight The Power", again from Public Enemy, immediately plunges us into the heart of the matter. Since "Do The Right Thing" came out, Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States of America, but racial oppression has not gone away. Therefore the two lead singers of Queen Bertrude, Dalton Parker (aka Jumping Jack) and Malcolm Smith (Skinny Mob), chose to continue the fight. The struggle is sometimes virulent ("Itchy Fingers", "Bullets" and "Pier 14" all scathing anthems), or full of irony ("Revolution Rap") or just plain malicious ("Cowards" and their criticism of the Republican Party’s conservative wing) but it is always frank and paradoxically serves the cause of love, brandished like a fist (the cover of the album is by Skinny Mob). One must say that the pair knows their classics – Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc, The Furious Five and The Sugarhill Gang – and work relentlessly. As youngsters, they were already spying on the techniques of their elders at block parties before each one followed his own path. Jumping Jack collected old soul and funk vinyls whilst Skinny Mob became interested in history, philosophy and political activism. The end result : a duo that complements each other and that has managed to attract big talent such as Jeremiah Sherman (D-Shark), nicknamed the "little prince of the turntable". All you need is "Luv".