Having his cake
and eating it too

>> Teki Latex: slick-lipped scumbag
or misunderstood artiste?

BUT THE LITTLE GIRLS UNDERSTAND: Latex

By JACK OATMON

Polemic and potty-mouthed rappers singing snot-nosed observations about women’s asses are hardly news to any listener. But if you happen to hear the new solo album of one such character—Julien Pradeyrol, aka Teki Latex of TTC—you might start to scratch your head. Compare the Freudian faux-innocence of tracks such as “Les jouets” and “Petite fille qui ne veut pas grandir” from his solo album Party de Plaisir with foolishness like “Frotte ton cul par terre” from his work with TTC. Needless to say, when I got the chance to query him about some of the more blunt discrepancies between the two while he was in town for les Francofolies festival in July, I jumped at it.

Mirror: Why did you choose to sing in English for this project?

Teki Latex: I wanted to make a pop album and also produce something I had never undertaken with TTC. And that wasn’t the kind of music TTC does. To rap in a language other than French, for me, is very difficult to imagine. I guess because I’ve always rapped in French, and for me, rap has to be a form of expression that is very raw. It must go straight from the brain onto paper. Rap just flows. For me, I don’t see it any other way than in my maternal tongue. But I am completely bilingual, I’ve been speaking English for a long time and I studied in English. I wanted the album to reflect that. But I’m not going to lie to you—we wanted to reach as much people as possible. Pop has to reach everyone, so the language—

M: Is that why the lyrics are so much more genteel than TTC?

TL: I wanted to do an album that girls could listen to in their bedroom. So there wasn’t much room for aggressiveness in there.

M: C’mon, how do you balance little girls listening to you in their bedrooms with all the misogynist diatribes of TTC? Is that all just somehow ironic?

TL: It’s not irony, but it’s not real either. It’s a fantasy. We recount things in an extreme way, in a pornographic manner, but we are really serious in our fantasy. If we were ironic, we wouldn’t be serious about it—we would be making fun of reality. We would be saying, “Yeah, well, I don’t think of it that way, but life is like that. I would make fun of it and I am going to say it, but I don’t think it.” Whereas we’re more into, “Wow, it’s too cool to screw so many girls, and to smack their asses.” We express it in an extreme and colourful manner because I think that’s what pop music is. Pop music has exploited sex throughout the years. It’s not us that invented that. So you gotta leave us alone with all this misogyny stuff—we are not misogynists. We don’t call girls sluts in real life. It’s like a movie. When Al Pacino makes a movie where he kills Colombian drug traffickers, he’s not making fun of reality. It’s a fantasized vision of reality. It’s an improved version of reality. It’s not irony.

With DJ Cherry Cola at Foufounes
Électriques on Friday, Nov. 30, 9 p.m., $5