Où Je Vis (studio album) by Shurik'N

Hip hop is a genre that is heavily based on lyrics, so if you take them out of the equation, it brings everything else down, too. Now, if I reflect on my favorite hip hop albums, the vast majority of them focus on production rather than rapping/lyrics, but this one here is something different, it's as if there are no lyrics at all. Actually, you could make a case it would be better if it were an instrumental. The sad thing is the production sounds really promising, so much wasted potential. I am by no means an expert on French hip hop, but for the most part this shared many similarities with typical American boom bap albums. But then there are songs like Fugitif or Memoire, which for me were the highlights of the album, they added an extra twist and sounded French-ier than the rest of the album-there were more, but these really stood out-, so there was an overall balance. I mean, if you are going to go out of your way to listen to something like this, it better be something different and original, not another version of what's in your comfort zone. And of course the eastern influences in Oncle Shu would make RZA proud. Not much to say about the delivery either, I guess it's good, but it's hard to evaluate without knowing what's going on lyrics-wise.
To sum it up, were it not for the language issue and I can imagine this would be fantastic.