earing in mind that rap music has always been at its strongest when it’s basically been going over the work of those who came before it, it’s hardly surprising that hip-hop criticism and debate has tended to thrive upon people running the same four or five arguments into the ground over and over again. “Classic” arguments in this field include the supposed evil of mainstream rap artists (we stopped caring about this in 1999), the belief that rap music has a responsibility and need to tackle socio-political issues, and is all the better when it does this (best before: 9/11/01), and the idea that, for rap music to be truly progressive, it needs to be performed by an out of shape white guy rapping over science-laboratory beats about how to gain NRA membership.

They’re all topics we’ve come to know and hate. But none of these tropes are as played out as the one levelled at non-Stateside MCs who decide to hit the mic: “They’re trying to sound too American”. Canadian, British, Japanese, German… no matter where a rapper hails from, if someone wants to take the rug out from underneath him, all they have to do is suggest that they’re chasing the dollar rather than the Euro/miscellaneous other currency. Why is this? It’s because patriotism is the last refuge of a b-boy. It stands to reason that anyone attempting rap music is trying to be American: rap music is an inherently American form. It’s the equivalent of complaining that a sushi chef is trying to be too Japanese. Of course there’s a need to put a nationalistic slant to things, in order to prevent any Stakka Bo/Bomfunk MCs style aberrations occurring again, but there’s very little wrong, and a lot right, with looking over to our cousins stateside, seeing what they’re doing, understanding what they’re doing, and, effectively, copying it.

TTC understand this, and it gives them such a head-start over both the majority of their Europe-wide contemporaries, and 75% of other rap outfits out of there. So instead of, say, accordion samples and a shout out for twink WWE superstar Rene Dupree, we instead get an electro take on “In Da Club”, ingeniously titled “Dans Le Club”, which reworks what must be the most famous beat of the past five years as the intro music for an ecstasy-dealing based NES game. Even the rhymes are 8 bit: watch out for the verse at around 2:40 where the MC in question simply can’t be bothered to open his mouth.

There’s more to this than just MTV Base though. “Codeine” is an acknowledged attempt to create a Swisha House style track. It’s an attempt that works. Remember, though, that chopped and screwed is a concept that still hasn’t reached the overground of it’s home country yet, and here you have a genuinely mainstream (they may be on Big Dada here, but don’t forget: TTC are genuine stars on their home turf) act tackling it with the same lack of fret as they would using “The Funky Drummer”. The rest of the album plays as if it had been produced by Fury on a year in Provence. It’s not misappropriation. It’s just the benefits of globalisation: TTC have fully integrated themselves with a culture that it’d take eight hours for them to reach by plane from Charles DeGaulle International. Vive la South.