Le Peuple De L'Herbe are a French hip-hop band that my friend Steve got into when he was living in France on his gap year. I remember him raving about them on his return and having a t-shirt of theirs, quite possibly featuring the art in the top corner of this sleeve.
Roll on three years or so, and I found this record in a charity on Albany Road in Cardiff that often had some interesting things - lots of promos that someone was routinely dropping off. I figured it was worth a £3 punt; it's worth dwelling on mine and Steve's musical tastes for a moment - there are bands and musicians that Steve and I have agreed on in the past, and some of them are amongst my all-time favourites (Jason Molina sits at the top of that list, but we've also both enjoyed Pavement and Pavement-a-likes, Car Seat Headrest). However, the vast, vast majority of stuff we don't actually agree on - he hates a lot of the bands I like and a lot of the ones he really loves do less than little for me. Here, I was willing to take his praise as recommendation but it was certainly not going to be a sure fire bet.
Le Peuple De L'Herbe is not really for me. As the name (and leaf on the sleeve) suggests, the band spend a lot of their time Very High. I imagine if you are Very High that this might be interesting music. But sat here, sober and in my thirties it's really pretty dull. I've never got very much from it and it's spent almost all of its life sat in my record collection, unloved. Herbman Skank has a fun beat for a while, but quickly descends into something unlistenable with a flat, programmed drum beat and a guy saying "Give me the weed". There are only four songs here, but their obsession with weed wears thin very fast (Electric Wiazrd's Dopethrone is a great example of a record obsessed with weed that doesn't make you wish they could sing about literally anything else, but it's very likely I'm saying that because I like doom-metal and not whatever genre of hip-hop this belongs to).
I'd go so far as to say that Le Peuple De L'Herbe are really quite terrible. I wonder if Steve's enjoyment came out of the rare intersection of the Venn diagram featuring hip-hop, French musicians and cannabis.
Format: 12", promo insert
Tracks: 4
Cost: £3 second hand
Bought: Albany Road Charity Shop
When: 09/10/07
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: None
