"QALF": So, how is Damso's new album?

“The most anticipated album of the year will not be released this year”.

At the end of 2019, Damso dropped this sentence in “God bless” as a snub.

The 28-year-old Belgian rapper actually preferred to wait.

QALF, his fourth album, was released this Thursday at midnight.

An event that puts an end to more than three years of waiting since “Lithopédion” sold nearly 500,000 copies.

So what is the value of this QALF, acronym of the expression "Who likes like follow"?

It lasts 45 minutes and has 14 tracks.

In this album, mostly designed in his laboratory at the ICP studios in Brussels, William Kalubi Mwamba, whose real name is, is calmer, more peaceful.

He who claims relations without a future, shows himself this time in love in the title "9-1-1", the emergency number in the United States.

A declaration of love to his mother ...

A first exposure in an album where he lets go like never before.

The artist even splits a poignant declaration of love for his mother, suffering from a serious illness and hospitalized for many months.

In "Rose Marthe's Love", he returns in particular to this trying period "friends at the hospital, you had few" by quickly adding a "Mama I love you, even if I never say it in the eyes".

He therefore speaks of his mother and makes his son Lior sing, whose voice has been recorded for the needs of "Deux toiles de mer".

The rapper also welcomes the former top model Noémie Lenoir in “Sentimental” and two other guests: Hamza, another Belgian hip-hop sensation for “Bxl 200”, a little gem in the second degree.

And the Congolese star Fally Ipupa in “Fais ça bien”, to a Congolese rumba tune that resonates in the streets of Kinshasa, the birthplace of Damso.

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Africa could not be more present on this record.

In "Heart in crumbs" and "For the money", the Belgian ventures into the political arena, as he had already done in "Graine de Sablier" or "Kin la Belle".

He returns in particular to the conditions of his departure from Kinshasa, fleeing the abuses when he was only a kid.

On the music side, his close guard DJ Ritchie Santos, Prinzly or Jules Fradet, ensures the production that waltzes from one title to another from electro to Congolese choirs with joyful freedom.

And no question of going into provocation or looking for possible clashes with the competition.

“It's not my life, it's not mine.

Why do they want me to fuck up?

», He slips at the turn of a verse.

What follows will tell if the message got through to his colleagues.

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