>MC Soolar is one of the best <BR>>performers out there, I believe, is <BR>>too bad I don't understand a <BR>>word he is saying<P>Solaar is the bomb, although I personally feel his beats have gone downhill since he - for some reason, and if somebody can shed some light into this, please do - stopped working with jimmy jay (who produced both qui seme le vent recolte le tempo and prose combat, his first two albums).<P>>them. Wouldn't that be phat if <BR>>BT got down in aother language <P>Nah, I think it's best he sticks with the shit he knows best. But I love the collaborations over language boundaries - a combination of different artists/languages on the same track. In addition to I'm doing fine w/ solaar, another fly Roots collaboration was the one with a French group called La Releve. Someone also wrote about a collabo between Les Nubians and The Roots; and then of course there's the zap mama connection (with marie daulne on tfa's the love of my life) which i truly hope will result in more cooperation in the future. <P>>I tried to meet <BR>>as many people from different countries <BR>>and cultures and always ask them <BR>>about the hiphop culture. I had <BR>>a tape of Japanesse rap with <BR>>wu-tang and biggie beats<P>You might find this hard to believe, but there's some interesting shit coming out of scandinavia too. Most of it is pretty underground, and sometimes it's more ridiculous than anything else. But not always. There's a swedish rapper called Petter who's not bad at all. And he's actually been played a lot on mtv up here in northern europe. Some of the Japanese rap I've heard, on DJ Krush's records for instance, sounds interesting too. It seems to me like pretty much any language can be used to make good hiphop if the rapper knows how to work the rhymes and rhythms. <P>>As for the <BR>>other roup you mention, I have <BR>>never heard of. Maybe you could <BR>>tell me more about them. <P>Well I mentioned akhenaton (aka sentenza) who's really part of iam. I guess his role is a bit like that of the rza in wu-tang, he's both producer and rapper and some sort of mastermind behind everything they do. You should get your hands on the soundtrack for the movie TAXI (produced by Luc Besson) - there are a lot of marseille based artists on it and all the music is produced by iam/akhenaton. Great album. <P>>Watch <BR>>out for hiphop from Toronto, Canada. <BR>>They seem to have a nice <BR>>underground move. <P>Canadian/Toronto based rap is a complete mystery to me. Can either of you recommend anything?<P>Act like they live in paris? That's not a compliment is it? Then again, wouldn't we all like to live in paris.