Paris Texas Is The Future of Music
A while back, scrolling through Instagram, I casually looked at a video of Bianca Censori driving while looked like a tank. In the background, a completely fresh, unhinged song was blaring on the radio, a guitar driven rap about Onlyfans, gold diggers and daddy issues. This incredible record was “girls like drugs” by Paris Texas, a new hip-hop band that is probably the most exciting new artist I’ve heard in a long time.
It’s interesting how time works-it feels like a slow creep of impossibly small steps, seconds, minutes, hours, days. And then, suddenly, you wake up and you recognize that you’re several years older and the place you are is unfamiliar and uncharted. It is, and always has been, a rejuvenating and eroding force all in one. And that’s how Paris Texas feels, to me, for music.
Since the mid 2010s, there have been rumblings and shifting, a slow but steady crawl towards a rock-rap convergence. Travis Scott, Lil Peep, XXXTentacion, $uicideBoy$….Yeat also. All weird, twisted rap-rock pioneers who led us to a musical precipice where rap and rock are merging into a new form of violent expression. Both genres and their conventions have lent themselves to elements of rawness, but together, there is a bitter harmony that I believe will be the defining sound of the 2020s before the decade is up. Enter Paris Texas, an alternative hip hop group comprised of rapper-producers Loiue Pastel and Felix.
My first exposure was “girls like drugs”, a 2021 single that encapsulated the idea of “grunge hip hop”, with distorted electric guitars slicing and dicing beneath sinister lyrics about a girl who wants money first and foremost. Her relationship with our narrator is tenuous, with him liking her in spite of her money hungry ways. Of course, a large part of the song is also shit talk about her current (?) or maybe former man. “She got a brand new crib off of Onlyfans, {her man} tries to rap but his homies are his only fans” Louie Pastel muses, the disrespect clear in his voice.
They’re interesting duo because they each sound incredibly gifted, but sort of in the same way. Their are some differences in their vocalizations and tone, but overall they’re very cohesive in their melodic sensibilities as vocalists. You could’ve told me that it was one singer/rapper and one producer and I would’ve believed you. They have a cynical, sometimes sadistic sound that fills the vacuum created by their often emptier beats and their bars are often diabolical because they’re heartfelt. Paris Texas may have a performative aspect but that’s an air of dead seriousness about them.
While not flawless, Boy Anonymous showed the world the potential of Paris Texas
Listening back through some of their earlier discography, there was always signs of greater potential. Boy Anonymous, released in 2021, explores several different directions overall, but has some very strongly rooted Paris Texas signatures- dirty guitars, dark wave style synths, and simple consistent drum loops under quirky, brooding lyricism. There is a good bit of introspection here too though, admission of longing, pain and deep, unmovable sadness. It feels like an early 20s record, one mired in the mix newfound flight or die associated with the agency of adulthood and the grief of youth. Boy Anonymous, like many first records, is confused, frustrated and angry, but it shows what Texas Paris can be and what they will become.
Red Hand Akimbo, their EP between studio records, find them refining their sound.
Their EP Red Hand Akimbo, running 5 tracks, 12 minutes, captures more of the signature sound that defines Paris Texas. It eschews the navel gazing of their first project for a more aggressive sound built on outward aggression. There is a sense of destruction, confusion and general malaise that isn’t present on the first record. It manifests itself sexually and toxically, with hard flexes over juiced alternative beats. The production on this record is more unique and more potent. Whereas on Boy Anonymous the guitars felt more folded in, here they synchronize with the drums and melodies in a way that feels like a band coming into it’s own sound. This was only a four song EP and an outro, but all four songs are excellent, demonstrating both range and a newly found center to Paris Texas’ sound.
Mid Air is their best work yet, capturing the band at max power for the first time.
This brings us to Mid Air, their 2023 studio album, which is in many ways impeccable. It’s opener, “tenTHIRTYseven” is one of the best rap songs of the 2023 in my opinion. This record also shows off a lot of their newly found controlled dynamics, the ability to fit several ideas and aesthetics inside of a sound. A song like “DnD” doesn’t sound from a different planet as “Split-Screen” even if one is more rap then rock. It is evident that their rap game has become extremely polished, with coherent storytelling and sticky bars but they’re evolved beyond more than simple rappers.The masterpiece “Everybody’s Safe Until” is perhaps the perfect encapsulation of how they have come as alternative rockers. The paranoia of the track is infectious and haunting. The brilliant vocalizations from Felix and Louie Pastel remind me of Kendrick and Kurt Cobain rolled cohesively into one song.
Perhaps for the first time on a record, the vision of Paris Texas is truly present. The production on this record is stronger than it’s ever been, certainly not a maximalist approach, but undoubtedly a fuller palette of sounds and textures. It always felt like Paris Texas had a lot of tools- samples, guitars, synths and weird, freaky vocals, but on this record they seamlessly apply them. This record is the future of music. It’s a visionary piece of genre bending rap-rock fusion that feels complete and total. It’s the first rap-rock record that sounds more like oil than LEGOs, which is to say, it doesn’t feel stuck together- it flows.
I’ve said almost all I need to say. I’m quite confident that Paris Texas is probably the best new artist to emerge in some years and that their impact will be meteoric. Their sound is unique yet accessible, their concept refined but replicable, and their creativity wild and unglued. It is a mirror of the pale, yet vibrant world we live in today.
There is a crack in the music-time continuum, and Paris Texas has finally emerged, a rap-rock death machine whose beats are menacing and hooks are electric. But they’re so much more than that. They are the product of years of evolution in a genre some people weren’t sure existed. They are a very important band, a group who in the future will likely inspire hundreds, if not thousands of musicians. They are the tip of the prodigal spear which has been forged and honed over a decade-plus of innovation, a tiger whose stripes have finally darkened. Paris Texas is the future, a wave of photons surging through darkness towards a destination unknown.
