To have Carte Blanche is, according to Merriam-Wbester, to have “full discretionary power.” It means freedom to do what one wants or thinks is best, and by the time of his sophomore album, DJ Snake has far and well proven that what he thinks is best is sure to fire up the charts, be them Dance/Electronic, R&B/Hip-Hop, Latin or Pop.
He takes full advantage of this golden ticket on Carte Blance, his 17-track follow up to 2016’s Encore debut. Where that album, at times, struggled to find it’s rhythm, Carte Blanche says “f–k the rhythm” and goes wherever it so pleases, In doing so, DJ Snake finds the groove that’s perfect for him, and that would be just about every groove possible.
It opens cinematically indeed with the sci-fi weight of “Butterfly Effect,” an instrumental that erupts in dramatic drum and synth patterns that build into the “Quiet Storm” of his grimy dubsteo collaboration with dubstep. He works into the vocal-pitch future bass of “When The Lights Go Down” into sensual bedroom easy and almost ’80s feelings on “Reognize” with Majid Jordan. Speaking of bedrooms, a Zhu collab is up next with his distinctive desert guitars, falsetto smoke and dark house rhythms.
“Made In France” features Tchami, Malaa and Mercer — the canon of his Pardon My French friends — on a perfectly PMF hip-hop house groove. The monstrous “Enzo,” previously released with vocals from Sheck Wes, Offset, 21 Savage and Gucci Mane puts the hip-hop out front. “Smile” comes next with Bryson Tiller on some almost DJ Khaled-esque R&B – and it’s around this time you realize, you just listened to eight songs in a row, all of them a different style from the last.
And so it goes for about 10 more tracks, with tropical bass, dancehall pop, bloghouse stomp, neon rave, reggae electro-dub, the Indian-inspired twerk of “Magenta Riddim,” and the massive Latin crossover hit “Taki Taki.” DJ Snake is a global icon, and his career has taken his sound all around the world, but in the end, he brings it back home to “Paris” with an inspirational vocal from Gashi. He may stray far, but you always know where he’s coming from, and that authenticity is what makes DJ Snake such a great explorer in the first place.
Perhaps it’s not the “new sound” a generation will build from in order to create a new world. It is, however, a satisfying litmus test of where our world is right now. It’s just plain fun to listen to, and for a 17-track album, that’s a gargantuan feat in itself.
Carte Blanche is out now on Geffen Records. Listen to it below.