Tonio MC is an award-winning Paris-based emcee, who has released two albums, 2017’s Déstresse and 2019’s Bons Vivant, Vol. 1. His highly-anticipated third album Drôle D’Oiseau is slated for a 2022 release.

The album’s third and latest single, the Louis Angeles and Aurilen Falconnet co-produced “A L’Envers” finds the award-winning French emcee reflecting on mad world, gone even madder. Written during pandemic-related lockdowns, there’s a sense of the song’s narrator feeling confined and constrained by forces larger than him that he can’t see, control, or understand.

Tonio MC’s dense yet melodic flow is paired with a spectral, jazz-inspired production featuring brooding horns, a looping acoustic guitar sample and skittering, boom bap. The overall effect is a brooding song clearly inspired by its time that somehow evokes longing for when things felt and seemed somehow easier and carefree.

The recently released video was shot in Paris’ 13th Arrondissement. We follow the award-winning French emcee as he walks desolate streets that would be bustling pre-pandemic. The video is intended as a love note as a love note to a section of his hometown that seems to have disappeared and been forgotten — but its spirit and character still remains.