ACHIM is an emerging French emceee, who hails from Marseille, France’s La Castellane neighborhood. Initially built as a council estate in the 1960s for French refugees of the Algerian War, the neighborhood is now home to roughly 7,000 residents, who are mostly second-generation French citizens. The neighborhood is plagued by high unemployment, drug trafficking, prostitution and arms smuggling. Naturally, the emerging artist’s work draws from life in La Castellane — and is a portrait of life in a hardscrabble neighborhood, struggling to survive.  (Perhaps unsurprisingly, Marseille is known for being especially corrupt and brutal to its poor.) 

“Mets dans l’assiette,” ACHIM’s debut single is some twitter and woofer rattling trap, centered around an eerie looped sample of a twinkling piano figure, stuttering beats and an enormous hook, paired with the emerging French rapper’s effortlessly self-assured flow. Frankly, this cat may have a big future ahead of him. From what I understand, the song is actually pretty deep. Thematically the song focuses on the paradoxes of our world. 

Co-directed by the emerging artist and his friend Alexandre Lhote, the recently released video references Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Botticelli’s map of hell and several other paintings, while being centered around contradictions and paradoxes. Sometimes ACHIM is alone, sometimes he’s with his crew — and the result is trippy.