Production Breakdown: Jamie Foxx’ “Speak French”

"Bangladesh. It's just Bangladesh. It's foreign to the ears." Those are the words a certain Des Moines-bred, Atlanta-based beatsmith used to sum up his peculiar yet tremendously popular brand of hip-hop production, heard on hits by everyone from Luda (“What's Your Fantasy”) to, more recently, Weezy (“A Milli”) and Mario (“Green Light”). That description is most definitely an apt one, but the producer's latest DJBooth.net appearance raises the question: has Bangladesh gotten a little too foreign to appeal to mainstream ears?

“Speak French”, the latest single off Jamie Foxx' forthcoming, as-yet-untitled fourth album was thoroughly panned in the Booth, and it's not hard to see why; the cut has no coherent concept, features the most overexposed rapper out there (to be fair, Gucci did get props for his above-average bars), and finds the actor/singer venturing yet farther from his old-school soul roots. It was Bangladesh's beat, however, that got slammed the hardest by readers and staff alike – our own Nathan S. even called it a ”disorganized mess.”

And, the record does sound like a mess – the repeated shifts of emphasis between synths, bass and piano add up to a track without much consistency in sound, and consecutive passages just don't seem to fit together. Listening a little closer, I couldn't help but wonder, “What kind of chord progression is he even using here!?” When I picked up my trusty acoustic guitar and tried to strum along, the deeper issue with the track emerged: it's packed with unorthodox key changes – hell, the intro seems to be in a different key than the first chorus. Now, I know very little music theory – if you do, feel free to school me on the topic – but I can tell that Bangladesh is venturing down a path few pop songwriters would even dream of setting foot on.

“Speak French” is not really R&B at all, as far as I'm concerned. Try to imagine Jamie Foxx sitting down at a piano and performing an unplugged rendition of the record. It would sound... not much like a soul song, to say the least. So, is Bangladesh deliberately sneaking avant-garde elements into his beats? Considering he claims to have had no formal musical training, I'm going to assume the answer is no. Whether the producer's some kind of untutored, iconoclastic genius or he's just throwing sh*t together completely at random is up in the air, but what I find more interesting is that the record was chosen as a single – meaning, the label brass assumed that mainstream listeners would not only tolerate but love the record, and want to hear it again and again.

Regardless of whether “Speak French” is good or not (personally, I don't care for it), the fact that Booth readers pegged it as a 'commercial' record is evidence that the figurative rulebook of pop songwriting has become quite a bit looser, as far as urban music is concerned. If it does become a hit, I'll be forced to conclude that the listening public is (A.), tone-deaf or, (B.) incredibly open-minded. Which would be very depressing or very exciting, respectively.