French Montana Has Never Felt So Free As He Does Right Now | #daitngscams | #lovescams

When I arrive at the high-rise condominium in the Two Bridges neighborhood of lower Manhattan that French Montana calls home, I think, He has done well for himself. The doorman greets me as I walk past designer luggage heaped at the entrance—Montana’s, I later learn—and into the lobby, which is decorated with plush throw blankets and refined bookcases and furnishings. The lyricist, arriving from the airport, is still in his car, wrapping up a call, so his publicist brings me up to the apartment, where we settle in his living room and exchange our histories working in the industry.

Montana walks in, still on the phone, and now he’s yelling—whether out of excitement or frustration, I cannot tell. He’s wearing a black T-shirt, sweatpants, and onyx Yeezy Slides. He ends the call and stretches out across the edge of a sectional sofa. I join him. He now appears relaxed. He drapes a fur blanket over his lap. “You wanna come closer?” he asks welcomingly. “It’s all good.”

Montana, 37, has worked hard and long to become this comfortable. In late June, he released Montega, his first independent album since going mainstream. Longtime collaborator Harry Fraud produces all its boom-bap tracks; its name comes from the Spanish slang for heroin. Even New York City mayor Eric Adams attended the New York listening party. “I asked him, ‘Is this the first rapper’s listening party you have been to?'” Montana recalls. “He said, ‘Yup.’ I felt like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.'”

Montana is no overnight rap sensation or come-and-go, virally built talent. He is a multi-platinum-selling artist and CEO of the company he started. But experienced his share of rejection on his way up in New York’s rap scene in the early aughts. I ask what inspired him two decades ago to launch the entertainment company Cocaine City (now Coke Boys, which is both a record label and a rap collective). “Being denied, misled, and misunderstood, and people not believing in me,” he says. “I had to gain capital and boss up.”

Before the industry setbacks, there were his several personal obstacles. Montana, whose given name is Karim Kharbouch, was born in Morocco. When he was 13, he emigrated from Africa to America with his parents and younger brother. The family settled in the South Bronx; another brother was born. At the time, Montana spoke Arabic and French, but not English. “It was a culture shock at first,” he says. “It was hard.”

In time, the music in his neighborhood inspired the work ethic we observe today. More than gained notoriety through the underground circuit and eight years of producing rap interviews for his Cocaine City DVDs—Montana made a name for himself in arguably hip-hop’s most formidable locale—and its birthplace. “I take all the pride in being from the Bronx,” he says. “You could become a rapper anywhere in the world. Still, to do it in the mecca of hip-hop, where all the pillars come from, makes me even more proud.”

That love helps explain why he never ran from the place he spent his formative teenage years. Gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows and the view beyond—the East River waterfront framed by the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge—he grows pensive. “My mother is the hero of my life. She inspires me every day. Most importantly, I love her faith. She taught me to believe, even when you don’t see things,” he says, nudging toward the stunning backdrop.

Montana and Rick Ross. The two have worked together onstage and behind the scenes.

We start talking about one of the best tracks on Montega, “Rushmore Pack,” which kicks off with a spoken clip by Fred the Godson, an esteemed rapper who died in 2020 from Covid-related complications. The fellow Bronx native was just 35. Montana reminisces about their camaraderie. “We had a friendship for so long,” he says. “Fred the Godson used to live two blocks away from me. Whenever he went to work, he had to walk up my block. And he would call to me while I was out there hustling. We would talk about rap: Who was hot, who had bars.”

I ask about a bar in the song: “You can buy the charts, but you can’t buy the culture.” His raised eyebrows answer before he speaks. “The record labels handpick whom they want to take to the top. It happens like that every year. They can buy the charts for the artist,” he says. “Once you drop down the charts, if the culture picks you back up, you become a longevity artist. If the culture does not, you were never a part of hip-hop culture.”

Montana expands his statement by clarifying what existing as a rap pillar means to him. A few of which he identifies by name are Rick Ross, Jadakiss, Nas, and JAY-Z. The latter artist has addressed his shared perspective on the triviality of chart placements and said untruths. On the Meek Mill collaboration, “What’s Free,” which also features Rick Ross, JAY-Z rapped: “I ain’t got a billion streams, got a billion dollars/ Inflating numbers like we ‘posed to be happy about this/ We was praisin’ Billboard, but we were young/ Now I look at Billboard like, ‘Is you dumb?'”

In acknowledgment of the business undertakings he can control, Montana prioritizes the thing that will build generational wealth for his loved ones: ownership. “Ownership means everything,” he says. But he worries about the inherent risks. “I feel as though I am sacrificing my life. There are all these shootings and people dying.”

In 2015, Chinx, his best friend and one of the Coke Boys’ most formidable members, was gunned down in Queens. The pair used to record together religiously. “My brother was supposed to be at the top of the food chain. He would have been on their ass if he was still alive. Chinx was going to become a better me,” Montana says. Seven years after his friend’s death, traces of grief still linger.

These days, Montana is having a ball.

On “Drunk Words, Sober Thoughts,” Montega’s eleventh track, Montana included one of the final verses recorded by Chinx. The song also lyrically acknowledges another Coke Boys member, Max B, who was sentenced in 2009 to serve seventy-five years in prison for robbery-related charges.

“People always ask who I want to work with,” Montana tells me, “and I would like to work with Max B when he comes home. It would do everything for my spirit.” That chance may come soon: B’s sentence has been reduced, and he’s scheduled for release this year.

When the duo was just starting out, New York radio all but ignored them. “We were like the villains of the city,” Montana says. “When everybody counted us out, we would still go to the studio and make our best music, then drop it on mixtapes,” including the classic Coke Wave compilations. “We were not worried about numbers or politics. We come out victorious with no radio and no scams. The streets just picked us.”

Still, with more than twenty mixtapes under his belt, Montana says, “New York wasn’t showing me any love. I got blackballed. I had to go down South to get my love.” In 2009, he began teaming up with Southern artists like Waka Flocka Flame, Gucci Mane, and Three 6 Mafia. Those collaborations, each in a distinct rap subgenre, enlarged Montana’s repertoire and territory.

But Frank Sinatra sang about New York, “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere,” for good reason. If a musician aspires to be the best in most any popular genre, they will need to compete in this city. Montana knew this, so he always made his way back. He often found that little had changed, and those old grievances simmered.

Though a river separates the South Bronx and Harlem, you can walk from one neighborhood to the other across the Third Avenue Bridge. Perhaps the biggest fallout of Montana’s career was with a crew from across that bridge that ruled the city in the early aughts.

“Sometimes Allah blesses us so that we can bless other people,” he says. “The moment we stop doing that, He will take everything away.”

The Diplomats, a.k.a. Dipset, were led by Cam’ron and included, among others, Freekey Zekey, Juelz Santana, and Jim Jones. When Jones’s hit “We Fly High” came out, in 2006, Montana had thoughts. Complicating matters, Max B had once been affiliated with Dipset by way of ByrdGang, a rap collective assembled by Jones. With everyone’s egos involved, it became a no-win situation. “Yeah, we were beefin’ with Jim and other people,” Montana says. “I feel like back then; everybody had to pick sides. Once Jim caught that record—oh, forget about it,” he laughs. Today, he has an evolved perspective. “We became grown men,” he says. “Shoutout to Jim Jones.”

Montana’s stylist walks into the room and begins undoing the braids in his hair in preparation for a video shoot that will follow our conversation. I notice the scars on his scalp—from a gunshot wound he sustained outside a recording studio in 2003—and ask about the incident. “Everybody goes through obstacles in life. They either make you stronger, or they kill you,” he says. “That situation did not kill me. It made me go harder. I know my life is in Allah’s hands. He has a bigger destiny for me.”

He is emphatic about his faith. Islam has allowed him to forgive his father, who returned to Morocco when Montana was 17—leaving him as the man of the house. And it informs Montana’s perspective on co-parenting his 13-year-old son alongside his ex-wife, Deen Kharbouch. It watched over him when he was on his block trying to provide for his mother and two little brothers. And he believes Islam protected him from deportation after several drug-related arrests.

“That would have been the worst thing that could have happened,” he says. “My mother sacrificed for us to have a better career. If I got deported, it would be a smack to her face.” He often addresses such complications on wax. You can hear Montana’s personal growth from his earliest Mac & Cheese tapes to the platinum-selling Jungle Rules to the grittier introspections of Montega.

In 2011, Montana co-signed to the label owned by his idol, Sean Combs.

The Montega track “Bricks & Bags,” featuring Benny the Butcher and Jadakiss, is a full-circle moment for Montana. Jadakiss was the first star to extend his support in the form twelve bars, on the 2009 track “New York Minute.” Montana remains grateful: “That feeling is something I can never explain. He made me feel like there was hope.” Now he wants to utilize his fame in the service of helping the genre’s next generation of up-and-comers. More broadly, he feels a responsibility to give back to a world in need. Notably, he did so in 2017, when, as hip-hop’s first Global Citizen ambassador, and in partnership with the foundation Mama Hope, he began an initiative to expand the maternal-health-focused Suubi Health Center, in Uganda. “Sometimes Allah blesses us so that we can bless other people,” he says. “The moment we stop doing that, He will take everything away.”

And he knows all too well that talent rarely gets far on its own. He credits GStarr Entertainment CEO Gabriel “Gaby” Acevedo as the music executive who helped him in the earliest stages of his development, when few people knew his name. Acevedo, who grew up in the Bronx and is a product of a Puerto Rican migrant family, helped Montana secure his first deal with a major label. “Big Gaby! He connected me to a lot of people,” Montana says. “Gaby gave me the energy I needed coming up. Before him, I never had a cosign that made me think, ‘Okay, I am going down the right path.'” Montana’s artistry might not align with lyrical purists, but his hustle has earned the respect of icons, and he knows how to write a hit. “Sometimes, you have to dim down the lyrics because the hit records are usually simple,” he says.

In the wake of his radio breakthrough, 2011’s “Shot Caller,” produced by Harry Fraud, listeners knew Montana had been co-signed to the label owned by his idol, Sean Combs. Soon after, Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group joined the deal. The song’s music video bore the Bad Boy Entertainment logo and included cameos by Fat Joe, N.O.R.E., Chinx, Busta Rhymes, Waka Flocka Flame, Yaris Sanchez, Diddy, DJ CAMILO, and more. New York’s premier hip-hop station, HOT 97, kept the track in rotation and blaring from speakers across the five boroughs. Montana had arrived. “I remember ten years of grind, and then it was like, ‘Okay! This kid paved his way,'” he says. “Finally, I began to get embraced everywhere.”

“This moment is like when Nina Simone said, ’i’ll tell you what freedom is to me.'” he says. “this is it!”

Since then, collabs like “Ain’t Worried About Nothin (Remix),” “No Stylist,” and “Pop That” have cemented his legacy. His biggest hit to date, 2017’s “Unforgettable,” went RIAA-certified nine-times platinum; it also was leaked early by the artist. “Puff would always tell me, ‘Yo! Take your time,'” Montana says. “I come from the era when it was like, ‘Nah, we gotta drop.'” Still, the respect he holds for Diddy runs deep. “He wrote the soundtracks to a lot of our lives. He is everything you would want a big brother to be.”

He also holds Rick Ross in high regard. “Ross is one of the most real human beings I have ever known,” Montana says. “He is a great brother, mentor, and artist. Anytime there was a lick or a play, he always brought it to me.” Ross appears on the Montega track “Kind of Girl.”

Montana is thinking a lot these days about his legacy, partly because of a forthcoming documentary about his life and career, For Khadija, named after his mother. “There were a lot of experiences on the journey. It will go through every level of struggle and success,” he says of the film.

Montana’s previous LP, 2021’s They Got Amnesia, came out soon after he’d fallen gravely sick and spent nearly a week in the ICU. At the time, he felt he had a point to prove. Though the album was stacked with collaborators, it lacked the depth his latest release possesses. Montega is how Montana gets free again. With that, he leans in close and says, “This moment is like when Nina Simone said, ‘I’ll tell you what freedom is to me.’ This is it!”