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Music

Dead Obies: Made au Québec

In this short VICE documentary, Simon Coutu spends time with the Dead Obies—the post-rap group that put Quebec's Frenglish movement on the map. For them, mixing English and French isn't a political statement, it's just good fucking music.

Post-rap group Dead Obies grew up surrounded by the French language, in Montreal and its suburbs, but they unapologetically blend a lot of English into their lyrics. Much like their fans, they have only vague memories of the last referendum, if any at all. They are part of a generation that doesn't care much about having a national language. In the debut of VICE Dossiers Quebec, Simon Coutu meets with Dead Obies, who put the Frenglish movement in Quebec on the map. VICE follows them in studio, on the road, and backstage to get a sense of what the movement really looks like. They discuss the music industry's refusal to fund them, the Quebec media's misguided attempts to blame them for a "decline of French," and the new aesthetic avenues "franglais" opens to rappers.