Para One Passion

Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, aka Para One, has always been an hyperactive guy. He first started as no-nonsense hip-hop producer in the mid-nineties, making beats for undeground rap artists. His recording studio was actually his one-room apartment in Southern Paris, where MCs were coming on a daily basis, crammed around a mic, an MPC and a battered convertible.

At the turn of the century, he began producing his own instrumental tracks and soon got in touch with the TTC people, then at the core of the burgeoning French indie rap scene. This was the beginning of a new exploration in sound for him : from traditional rap, Para One switched to IDM and techno-infused beats, fizzing with 8-bits FX and deconstructed grooves.

After TTC’s first LP Ceci n’est pas un disque, in 2002, for Ninja Tune’s rap sublabel Big Dada, Para produced L’Atelier’s (an indie rap supergroup) album for seminal Parisian label Institubes, with his boy Tacteel, whom with he also started a live electronic project named FuckALoop.
In 2003 came the massive « Beatdown EP », and then TTC’s 2nd album in 2004, Bâtards Sensibles, two records that definitely proved how rap attitude and electronic wizardry could be melt into one single sound – an idea many people didn’t quite buy at the time. In 2005, Laubier graduated from the FEMIS film school, and found the time to start working on his first solo LP, the critically acclaimed Epiphanie, that came out in 2006 on Institubes.