The unnatural blond hair coiffed with execrable taste, the puffy sneering face, the warped masculinity, the companionship with  goons you fear are worse than their master – is it just me or do French rap stain Jul and US president-elect Donald Trump have a lot in common? How terrifying.

 

This is all apropos to nothing, however, as our subject of the day is just how awful Jul’s music videos are – and in deciding which of them is the worst. Peel your eyelids back and prepare yourself for as yet undreamed of horrors.

 

10. MON BIJOU

This is the first Jul video that appears to have been directed by an actual professional. I’m struck by the excellent photography/production values. Bravo, Jul! And it has a story – my favourite kind of pop video. I’m excited. Where’s my popcorn?

 

Dramatic opening: a middle-aged man tumbles from his car, bleeding; he takes his phone from his pocket – not to phone for the emergency services – but to watch a video of himself and a beautiful young woman we assume is his daughter. I’m hooked. Scene shift. It’s a wedding in the garden of a sumptuous country house, attended by a blinged-up crowd. The same man is waiting at the altar for that same beautiful woman. OK, so not his daughter. They marry. He kisses her on the forehead because wait what? No time to think about it ‘cos  Jul arrives in a huge white car. He is late for the wedding and wearing tight red trousers and a golf shirt. The least plausible part of the video comes when Jul performs his ‘rap’ and the wedding party dance and smile appreciatively. THIS WOULD NOT HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE.  IRL the adults would go find the bar and Jul would be performing to a group of 5 year old flower girls, impatient for him to sing ‘Let It Go’ instead.

 

At this point I’m convinced the bride is going to be overcome with lust for Jul in his red trousers that she will flee with him. UH-UH. TWIST! I’m not going to spoil the ending for you, suffice to say that there is a rupture in the marital bliss, leading to the murder of the aging husband, but whodunnit was a surprise. Watch and enjoy (if you keep the sound on low).

 

9. LOVA

OMG I like this one too. Ok, not like-like but still. Again the cinematography and direction look like the work of people who know what they’re doing. Plus the central performances by the male and female leads were believable and actually kinda affecting. The story was less thrilling than in our previous outing – boy meets girl, boy gets jealous of girl, their difficulties are apparently resolved, boy and girl sail off into the sunset. Jul is confined to singing in helicopters and boats – apart from one scene in a housing estate – and that seems to be the recipe for success when employing Jul in a video: keep Jul to a minimum.

 

8. MARIA MARIA – Ghetto Phénomène ft. Jul

 

So, cheating a bit here, this is only featuring Jul but I’m including it because I found it mildly amusing. Story here is  our hero Friz goes on a date with a pretty lady who looks like Billy Piper. On arriving at Billy’s  McMansion, clearly hired for the day by the production team, he realises with horror that he has been followed by Jul and their group of his chums. They jump over the security gates and rampage through the house, garden and pool, inviting a group of bikinied girls, who dance without enthusiasm throughout the video. At one point Jul has to be dragged from a bedroom. This is no doubt meant to be hilarious high japes but I can only think of how annoyed the neighbours must be that the real owners of the house have let it out on airbnb.com. I’m placing it so highly because Friz was a sympathetic lead and his dismay and distress at the presence of Jul et al so clearly mirrored my own.

7. SENORA

Another video, another love story. Boy harasses girl in the street until she agrees to go to a party with him. There is drinking and dancing and hair flicking… Honestly by this point I’m so bored I actually want Jul to come to the party AND THEN OH MY GOD HE IS and that’s how desperate I am: happy to see Jul.  Meanwhile, trouble in paradise, our couple are having a tiff. She goes off, phones someone and is picked up by someone driving an enormous penis  sports car. Who is this mysterious lover man? Why JUL*, of course. Boo yah!

 

*Seriously, though, what a knob.

6. EMOTIONS

I’ve already discussed this video at length so I won’t go into it too much again, suffice to say that Jul is created  piece by piece by robots in a lab; they even – controversially – give him a brain. Say what you like about our Jul, he’s not afraid of taking a creative leap. Taking a more critical approach though, the production values let the video down somewhat. Sticking with the realism of Lova is a better choice on his budget.

 

5. MY WORLD (BARBIE GIRL)

Difficult to place this video. On the one hand it’s awful, but on the other it’s surprising, and I would argue that there’s a value in that regardless of quality. While I haven’t been discussing the music – mainly because I’ve not been listening – it’s important to note that Jul has chosen to do a reprise of that awful 90s hit Barbie Girl. Let’s just take a moment to digest that.

 

I know, it’s unfathomable. Moving onto the video. Well, it’s partly animated, which saves us the sight of Jul stumbling around like a shaved and stunned  bear. Instead we have cartoon Jul, who fights aliens in space with a giant penis gun. He wins the battle because he is the bestest. I understand nothing.

 

4. WESH ALORS

This video was my introduction to Jul’s oeuvre and as such I look back on it with a certain sentimentality. There’s our hero gurning and dancing (stiff armed, like a Ken doll at a rave) . There he is in a giant hamster ball. There he is making gun symbols with his podgy little fingers.  He’s dancing with his mates, they’re having a jolly old time, I’m falling asleep. Next!

 

3. ALLEZ LE SANG

You know how The Godfather is often credited with being the greatest film trilogy of all time (part 3 wasn’t as good etc, etc). Well Jul also has a trilogy of videos with the theme of men being dicks on mopeds. Thought provoking stuff.

 

In our first venture into the genre, Jul sings into the GoPro on his moped, accompanied by whooping imbeciles. It features a con doing a wheelie down the street, something a twat in my neighbourhood also does, much to my intense irritation. Loathsome.

 

2. EN Y

As above, almost identically but featuring blackface. Yes, you read that right.

 

 

1. C’EST LE SON DE LA GRATTE

Yes, we’ve arrived at number 1. I thought this video was going to be more of the same moped crap but it’s not: it’s worse. Much worse.

 

True, we have the same gang of numbskulls doing low-level stupid stunts on their moped, making gun hand symbols,  and jeering into the GoPro.  So far, so Jul. What’s worse here is the inclusion – the celebration – of crime. Now I know saying that makes me sound like an uptight Mary Whitehouse-type but I don’t give a flying monkey’s.  We see people breaking into flats and stealing TVs, selling on stolen goods, a young guy threatened with a huge knife and his moped stolen, pickpocketing at an ATM – all this is presented as being huge laugh. There’s no comeuppance, no moral of the story.  The crowd dance and brandish Jul’s gold records. Children imitate their elders, revelling in the attention. It leaves me sickened and feeling hollow, like watching a Trump rally. The idiots are winning.

 

Well, what have we learnt? Firstly, it’s not all bad. Among the videos there are some quality performances, cinematography and direction (notably in Mon Bijou and Lova); there’s humour (Maria Maria) and risk-taking (Emotions and My World). That said, there is also lashings of egoism (Señora and My World) and a juvenile obsession with wealth and its trappings. So far, so rap-video. What sets Jul’s videos apart is the repellant posturing and glorification of crime; without that he’d just be another tiresome twat with an autotuner and a tracksuit. Instead his brand of idiocy sends the worst kind of message to any impressionable viewer.