La Caution
La Caution is a French hip hop duo consisting of members Hi-Tekk and Nikkfurie of Moroccan descent. They are notable for creating the song "Thé à la Menthe" which is known for appearing (in instrumental form) in the film Ocean's Twelve. The phrase "thé à la menthe" is French for "mint tea", their song "Briques" also appeared in the 5th Season, Episode 18 of the US TV Series How I Met Your Mother
La Caution's first single "Les rues électriques" (electric streets), was released in 1999. They began to gain recognition participating in Assassin concerts. As a result, they secured the opening slot on the band's tour in 2000 and 2001; this enabled them to reach an increasingly larger audience. Encouraged by the success of "Les rues électriques", La Caution, shouldered by DJ Fab, released their first album "Asphalte Hurlante" (Screaming Asphalt) in 2001. A year later, a version including seven new unreleased titles was released. Participating in many projects with other hip-hop groups, they released the "Cadavre Exquis" (Exquisite Corpse) album in 2002, with the collective L'Armée des Douze (French for "Army of Twelve", a collective made up of La Caution and TTC, started in 1999). They also released the "Crash Test" EP with the electronic group Château Flight.
Their musical style is seen to be a combination of energetic electronic sonorities and original and percussive words. Wanting to break away from the current French rap, they brought a revival which now tends to spread out further than the Parisian underground, along with groups such as TTC. After over three long years, the Peines De Maures / Arc-en-ciel Pour Daltoniens double album was released on October 17, 2005. Peines De Maures, a play on words with "Peine de mort" (death penalty) and the Maure tribe, another way of describing people from North Africa, remains within a rather traditional rap style, whereas the second Arc-en-ciel Pour Daltoniens (Rainbow for the colorblind) has more of an electro sound.
The song "Thé à la Menthe" (subtitled "the laser dance version" in its instrumental form) appeared in the film Ocean's Twelve in a scene where the thief Nightfox dances in order to evade a series of randomly sweeping laser beams. The song appeared courtesy of Vincent Cassel who, alongside La Caution, is part of Kourtrajmé, an artistic collective. The song was also popularized in the Counter-Strike: Source frag movie by player "phoon," titled "too much for zblock," where the instrumental version of "Thé à la Menthe" was the first track played as an homage to the movements of Nightfox in Ocean's Twelve which also used the instrumental. La Caution also appeared as an imaginary group called Sheitan on the score to the eponymous film (directed by Kim Chapiron of Kourtrajmé), with the title "Bâtards de Barbares" in which they preach a violent style of rap, which is purely caricatural. The songs "Comme un Sampler" (Like a Sampler) and "Pilotes Automatiques" (Automatic Pilots), taken from the album Peines De Maures, also appear in the film. "Pilotes Automatiques," their French rap remix of the Tamil song "Ottagathai Kattiko" from the Tamil film Gentleman composed by A. R. Rahman was a huge underground success in France . Hi-tekk and Nikkfurie are also part of the "Les Cautionneurs" collective, with Saphir the Jeweller, Izno (Hi-Tekk and Nikkfurie's little brother) and 16S64.
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