Following the success of his last album, Cinquième As, which sold over 850,000 copies in France, Belgium and Switzerland, MC Solaar has pulled an unexpected ace out of his pocket with his sixth studio album, Mach 6. The French rapper, known for his linguistic innovation, has insisted he will not be getting involved in the usual 'post-sales' business of hitting the road. "The routine is as soon as your album appears in stores – and you've made the video and done the promotional interviews – you have to get out and tour," Solaar complains, "That's the way the system works. But I'm not getting stuck in that cycle again with Mach 6." What does the rebel rapper intend to do with his sabbatical? Solaar is rather evasive on that score, claiming he "simply wants a bit of time to do other things!"

With no tour in sight, Solaar's new songs are to be judged purely on the strength of the album alone. A first listen finds France's foremost hip hop wordsmith rapping lightly over his mixes with laidback phrasing, rarely working himself into a state of anger – even when he criticises "the national police who should be out there preserving the peace, but are busy messing up their duties instead!" (a direct quote from the track Souvenir).

Solaar's sixth studio offering has a distinctly mellow feel, the rapper admitting that "these days I manage to do what I want on an artistic level. I have no problems when it comes to credibility and I don't need a mentor any more." Since he first exploded in the charts with Bouge de là, Solaar has carved out his own niche on the French music scene with his alliterative juggling and clever wordplay. Hardcore rappers may have criticised his laidback style and lightweight themes, but the truth is Solaar has never abandoned the values of a movement which, from its early days on the streets of New York, has always included the concept of "fun."

"I feel more comfortable about things these days," the French rapper admits, "Before when I used to listen to a track that really blew me away I'd start doubting my own style. I'd be influenced by what I heard. But these days I'm my own man. I don't give a damn about whether I fit in more with the French style or with U.S. hip hop." So comfortable is Solaar nowadays, in fact, that he occasionally relapses into his old ways on Mach 6, rehashing themes and ideas from previous work. This lazy approach is all the less excusable in a rapper who dared introduce poetry and wordplay into his songs from the word go, a rapper whose work was championed by literature teachers across the land. These days Solaar, the French king of 'tchatche' has spawned a whole horde of (good and bad) imitators, willing to take up their Thesaurus and indulge in alliterative wordplay of their own. So the king should be careful about dropping his guard and putting out half-hearted rhymes. Solaar wittily acknowledges his awareness of this on Today Is A Good Day, a song which ends with a guy at the job centre being asked what he wants to do with his life: "Physicien. J'viens de rêver d'être musicien et ça ne rime à rien." ("Physician. I thought about being a musician, but there's no rhyme or reason to that!")

There's one thing Solaar's good at and that's giving us Solaar. It's got to the point now where the rapper admits that "as time goes by I've even started finding correspondences between different songs. It's like my work's become a hypertext." The rapper, who recently revived the story of Caroline (a heroine of an earlier hit) with French singer Marka, declares, "You can either write new episodes in the story or you can be like Alain Delon and simply recycle yourself!"

The new episode in Solaar's career involves new faces at the control desk on his new album: a duo of producers known as The Black Rose Corporation. In fact, Eric K-Roz and Alain J were involved on Solaar's last album, but this time round they exerted executive control over all 16 tracks (including two musical interludes). "Eric and Alain were the last people to come on board on Cinquième As," says Solaar, "But this time round they had a lot more time to do their stuff so they've obviously gone further with things."

The duo's work gives Mach 6 a more musical, orchestrated feel with the string section of the Moscow Orchestra stepping in on some tracks and plenty of guest musicians and backing vocalists involved on others. "Mach 6 is a musicians' album," declares Solaar proudly, assuming his new status as king of "hip pop" with no complexes whatsoever. The finely-crafted instrumentals provided by computer whizzkids Eric K-Roz and Alain J certainly deserve to be listened to over and over again. Cash Money is an absolute highlight with its brilliant use of the beep from the 70s TV tennis game (that preceded the world's gameboys) punctuating Solaar's mellow flow. This intriguing and faintly anachronistic sound is guaranteed to bring fans' (possibly by this point wandering) attention firmly back on the beat.