The French hip-hop stars fighting the far right
French aid worker Moussa Tchantchiung was arrested and detained in Bangladesh in December while working with Rohingya refugees.
This article titled “The French hip-hop stars fighting the far right” was written by Iman Amrani, for The Guardian on Friday 10th June 2016 12.00 UTCMarine Le Pen and her father are the two figures French hip-hop loves to hate. In the lyrics of one of his most recent tracks, Kalash tastefully expressed his feelings for the pair: “I’ve fucked Jean-Marie since I was born and his daughter that orangutan.” When Nekfeu accepted the award for urban album of the year at the Victoires de la Musique awards in February he added the line “Take Marine Le Pen and Free Moussa” to a performance of On Verra.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Front National, was acquitted last year of charges of inciting religious hatred against Muslims, while French aid worker Moussa Tchantchiung was arrested and detained in Bangladesh in December while working with Rohingya refugees. Criticism of the government for not doing more to defend the Muslim French citizen became a cause; #FreeMoussa trended on social media for weeks.
These are not the only political topics to have filtered into mainstream French hip-hop of late. Divisions along the lines of race and class in France’s main cities made hip-hop resonate with inner-city youth back in the 1980s. The groups Suprême NTM and IAM (both formed in 1989) rapped about police brutality, identity and life in Seine-Saint-Denis and Marseille. Today, the second generation of rappers are experiencing many of the social problems that their parents had – life in the suburbs, racial profiling and poverty – but at the same time having to deal with the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris. There is a general hostility towards far-right politics, Islamophobia and discrimination.
Hip-hop fans are attracted to expression that is as much about engagement as it is entertainment, and the most successful rappers are those who can best work that balance. So while the rapper Médine zoned in on the hypocrisy of laïcité [secularity] in France, attacked fanaticism, and rapped about Gaza on his last album, his work is often ignored by mainstream media. Booba, who has sold over 10m records, will often reference France’s colonial past and issues with race, but only in a few well-chosen lines. French-Congolese rapper Youssoupha has been reluctant to be labelled as a “conscious” rapper. Instead, he makes a more subtle gesture in his video for Entourage, wearing a shirt that says “I can’t breathe”, the last words of Eric Garner who died in 2014 after he was put in a chokehold by an New York police officer.
French rap may not always be explicit in its response to social unrest but it remains more political than its British or US cousins. Social media has made it easier for artists to access their audiences and engage with the stories that their fans are talking about. With increasing concerns for young people and ethnic minorities in France right now, it remains the only genre attempting to express what many voiceless people want to say.
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