PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

Samir Meghelli

Intro: To The Source France

In August of 1988, a Harvard undergraduate, David Mays, began putting out a one-page newsletter about Hip-Hop culture to promote his on-campus radio show, “Street Beat.” Within a couple years, circulation of his newsletter went from 1,000 to 10,000, as it eventually began being distributed by record retailers around the country. After graduating in 1990, Mays opened a New York office and, within a few years, The Source: The Magazine of Hip-Hop Music, Culture & Politics had become the nation’s number one selling music magazine, with a paid circulation of over 500,000 and a readership of 9 million.[1] Despite recent (and even older) debates concerning the magazine’s legitimacy, it has nonetheless become widely recognized as a staple of the Hip-Hop Cultural Movement (HHCM). Significantly enough, during the summer months of 2003, The Source announced that it would be launching The Source France, a French version of the American magazine. Not only would The Source France translate and reprint some of the content of the American version, it would also include entire sections dedicated to the local Hip-Hop scenes in France. The arrival of The Source France raises some important historical questions for those interested in the evermore global Hip-Hop Cultural Movement. And although the history of Hip-Hop in France has been addressed elsewhere,[2] the emergence of the Hip Hop Cultural Movement in France has yet to be properly historicized within the context of the century-plus long relationship between African American culture and the populations of France (i.e., the French, but also the large populations of people of African descent there). This is to say that, despite being the product of a confluence of cultures, Hip-Hop is a distinctly African-American cultural form that has experienced a remarkable reception, adoption, and adaptation throughout the world, but in France in particular, which is home to the second largest market for Hip-Hop music in the world, behind only the United States.[3]

Thus, I will be exploring the history of Hip-Hop in France in order to provide a context for understanding the vibrant scene of today which has demanded interest from the best-selling music magazine in America, The Source. In my attempt to re-construct this history, I will be placing as much emphasis as possible on oral histories and narratives of members of the French Hip-Hop generation, collected both by others and myself. These sorts of oral sources remain gravely overlooked and under-used in Hip-Hop Studies thus far. Yet they are increasingly needed in an area of inquiry where the voices of the historical actors and social agents themselves can easily get lost in the words of those writing about the culture.[4]

“Talkin’ All That Jazz”: The Jazz Age in Paris as Context for the Reign of Hip-Hop in France

In order to more fully understand the widespread reception of Hip-Hop music and culture in France, one must look at the ways in which earlier African American cultural/musical forms have acted as historical precedents. What has come to be dubbed the Jazz Age in Paris, which the Smithsonian Museum dates as ranging from 1914 to 1940 in a recent exhibition,[5] was the first major period in which an African American cultural form was broadly embraced by the French public. The Jazz Age came to be, in part, as a result of the sizable number of African-American ex-servicemen who stayed on in France after World War I, feeling that the country “offered them a life free from the debilitating limitations imposed by American racism.”[6] During this time, there was also a growing number of African American artists, intellectuals, and musicians making their way to Paris. It is significant to note that, by and large, African American expatriates in France did not choose to “remake themselves black Frenchmen or Frenchwomen.”[7] Instead, they existed as something of an African American community in Paris where, generally speaking, they had the means and opportunities to live out their everyday lives without apprehension or the fear and cautiousness that would have to be exercised in the U.S. under white racism.

The African Americans in Paris were met by a French population that had an enthusiasm and passion for Black culture. Historian Tyler Stoval suggests that the French’s fascination with African American culture was a product of their more general interests in ‘primitivism’ and American culture.[8] As a result, Jazz music was received by the French public with open arms, and it “triumphed in the cabarets, night clubs, and dance halls of the city”[9] of Paris. This remained true for decades to come. Not only did there exist a community of African American expatriates among whom there were Jazz musicians and fans of Jazz, but there was also a steady stream of African American Jazz musicians touring and performing in Paris.

As new and powerful forms of Black American music emerged, such as Soul, Rhythm & Blues, and Funk, these as well were met with a positive critical reception in France. But, these musical forms found shifts in the demographics of their French listeners and consumers. The 1960s and 1970s brought large waves of decolonization immigrations, in particular from France’s former African colonies and Caribbean “départements.” These communities had been hearing and consuming African American music prior to their arrival in France. However, African American music was now more widely available and less expensive in their newfound home. It was during these years that the youth who were to be among the pioneer French Hip Hop generation were born. Les Nubians, a female Hip-Hop singing duo born in France to a Cameroonian mother, explain how integral Soul, Funk, and R&B were in their musical upbringing:

Célia: I was less than 10 years, maybe 2 or 3 years old when I became aware of the importance of Black music and musicians. Yes, because you know my auntie called her favorite dog Aretha because she loves Aretha Franklin. In our family we were listening to African American music for a while. People like Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding and Harry Belafonte…

Hèléne: Oooh, Harry Belafonte. Our mother, when she was pregnant [with Celia], was always listening to Harry Belafonte.

Célia: I can say that my own discovery of African American music was Prince. I was four. It was the Purple Rain album…. Our mother and auntie brought all the Soul music in the house – James Brown, Aretha Franklin and other Soul singers. Our cousins brought us the Gap Band, Prince, Michael Jackson, and Funkadelic.

Hèléne: We grew up with Funk and Soul.[10]

Antoine “Wave” Garnier, Hip-Hop journalist and author, in the first volume of his two volume series on Hip-Hop in the U.S. and France, begins the first chapter by talking about the impact of Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross’s music on the African diaspora in France:

A collection of love songs of rare expression, the album Diana & Marvin will easily conquer the entire family on this side of the Atlantic.[11]

Here, Garnier expresses a sense of what Paul Gilroy calls “diasporic intimacy” with Black American music, an intimacy which was and continues to be felt most strongly in the case of Hip-Hop.[12] In calling Africans “on this side of the Atlantic” part of the “family,” Garnier is conceiving of Africans and Africans of the diaspora as one large family, one entity. Moreover, writing from the vantage point of 1975 in France, Garnier was foreshadowing a widespread embrace of Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, and Black American music more generally by the African immigrant communities. Thus, I am suggesting that this context and this history provide important background for understanding the later reception of Hip-Hop in France. Still, as I will show, there were and continue to be significant differences in the nature of the reception of Hip-Hop and all previous African American musical forms.

The Birth of a French Hip-Hop Nation

In the late 1970s, Funk and Disco musics could be heard throughout dance clubs in Paris. In 1979, amidst the funky beats and rhythms of Paris clubs, DJ’s began dropping the needle on a new and unique record called “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang. This song, the first commercially successful Hip-Hop record in the U.S., represents for many French their first time hearing Hip Hop music.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, a French-Algerian by the name of Bernard Zekri was working as a journalist for the French magazine Actuel, and also as a waiter in a French restaurant in midtown Manhattan. While in New York City, Zekri befriended a good number of Bronx B-Boys (break dancers) as well as Afrika Bambaataa, who is widely recognized as one of three founders of the Hip-Hop Cultural Movement. This relationship would lead to one of the most important events in the history of Hip-Hop in France. In 1982, Zekri was able to convince the French radio station Europe1 to finance a tour called “New York City Rap Tour.” As a result, some of Hip-Hop culture’s most prominent figures would come to Paris to perform.

So it was not until the fall of 1982 that for the first time a French crowd would actually have the opportunity to see and hear the African American cultural producers themselves. On this tour there was featured the four core elements of Hip-Hop culture: MCing (rapping), DJing, B-Boying (break-dancing), and Graffiti/Aerosol Art. In an interview with one of the attendees, Sebastian Bardin, who is co-author of Freestyle, one of the first French books on Hip-Hop (not to mention a Hip Hop musician himself), described the event:

Basically you had Bambaataa and DST on the turntables, like four turntables, and then you had Fab 5 Freddy and Rammelzee kind of hosting, MCing, busting a couple rhymes here and there. And then you had Futura and Lee and Dondi painting in the background on like big boards. You know, and then, the breakdancers… This is like a huge stage, so they had room for all of this. You know and the Breakdancers, you know, doing routines, right in front next to the DJ, while these cats is painting, while these cats is rhyming, and you know, they’d get off and the Double Dutch Girls would come on and do a little somethin’. It’s like an hour-and-a-half of, you know, just Hip-Hop, all activities put together. That was nuts.[13]

Teddy Esposito, the Artistic Director for Celluloid Records, a small French record label that had put out some albums by The Last Poets (widely considered predecessors of Hip- Hop) and then later some Hip-Hop albums as well, remarked when asked whether he remembered the concert:

You know, I have an audio cassette of the concert. It’s because of that concert that I dove head first into Rap … It was shown on television and I had a small video-cassette. I was able to tape the concert. One night, I was watching the television and there was an announcer who said, “Here it is, from the U.S.A., a new style, it’s super!” “Here are guys who are making music with their records, who rhyme on top of music, and others who spin on their heads.” There was DST on the turntables, Bambaataa doing the beatbox. The Rock Steady Crew (Crazy Legs, Ken Swift, Take 1, Mr. Freeze, Frosty Freeze) break-dancing. There was Fab 5 Freddy and Phase 2 on the microphone and Futura 2000, Phase 2, and Dondi who were painting on panels at the scene. That was on TF1 (a TV channel)…. That concert completely transformed me. I was already passionate because I had been collecting records for two years. But, when I saw the enormous energy of that whole group of guys, I said “That’s me.”

Daniel, a D.J. and the manager of a Hip-Hop store in Paris called Ticaret, also attended the well-known tour and similarly explains how Hip-Hop captivated and engulfed him:

That’s where I caught the fever. Especially when the Breakdancers arrived, I looked, and the group was amazing to watch. I began training myself, to follow them like the rest of the world. At the time, I was doing rollerskating at Montparnasse. Then I trained in Breakdancing.[14]

He goes on, describing the subsequent development of Hip-Hop locally:

Afterwards, there was Sidney, then Paco Rabanne who were very important. He had a room at Colonel Fabien (near the metro station of that name) where one could practice.

Here, Daniel names two key figures who played a crucial role in the evolution of the early French Hip-Hop scene. Sidney became the first person of African descent to have his own full, regularly broadcasted television show, which was called “Hip-Hop.” It appeared on the channel TF1 and featured rappers, DJs, B-boys, and graffiti writers each performing their own craft. A number of prominent French rappers, who appeared on “Hip-Hop,” credit Sidney and his show for their breakthrough moment. Moreover, for many French youth as well, this is where they were able to see Hip-Hop culture over an extended period of time; it made the culture accessible to a wide audience.

Among the more unlikely figures in this history, perhaps, fashion designer Paco Rabanne was an early supporter of Hip-Hop in France. As Daniel describes above, Rabanne had a large space that he would let the Hip-Hop crowd use to practice Breakdancing; as a result, Rabanne and his place became a staple of the early Hip-Hop scene. It was one of the few locations where such activity was welcomed. It was around this very same time period that one very significant event took place which forever enhanced Hip-Hop’s possibilities for mass mediation and dissemination in France. In the early 1980s, France’s radio airwaves became denationalized, allowing for the broadcasting of Hip-Hop music. Prior to this period, because radio in France was nationalized, there was very little variety as to what could be heard on the airwaves. After denationalization, however, both pirate radio stations playing Hip-Hop and also Hip-Hop shows on larger radio stations began to emerge. These became principal sites for the development of a French Hip-Hop Nation; for they provided a common, widely heard forum in which new artists could be introduced. What's more, a French Hip-Hop aesthetics, language, ideology, and ethos could be born, nurtured, and negotiated. DJ Dee Nasty, one of the most well-respected early French DJs, had a Sunday radio show on the station Radio Nova. There was also MC Lionel D, a rapper. These two men would pioneer French Hip-Hop radio. Many artists today give credit to this duo for helping them to get known and, consequently, setting in motion their recording careers. Artists such as Suprême NTM, Ministère Amer, and MC Solaar “all made their debuts on this show.”[15]

A couple years after French radio became denationalized, Afrika Bambaataa took a trip to France during which he worked to establish branches of his organization, the Universal Zulu Nation. He founded in 1973 the Zulu Nation, a Hip-Hop organization in the South Bronx, New York, as a response to the rampant gang violence in New York City’s boroughs. A couple years after touring Paris as part of the New York City Rap Tour, he returned again in 1984. This time, however, Hip-Hop had become more widespread than it had been just a couple years earlier, as a result of both radio capability and the popularization of films like Wild Style, Beat Street, Style Wars, and Breakin’ (all of which revolved around the New York Hip-Hop scene). Thus, as MC Solaar explains, Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation were encouraging the French Hip-Hop scene to evolve and advance:

What is in the best interest of those looking to advance the culture – is what Bambaataa said to us at the time – that is to do things locally, because if we hadn’t done rap in our native language, in French, then I believe that the movement would not exist any more.[16]

Prior to that moment, many had tried to imitate American rappers by rhyming with the few English words they knew. It was only after Bambaataa spread word of the importance of rapping in one’s native language that the French Hip-Hop scene really began to take off. It opened up new possibilities for French rappers who had previously tried to replicate the English raps of the American, but who now could use their highly flexible French, argot, and verlans.

Also during his trip, Bambaataa tried to unify “the disparate forces of Hip-Hop in France”[17] through the establishment of branches of his Zulu Nation. As in the United States, Hip-Hop youth in France organized themselves into “posses” or “crews” which tended to identify by specific neighborhoods/arrondisements, specific banlieu communities, or specific building complexes, for instance. This made Bambaataa’s task difficult, but he achieved a certain level of success nonetheless. After his visit, there began to be published “The Zulu’s Letter,” a newsletter/magazine of sorts; there were also parties put on called “Zulu’s Party.”[18] In the end, a stable and well-formed Zulu Nation would not endure, yet Bambaataa’s efforts did result in loose-knit networks which helped shape the French Hip-Hop scene from that time on.

“…But No One Told the Banlieues”: Hip-Hop & the French ’Hood

Although the French word banlieue translates into English literally to mean “suburb,” we must probe further into what banlieue has come to mean as a social-political construct if we are to fully understand the importance of the banlieue to Hip-Hop in France. Despite contentions that the American “’hood” or “ghetto” and the French banlieue “do not represent similar societal environments,” and that the “differences between the two are clear,”[19] it is my contention that the banlieue has in fact become the French counterpart to what in the U.S. has been termed the “’hood” or the “ghetto.” The “suburbs” in France are called “suburbs” for the reason that they lie on the outskirts of the large cities, not within them. However, these “banlieues” have assumed many of the same characteristics and/or stereotypes, irrespective of the actual likeness, as the ’hoods and ghettos of the U.S. I am suggesting that not only is it significant that the banlieues have become stigmatized in much the same way as the ’hood has in the United States, but also that French rappers have likened their banlieue communities to the ’hoods and ghettos of the United States. That is to say, the “banlieue” and the “’hood” have taken on parallel socio-political meaning in their respective societies.

In what is a telling description, French scholar André Prévos describes the banlieues as they are understood in France. I quote him here at some length, if only to call attention to the nature of the discourse. Take note of the stereotypes that prevail even in this academician’s supposedly objective portrayal:

The majority of rappers in France come from suburban areas where poverty has always been present. These suburban areas include subsidized housing developments (HLM for Habitations à Loyer Modéré – that is to say, low-rent housing) where large families, including many children, live in apartment buildings built in the 1960s and 1970s to house workers and their families. These suburban areas have come to symbolize the excesses in violence, drug consumption, social dislocation, and delinquency encountered in financially strapped urban neighborhoods…. The 1980s have been marked by violent uprisings in several subsidized housing centers in the suburbs of Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles. These destructive episodes caused financial losses to storeowners and other retail outlets. As a result, there are fewer and fewer businesses in these financially depressed areas. The large numbers of unemployed teenagers and the significant number of youngsters who decide to drop out of school (even though this may lead to the suppression of subsidies to the family) organize gangs, steal, rob, sometimes rape women, or beat up others who refuse to hand over their money, their clothes, or their shoes.[20]

It is illuminating that these stereotypes penetrate even the meta-discourse surrounding the banlieues. This is strongly suggestive of the ways in which the “’hood” and the banlieue are mutually related, for similar comments have been made about the American “’hood.”[21]

Much like the ’hood in the U.S., the banlieue in France most often signifies a community of color or a community of racial “minorities,” although not exclusively, for some poor Whites also live in the banlieues. In the case of France, the banlieue communities are disproportionately dominated by immigrants and second-generation immigrants from France’s former colonies, “protectorates,” and “departements” of Africa and the Caribbean (such as Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, Congo, Cameroon, and Martinique among others). Individuals of these cultural backgrounds seem to hold a particular and special relationship to Hip-Hop, which is again characterized by diasporic intimacy, in large part because they conceive of the cultural producers of Hip-Hop, African Americans, and themselves as being part of an African diasporic whole. Moreover, Hip-Hop has often given a voice to the politically and economically marginalized, and this rings true for immigrant youth of France. One interview with Antoine “Wave” Garnier explains what Hip-Hop meant to the children of first-generation immigrants in France, with significant reference to a “thirst for freedom” that Hip-Hop could satiate for all French youth:

I think this thirst for freedom was more valid for Blacks and Arabs because we were oppressed. We were the first generation born here that went to university, for instance. So we’re not like our father or mother… So we want our part of the cake. That’s the first generation. Okay. So that the thirst for freedom I think got supported or came visible through Hip-Hop, that energy.[22]

Garnier continues, describing how, for the first time, the immigrant youth saw individuals that looked liked themselves in Hip-Hop films and on television; and what that meant to them:

And then another dimension, that was us on TV. Or we could be them. You go to Trocadero, you go to Les Halles, you go to other places, and you see mostly Blacks and Arabs doing the dance. And then, the music, the rapping.[23]

For a period during the middle of the 1980s in France, there was for some a decline in interest in Hip-Hop culture. Bernard Zekri, regarded as one of the key people responsible for bringing Hip-Hop to France, says in reference to this period:

…trendy Paris was burying rap, but no one told the banlieues.[24]

Here, Zekri was referencing the fact that much of the Paris crowd who got swept up in the Hip-Hop tours, films, fashions and television shows lost interest in the culture when these things became less chic among the city’s elite. However, in the meantime, the youth of the banlieues began delving more deeply into Hip-Hop culture, and were staging their own parties, ciphers, and B-boy sessions. Within several years, France had its first major record release, an album entitled Rapattitude, which was a compilation of songs from ten artists around France. Groups featured on the CD, as well as others who released albums either shortly before or after Rapattitude, were the groups who were to become known as part of the first major wave of French Hip-Hop. These were groups like IAM, Ministère A.M.E.R., Assassins, and Supreme NTM. In 1992, MC Solaar released his debut album, entitled Qui Sème le Vent Récolte le Tempo. This album went on to sell over 400,000 units locally and was the first ever Hip-Hop album in France to go platinum. This signaled new possibilities for Hip-Hop in France. Specifically, it demonstrated the ability of the music to appeal to a “universal” audience. Thus, despite having been dismissed by many French as a passing fad, just as many Americans had done in the early days of Hip-Hop in the U.S., Hip Hop is there to stay.

Outro: The Futurestory of Hip-Hop in France

Gracing the debut cover of The Source France is IAM, one of France’s first major Hip-Hop groups. The release date of the magazine complements the release of IAM’s fifth album, Revoir Un Printemps. The album’s lead single, entitled “Noble Art,” is a song on which they collaborate with Redman and Method Man, two platinum-selling African-American rap artists. This song stands as a testament to continuing cultural conversation, both literal and figurative, between African American and French members of the Hip Hop Cultural Movement. Yet, we gain a more thorough understanding of the dynamics and contours of this cultural conversation by properly placing it within the context of the history of the reception of African American cultural forms in France. The founding of The Source France will only strengthen and intensify the cultural conversation occurring across the Atlantic in years to come. David Mays, founder and CEO of The Source magazine, recently said the following in regards to the founding of The Source France:

When Hip-Hop first emerged over 25 years ago, few could have imagined the creative, cultural and political impact it would eventually have on the rest of the world. Today, France is a leader in the globalization of Hip-Hop, reflected not only in the tremendous popularity of such U.S. artists as Nas and Jay-Z, but also in the way they have molded the culture and modified the style of the music to fit their own tastes.[25]

Bibliography

Bardin, Sebastian. Unpublished Interview by author. 17 July 2003. Tape recording.

Cannon, Steve. “Paname City Rapping: B-Boys in the Banlieus and Beyond.” In Post-Colonial Cultures in France, eds. Alec Hargreaves and Mark McKinney, 150-66. London: Routledge, 1997.

Desse [Bardin, Desdémone] and SBG [Bardin, Sébastian]. Freestyle. Paris: Massot & Millet, 1993.

Forman, Murray. The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2002.

French Music Industry (2003). Internet website.
Available at: http://www.french-music.org/industry/radio.php.

Garnier, Antoine “Wave.” Unpublished Interview by author, 14 July 2003. Tape recording.

Garnier, Antoine “Wave.” Souffle: Au Coeur de la Génération Hip Hip. Entre New York et Paris. Partie 1. Paris: ALiAS etc., 2003.

Gilroy, Paul. “Cultural Studies and Ethnic Absolutism.” In Cultural Studies, eds. L. Grossberg et al., 187-98. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Les Nubians. Unpublished Interview by James G. Spady, 20 July 1998. Tape recording.

Prévos, André. “Hip-Hop, Rap, and Repression in France and in the United States.” Popular Music and Society, Summer 1998 v22 i2 p67.

__________. “Postcolonial Popular Music in France: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the 1980s and 1990s.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, ed. Tony Mitchell, 39-56. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

__________. “Two Decades of Rap in France: Emergence, Developments, Prospects.” In Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World, ed. Alain-Philippe, 1-21. U.S.A.: Scarecrow Press, 2002.

Spady, James G. “Umum: Notes on an Inquiry Into Hip-Hop Culture and Archival Oral

Records.” Presented at the annual National Archives Conference, Philadelphia, PA, May 13, 1994, Unpublished Manuscript.

Stovall, Tyler. Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Templeton, Inez. “Where in the World Is the Hip-Hop nation?” Popular Music 22, no. 2 (2003): 241-245.

The Source Magazine Expands Globally (2003). Internet website
Available at: http://www.kccall.com/news/2003/0905/Entertainment/010.html.

References

[1] The Source Magazine Celebrates 15 Years of Hip-Hop History (2002). Internet website. Available at: http://www.thesource.com/html/history1.htm.

[2] See: 1) André Prevos, “Two Decades of Rap in France: Emergence, Developments, Prospects,” in Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World, ed. Alain-Philippe (U.S.A.: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 1-21.

2) André Prevos, “Postcolonial Popular Music in France: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the 1980s and 1990s.,” in Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, ed. Tony Mitchell, (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001), 39-56.

[3] French Music Industry (2003). Internet website.
Available at: http://www.french-music.org/industry/radio.php.

[4] For a discussion of these important issues, see: Templeton, Inez. “Where in the World Is the Hip-Hop Nation?” Popular Culture 22, no. 2 (2003): 245. And James G. Spady, “Umum: Notes on an Inquiry Into Hip Hop Culture and Archival Oral Records” (Paper presented at the annual National Archives Conference, Philadelphia, PA, May 13, 1994), Unpublished Manuscript.

[5] The Jazz Age in Paris, 1914-1940 (1999). Internet website.
Available at: http://www.si.edu/ajazzh/jazzage.htm.

[6] Tyler Stovall , Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 26.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Tyler Stovall , Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 33.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Interview with Les Nubians by James G. Spady, 20 July 1998, Unpublished Transcript.

[11] Antoine Garnier, Souffle: Au Coeur de la Génération Hip-Hop. Entre New York et Paris. Partie 1, (Paris: ALiAS etc., 2003), 11.

[12] Paul Gilroy, “Cultural Studies and Ethnic Absolutism,” in Cultural Studies, eds. L. Grossberg et al. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 193.

[13] Sebastian Bardin. Interview by author, 17 July 2003, Unpublished Transcript.

[14] Desse & SBG, Freestyle (Paris: Massot & Millet, 1993), 170.

[15] Steve Cannon, “Paname City Rapping: B-Boys in the Banlieues and Beyond,” in Post-Colonial Cultures in France, eds. Alec Hargreaves and Mark McKinney (London: Routledge, 1997), 157.

[16] Desse & SBG, Freestyle (Paris: Massot & Millet, 1993), 107.

[17] Steve Cannon, “Paname City Rapping: B-Boys in the Banlieues and Beyond,” in Post-Colonial Cultures in France, eds. Alec Hargreaves and Mark McKinney (London: Routledge, 1997), 156-157.

[18] Ibid., 156.

[19] André Prévos, “Hip-Hop, Rap, and Repression in France and in the United States,” Popular Music and Society 22, no. 2 (1998).

[20] André Prévos, “Hip-Hop, Rap, and Repression in France and in the United States,” Popular Music and Society 22, no. 2 (1998).

[21] For a full discussion of the ideas about Hip-Hop music and the “’hood” see: Murray Forman, The Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2002).

[22] Antoine “Wave” Garnier, Interview by author, 14 July 2003, Unpublished Transcript.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Steve Cannon, “Paname City Rapping: B-Boys in the Banlieues and Beyond,” in Post-Colonial Cultures in France, eds. Alec Hargreaves and Mark McKinney (London: Routledge, 1997), 153.

[25] The Source Magazine Expands Globally (2003). Internet website
Available at: http://www.kccall.com/news/2003/0905/Entertainment/010.html.

Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 3, 2004