Concrete Feeling

Coming out of France’s suburban ghetto, the first French hip-hop artists take the country by storm in 1990. Names like Assassin, NTL and IAM were poli...

The mainly BAME neighbourhoods of Paris were places mainstream media didn't go and didn't talk about. So the local rapper's became the CNN of their co...

Rap took off: no longer a genre on the fringes of acceptability or even on the fringes of what is considered music: it was everywhere. It was on TV, a...

The rapper is a social animal. He moves in groups and collectives, like Time Bomb or Beat 2 Boul. They're like famillies, only with a message and a vi...

Every generation of rapper in France tackles the diffcult and sometimes violent relationship between the police and urban French youth. And in the 90s...

Some rappers aren't content to work for somebody else. They intend to decide for themselves on their own terms rather than feel controlled by the reco...

In 1996, after a law was passed demanding that 40 percent of the music played on French radio be French, the radio station Skyrock became THE station...

Rap has grown mainstream; and in doing so, has it lost its soul? And which rap has value, which one is the authentic rap? There's socially conscious r...

2005. In the aftermath of the biggest riots in France since May 68, the political class has to find the culprit. It's not the unemployment, not the fa...

French rap may not have achieved the social changes it wanted, but it is now a firm favourite on the airwaves. This is a cultural revolution: rap is c...