BREAK THE CYCLE: On Rap Video Culture, Les Grand Ensemble & SelfRepresentation
The city, as the cradle of civilization, has been recounted by an infinite number of authors throughout history, however, for centuries we knew little about it
from non-institutional and peripheral perspectives. Indeed, only ‘recently’, the urban periphery has found ways to convey its stories, occupying and making use of numerous
arenas.
This short essay analyzes and discusses how rap video culture has given voice to urban outcasts, and helped them portray their surroundings in a different array of styles;
highlighting the formation of a shared sensibility, and the rising potential hiding behind a visual register widely used within the French context. On the other hand, it will
analyse the limits of canonical rap imageries and restraining narrative schemes, in order to contribute to the implementation of sustainable practices within the genre.
The dissertation incorporates several music videos, uploaded on YouTube since 2006, and covering a period of time spanning from 1982 to 2020. In addition, parallel to a short
historical and contextual introduction to the genre, as well as to the French urban periphery, the text will make use of the analysis of several sociologists, theorists, and
artists in order to substantiate the critique of the aforementioned visual material.
Last but not least, particular attention will be given to the French context, due to the abundance of documentation and emerging platforms discussing the state of affairs
of both rap video culture and urban peripheries; yet I believe that the following analysis can be extended, with due proportion and additional research, to several other
countries within Europe, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy.
-----------------
Henri Lefebvre point-blank begins his 1970 book The Urban Revolution as follows:
I'll begin with the following hypothesis: Society has been completely urbanized. This hypothesis implies a definition: an urban society is a society
that results from a process of complete urbanization. This urbanization is virtual today but will become real in the future.
1
(Lefebvre, 1970)
Fifty years later, this is still not the case, however, most of the analysis discussed by Lefebvre in The Urban Revolution seems to be more than ever palpable today.
Especially those concerning the aftermath of urbanization, where attention is drawn to the urban problematic and the intensification of violence
2,
especially from a global perspective.
Although critiquing urbanization at all scales,however, Lefebvre's analysis often evokes, by way of example, the French urban society, as well as Paris, the city par
excellence in relation to the combination of urban planning, understood as a grand design for the constitution of a new order, and its repercussion on urban communities.
[Georges-Eugène Haussmann] gutted Paris according to plan, deported the proletariat to the periphery [..] cutting through the urban fabric,
and inscribing straight lines throughout the city [...] a logic that is inherent in class strategy and tends to maximize this type of rational coherence, which originated
with Napoleon I and the absolute state.
3
(Lefebvre, 1970)
La grande croisée
4
however, isn’t an isolated historical event at all, and going back in time, Lefevbre inscribes it within a tradition and rationality long-tied
to dominant ideologies, Bonapartism in this case; a stillicide perpetuated across various regions and times, not just linked to the city, as a defined geographic entity,
but instead – acknowledging the scale and complexity of urbanization processes – to the urban, a much more porous and polymorphic organism; leading to what Levebvre defines
as an overall colonization of space that sees no boundary dividing cities or countries, but cutting across the urban, between a dominated periphery and a dominating center
5.
The urban society, as formulated by Lefebvre, sees in fact, the formation of two major dichotomies: the rural-urban and the center-periphery.
A clash between different geographies, running at different speeds, and defined by different logics, but still belonging to the same overarching system,
state, or economy.
On the same matter 39 years later, Metahaven, questioning the state of affairs of the Pan-European identity draws attention to the expansion of advanced forms of
marginality within the EU.
The French banlieues have developed something the sociologist Loïc Wacquant calls “advanced marginality”
6,
a tremendously powerful condition with regard to the condition of border, or periphery. [...]
Revamped (historical) city centers, meticulously styled and kept, become "global destinations'' for capital, culture, and investment, while cheaply and quickly
constructed urban peripheries become ever poorer, harder to reach, and more difficult to leave.
7
Center-periphery oppositions like these are increasingly found as borders within Europe. According to the French thinker Étienne Balibar,
there are “modes of inclusion and exclusion in the European sphere.”
8.
Europe is a “borderland”, anything but the patchwork of peace and prosperity conforming to the EU's official brand image.
9 (Metahaven, 2009)
Keeping an eye on the French context, a case in point is the ZUS
10
(Zone Urbaine Sensible), urban and infra-urban territories outlined by the Pacte de Relance pour la Ville
11
(PRV) as priority targets for policies meant to revitalize the economy
12
and keep the country ‘safe’.
Launched by the right-of-center Juppè government in 1996,the PRV is the product of a political campaign by Jacques Chirac aimed at fighting against the fracture
sociale [social divide] and the risk of social unrest in the suburbs, that was holding hostage the State.
Le plan présenté aujourd'hui par Alain Juppé semble avoir choisi d'autres angles d'attaque: celui du renforcement de la présence de
l'Etat dans les banlieues et surtout celui de l'emploi. Ainsi le pacte prévoitil une augmentation des effectifs de police, des mesures supplémentaires contre
la délinquance (avec la création, déjà critiquée, d'« unités à encadrement éducatif renforcé »), des dispositions en faveur du secteur éducatif ainsi que du logement.
Afin de favoriser la mixité sociale, les règles d'attribution de HLM seraient assouplies par la suppression des plafonds de ressources et la non-application des surloyers.
(Philippe Moreau, Les Echos, 1996)
The plan presented today by Alain Juppé seems to have chosen other angles of attack: that of strengthening the presence of the State
in the suburbs and especially of employment. Thus, the pact aims to increase the police force, and additional measures against delinquency (with the creation,
already criticized, of juvenile detention centers.), and provisions in favor of the educational sector as well as housing. In order to promote social mix,
the allocation rules for low-cost housing would be relaxed by removing income ceilings and rent surcharge.
Such intensive policing led to the expected results. Along with what Silverstein and Tetreault (2006) have called the “defacto militarization of housing projects”,
the PRV is considered to have also introduced a shift in focus from solidarity between communities, to a model based on economic success with strictly defined space
of intervention
13,
and paved the way to a neoliberal approach based on zoning which rather than breaking down problems to their constituent parts, lumps together social issues in
a box promptly defined as 'ghetto'
14.
One of the major downsides of the census has been in fact the encouragement of forms of institutionalized segregation and discrimination
15
based on territorial stigmatization. Indeed, territories classified as ZUS were and still are easily identifiable and labeled thanks to extremely detailed maps
16
offered by the French government itself, where areas are marked street by street
17
[rue par rue] and cut off from the rest of the city with red-line boundaries
18.
When asked where they reside, many of those who work in Paris say vaguely that they live in the northern suburbs (Avery 1987: 22) rather
than reveal their address in La Courneuve.
19
(Wacquant, 2008)
One of these districts is La Villeneuve
20,
a residential neighborhood located in the south of Grenoble. Designed and built between 1963 and 1983,
in the 1970s it has been widely publicized as a symbol of the post-68 architecture, being one of the first attempts at creating a differentiated district integrating jobs,
housing, and various services altogether. But as much as the buildings were quite correct and the urban space agreeable, throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
the lack of investments, and the ongoing deterioration of the estates, combined with acute economic problems, turned this 1970s utopia into a fragile ecosystem;
worthy of inclusion in the Zones de Redynamisation Urbaine (ZRU). A downfall predicted by French sociologists
21
already in the 1970s.
The city is a furtive object, it seems, one that conceals itself. Far from dominating their city, the inhabitants seem to lose
themselves further and further within it. The production of urban space today hardly offers the inhabitants any respite, now that it even goes so far as
to reduplicate this loss of self and of “home” in the city, by closing off all prospects through the shrinking of cityscapes, economic pressure, social division,
overpricing of “small” property lots, and the concentration of slum areas
22.
(Medam, 1971).
23
(Augoyard, 1979)
On the other hand, the decline of La Villeneuve, together with other neighborhoods across France, has been covered by French media manufacturing an image
of la banlieue as a public issue, deserving of the attention of specialists and the intervention of political decision-makers
24.
Indeed, especially in the early 1990s, and just before the introduction of the PRV, a supposed Americanization of French suburbs, supported by the
analysis of several journalists and scholars
25,
exacerbated the national public discourse around the social divide and social impoverishment; defectively comparing the banlieues
to ‘American style ghettos’, such as the Black Belt district
26
of the Southside of Chicago, and sensationalizing the issue by resorting to resembling
historical cases.
Proof is the epidemic of articles with alarming and alarmist titles, such as 'Ghetto Stories', 'Long Live the Ghetto', 'These Banlieues
where the Worst is Possible'
27,
triggered at the beginning of the 1980s by the infamous 'rodeos' in the Minguettes neighbourhood of Venissieux
(a waning industrial suburb of Lyons) and the firearm death of little Toufik Ouanès in the cité of the Quatre mille (4000) in La Courneuve in July 1983,
which was suddenly accelerated and greatly amplified following the incidents in Vaulx-en-Velin in October 1990, variously described by the press as a riot',
a 'revolt', an 'uprising', and even a 'veritable urban guerrilla [war]'.
28
(Wacquant, 2008)
A stigma still put forth today by several newspapers and newscasts in France, such as M6 with its TV program Zone Interdite
29
[No-go Zone](1993-present) or France 2 with Envoyé Spécial (1989-present) and its reportages on ‘les quartiers sensibles/chauds’ [agitated neighborhoods].
Despite the political and mediatic ostracism however, there is still who offers resistance. Stigmatizing media coverage in fact do not go unnoticed
and often found instead the opposition of local residents accusing newspapers and broadcasters of carrying and supporting prejudicial beliefs
about the grands ensembles [large-scale & high-rise housing projects].
A case in point is exactly Envoyé Spécial, which on September 26, 2013, broadcasted a reportage entitled “La Villeneuve: le rêve brisé”
30
[the broken dream], picturing a prejudicial and one-sided portrait of the area featuring clashes between young men and the police,
teachers struggling to support their students, gun violence, and the discomfort of the elderly. A few months later, a defamation lawsuit
31
was brought by a group of residents against France 2, leading, despite the dismissal of the appeals court, to the mobilization of the local community
and the production of a crowdfunded documentary
32
aiming to rebalance the image of the district; an initiative that shifted the focus from
the voyeuristic and sensationalistic viewpoint of the broadcaster to one which alternatively promoted the perspective of a wide range of residents.
In a similar manner, especially in Paris, a new generation of photographers
33
and independent publishing houses
34
are encouraging the formation of a non-stereotypical imagery of the suburbs, directing the focus onto the ordinary, mundane aspects of everyday life in the banlieue,
in an attempt to counter both stigmatizing discourses, and the commodification and fetishization of urban culture by politics and media.
The pictures, most often set in the streets of Parisian peripheral districts, such as Saint-Denis, Epinay-Sur-Seine, or Bondy, feature non-judgemental
portraits of a wide range of residents and their daily routine
35;
a multidimensional visual account of contemporary French (sub)urban society, that could potentially have the same impact photographers
such as Cartier-Bresson, Koudelka, Arbus, Klein, or Meyerowitz
36
had in the narration of twentieth-century society.
Along side urban photography, however, zines like PARISREAL II (2015) by Yanis Dadoum reveal also the influence of rap video culture, as also confessed
by the same photographer
37
in a recent interview:
I like some stuff from the past like the rap from the 2000s, rap videos also. The video of Mafia K'1 Fry for their track “Pour Ceux”
38
is bloody amazing. Everything is there. Those guys woke up one morning and said 'let's do a video clip'. All the kids from the blocks
came out and they just filmed. Voilà. That's great. Even in the way they are dressed, those guys didn’t force anything. Didn’t play anything.
39
(Yanis Dadoum, 2015)
Indeed, photographic series such as THÉRAPIE
40
by Marvin Bonheur, to name but one, encompasses a similar iconography employed in early
2000’s French rap videos such as ”Pour Ceux”(2003) or “Les Princes De La Ville”
41
(1999) by 113; spontaneous or mildly staged portraits of the youth from the banlieues, with the cityscape as a backdrop.
Rap culture has in fact occupied a majorly influential role in the construction of visual and non-visual records of suburban and peri-urban areas,
having had, and still having a privileged relationship with urban peripheries.
We are essentially reporting live from neighborhoods and communities long forgotten, and, in Atlanta, recently torn down
42.
It seems as though our city and our people place no importance on our community any longer. These are the places you never visit.
These are the places that hip-hop claims to care about.
43
(Pill, 2009)
In the early 1980s, when rap music began to drift away from eclosed spaces and events such as clubs and block parties
44,
and gangsterism started taking roots in the culture, bringing a new spacial dimension in it, a new subgenre deeply tied to urban geographies established itself as
one of the most influential styles in hip hop music: gangsta rap; a subgenre either made by or about gangsters, promoting both tales of street life
and the lifestyle associated with it. And as much as rap music changed and evolved over the years, gangsta rap imagery and its recurring themes
remained dominant within the rap landscape, helping to popularize the use of urban settings in rap videos, and characterizing the genre’s aptitude
for the narration of urban realities.
Ice T, for instance, who helped pioneer gangsta rap, already in the late 1980s used to interwoven his music videos
45
with images of Los Angeles, featuring both cinematic scenes worthy of a crime movie and documentary-style shots of the Californian cityscape. And similarly
to Ice T, many other artists over the years – both in and out of the North American context – walked the same path; such as Nipsey Hussle in
Picture Me Rollin
46
(2017), also in Los Angeles, or SCH in Interlude
47
(2020) set in Marseille; where both videos mostly avoid studio or indoor settings, preferring instead open air locations, facing local landmarks
of their respective cities and neighborhoods.
But it is no coincidence that so many artists over time and across so many different countries have promoted images of their districts; as if in the face
of a society that devalues and demeans them
48
one way in which they could have cope with 'dispossession' was through the passionate display of the districts to which they belonged, although impoverished, moche
49
[ugly] or dysfunctional.
Rappers, in fact, seem to respond symbiotically to the ecosystems. A concept well-argued by Jesse Mccarthy in one of his Notes on Trap:
TRAP
50
IS THE ONLY MUSIC that sounds like what living in contemporary America feels like. It is the soundtrack of the
dissocialized subject that neoliberalism made. It is the funeral music that the Reagan revolution deserves.
51
(Jesse Mccarthy, 2018)
And despite being a comment on the American society, this concept seemingly applies to many other countries and contexts where living conditions are now majorly
dictated by urbanization processes, as defined by Henri Lefebvre. With rap music now potentially becoming the soundtrack of the infinitude of inner borders
fragmenting the globe; the soundtrack of policies exacerbating territorial stigmatization in France; the soundtrack of the forthcoming complete urbanization.
Indeed, rap culture today, especially through the production of visual records, assumes the task of narrating the city and its symbols, in the same way in the
19th-century poets and novelists portrayed the rise of the city as the new totalizing ground to decipher.
The symbolic dimension of the city was discovered by Victor Hugo, its paradigmatic dimension by Baudelaire, and its syntagmatic
dimension by many poets who inhabited the city and wrote about their travels: romantics and minor poets, from Gérard de Nerval to Lautrémont and Rimbaud.
52
(Lefebvre, 1970)
Likewise, rap music, better than most music genres, it has been able, and it is still able – at its best – to provide a different understanding of the urban
context, quite often fracturing the institutional and postcard-perfect image of the city, by reframing and observing it from unconventional perspectives.
In this regard, Kodwo Eshun in a short essay entitled Abducted by Audio
53
analyzes how much, already in the mid-1990s, rap music grew used to morph and unsettle reality:
“So if you go back to 1992 when Cypress Hill started - if you remember, before that, you had hip hop which was very much based in an
idea of reality, in an idea of representing your neighbourhood, representing your true class or true group around you- as soon as you had Cypress Hill you
had that reality blending, you had reality morphing into a psychogeography, a more unreal state. The first thing you hear is the sound of inhalation, people
breathing in, the sound of the hits from the bong. That kind of magnification, that idea of sound microscoping right in close to your ear, that’s what was
fascinating about hip hop, and that was, immediately, when you started to realise that reality was starting to morph.” (Eshun, 1997)
An analysis to be understood not as a withdrawal of the genre, and its video culture, from its social and documentary functions, which on the contrary continued
to play a major role, but rather as an enhancement of its subjectivity and its analytical potential.
Indeed,thanks to this shift in mindset, multiple voices coexist within the genre today, and the urban context, and all the stories associated with it,
can be experienced in a wide range of shades; sometimes fictionalized with cinematic features; sometimes sublimated into myths and legends; sometimes
excessively glamorized
54.
Among this different array of styles, however, fictionalization has been historically predominant, far surpassing the documentary style, which instead
remained most often a prerogative of a few
55
– and which only today is seeing a resurgence thanks to a community of creators and curators,
like COMPLEX (US) or YARD (FR), producing video tours of influential neighbourhoods within rap culture.
Since the early days of the genre, in fact, especially with the rise of gangsta rap, rappers have often worked with the movie industry in the production
of soundtracks or taking acting roles
56
, such as Ice-T in Colors
57
(1988) or years later Mobb Deep in In Too Deep
58
(1999). And over the years, this phenomenon has done nothing but spread, consolidating the relationship between rap music and film culture; a relationship that kept
on influencing rappers’ ambitions and rap videos’ accounts on the urban experience, both in and out of the North American context.
A case in point is Gomorrah
59
(2014), an Italian crime TV series narrating the story of two young men making their ways into a Neapolitan crime-syndicate.
Soon after its release, Scampia
60
, a suburb in the far north of Naples, and one of the locations of the TV series, gained among many European rappers a mythical dimension.
European (gangsta) rap, in fact, until 10-15 years before, was feeding almost entirely on American biopics and crime movies & TV series, such as Scarface
61
(1983), Carlito's Way
62
(1993), The Sopranos
63
(1999-2007) or Get Rich or Die Tryin'
64
(2005), and other cult films about American gangbangers like Boyz n the Hood
65
(1991) and Menace II Society
66
, La Haine (1995) directed by Mathieu Kassovitz.
When Europe's film industry eventually started producing crime drama and movies set within EU countries, such as 4 Blocks
67
(2017-2019) or Romanzo Criminale
68
(2008 -2010), the initiative had a great appeal to local rap scenes, which started leaving behind American icons and
instead embrace the European ones.
Fascinated by Gomorrah storyline and characters, several French rappers, for instance, picked Scampia as additional location for their videos,
such as PNL in Le monde ou rien
69
(2015) or SCH in Gomorra
70
(2015); as if that neighborhood, however distant from their lives,
and encountered only on screen, suddenly epitomized their life stories and ambitions, as much as their hometowns.
However, whilst acknowledging the usefulness and therapeutic value of using ‘ready-made’ narratives and imageries taken from films and TV series,
over the years the use of movie references in rap videos, especially crime drama, has led to a stereotypification and calcification of the genre
iconography, which now is flattened more and more by over-banalized images
71
like money, weapons, and drugs.
On the contrary, less ‘cinematic’ videos, synthesizing their own imagery according to the habits and customs of each neighborhood, kept on
constructing ever-evolving scenarios and expressive scenes.
For instance, keeping an eye on Scampia, this time from a different angle, the representation of the area given by Co’ sang in Int'o Rione
72
(2006) radically differs from Paky’s depiction of the same in Boss
73
(2020); with the latter appearing to be a patchwork of scenes likely scraped from Gomorrah, while the first one, a collection of spontaneous or
mildly-staged vignettes inspired by local scenes, offering an autonomous reading of the environment.
And a similar approach can be found in several French videos today, such as N'tiekar
74
by Dinos (2020), Bienvenue à la Banane
75
by Moha La Squale (2017), or MERCÉ LA ZONE
76
by Hatik (2019), in which the video functions as a map of an internalized landscape,
indexing the symbolic units underlying the experiences of the respective ‘communities’, as seen through the eyes of the artists.
Et je pense en fait qu’avec les années, le rap français est vraiment en train de prendre son identité, genre vraiment,
c’est le nouvel âge d’or maintenant, je pense vraiment, donc nos codes à nous, de simplicité à nous, nos trucs à nous, sans vraiment forcément
copier les autres, tu vois.
77
(Sofiane, 2017)
Actually I think that over the years, French rap is really consolidating its identity, like really. It's the new golden
age now, I think, with our own codes, our own simplicity, our stuff, without necessarily copying others, you see.
Rap video culture throughout the years has taken the medium of video and transformed it so it was better suited to describe the [urban landscape]
as it understood it
78
; starting from an elementary and bi-dimensional representation of the city – as in It's Nasty
79
(1982) by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – and getting today to a multidimensional depiction of the same.
In addition to this, what really keeps the genre interesting is the emergence of a shared sensibility towards the urban landscape and its
periphery.Indeed, French rap culture
81
, probably due to the homogeneity of its markets and of suburban and peri-urban areas shown in
most videos, is seeing the rise of a shared visual language and iconography, made up by elements taken from the environment; what Lefebvre may define as
urban mythology
83.
A prime example are Sofiane’s videos with the hashtag #Jesuispasséchezso
84
, a video series set in several neighborhoods visited by the French rapper since 2016.
En tournée, Sofiane passe toujours une tête dans la cité du coin, une proximité qui plaît à son public. «Quand tu en viens,
tu sais que c’est les clés d’une ville. Le rap s’est éloigné de sa base. Tu retrouves maintenant les rappeurs dans les clubs et moins dans les cités.
Il faut vivre ce qu’on raconte.
85
(Girard, 2017)
On tour, Sofiane always passes by the local city, a proximity that appeals to his audience. "When you go visit, you know you
have the keys of the city. Rap music today is distant from its base. You will now find more rappers in clubs than in the neighborhoods. [when instead]
You should experience what people claim.
It all started in La Castellane
86,
a neighborhood in the 15th arrondissement of Marseille, sharing a similar history to La Villeneuve.
After that, the series kept on expanding, incorporating other neighborhoods across France, but almost always maintaining a certain continuity
87.
The script, in fact, is most often the same: Modernist ensembles as a backdrop, a handful of young men behind him, tracksuits & football shirts,
cross-body bags, dogs, no presence of women or other groups of residents, weed & ash, dirt bikes & wheelies, guns, kids, cash, drone shots, middle
fingers, road signs, handshakes, boxers, choirs, balaclavas, flags, and occasionally cars speeding off. And this imagery keeps recurring for years
now. Of course, he has no exclusive on that, many other rappers in Europe use the same iconography, however, he is using it more solidly than others,
remaining consistent even when he crosses the French border to shoot videos in other European countries such as Italy
88
, Portugal
89
, Germany
90
and the Netherlands
91.
The list of locations is in fact, extremely coherent and well-curated, giving the impression that the landscape doesn’t change much, except for
local landmarks; that daily routines do not change, although seen in different contexts. One homogeneous geography, made of suburbs inhabited only by loud
and resentful men sharing the same lifestyle. However, as apocalyptic as it may seem, by acknowledging similarities in different urban contexts, and through
a highly selective take on reality, Sofiane is able to bring the European urban periphery and its social divide into focus; and potentially speak to an audience
that identifies itself with it, perhaps living in urban areas under the same or transposable conditions depicted in his videos.
“Blanc-Mesnil, Aulnay, Sevran, Bondy, La Courneuve, tous ces endroits-là, on se connaît, on est dans le même délire”.
93
(Sofiane, 2017)
Blanc-Mesnil, Aulnay, Sevran, Bondy, La Courneuve, all these places, we know each other, we are in the same delirium.
Indeed, what he calls “le même délire” is nothing but a reference to the aftermath of a mismanaged urbanization process and its impact on urban communities
now living under a regime of formal and informal segregation, impoverishment, and abuse; a condition which on the other hand, has also allowed rap culture
to create a sense of community, and which has granted to the genre an influential status in urban contexts; opening up a chance for the genre to become a
public platform against a hegemonic conception of France's urban identity.
I think there is a “common” that grows stronger and stronger. We always have to create institutions! But creating institutions
also means creating forms of cities, because an institution is not a metaphysical representation or an ideal archetype! It is among other, concrete
forms that the city has to be constructed, that the metropolis can constitute the common. And it goes without saying that I am not only speaking here of
buildings! There are, of course, buildings, but there is also communication — the lines, the spaces, and so forth. Creating an institution means creating
a public space. [...] Because we still require a place in which this multitude will exist — not only a network through which it communicates, but also the
power to decide its living conditions. This power to decide plays a role in developing a relationship between the multitude and state structures or
institutions, and from a negative perspective this means an uproar; from a constructive perspective it means revolution.
95
(Negri, 2010)
However, despite the multiethnic French banlieue has become a space from which French rap culture could potentially challenge the representation of Frenchness,
interrogate universalist notions of citizenship, encourage discussions on otherness, and open up a possibility of reclaiming the urban space, on the other hand,
most videos seem to exist in a social vacuum where there are no actual possibilities of exchange or encounters within segments of the community, unless it's
between small, demographically homogeneous circles of people.
Indeed, Sofiane’s videos, as many others, show us the cité within an extremely narrow framework, presenting it as a self-enclosed world, in which the
hyper-masculine focus on the aforementioned elements neglects the off-screen everyday life animating the suburb, reinforcing the gap between the multi-layered
reality of the banlieue, and its mythological and catastrophic representation by TV programs
96
and banlieue films
97
, repeatedly converging on a narrow set of images, characters, and situations.
Les mecs ils ont l’impression que dans le 93 on marche avec des fusils à pompes, que c’est la guérilla, non! Calmez vous. On s’amuse ici,
on fait des barbecues. On met 5€ et on fait un grand barbecue pour tout le monde. On fait tout, on emprunte des camions pour emmener les petits à la
piscine l’été…
98
(Sofiane, 2017)
People have the impression that in the 93 [Seine-Saint-Denis] one walks with shotguns, that it is the guerrilla,no! Calm down.
We have fun here, we make barbecue. We put 5€ each and we make a big barbecue for everyone. We do everything, we borrow trucks to take the little ones to
the pool in summer.
Paradoxically, even when rap culture claims to counter conservative conceptions of the urban periphery, when it takes on the task of portraying its
surroundings, that same hegemonic and catastrophic representation seems to remain in place.
Indeed, as far as the genre drifted away from American film culture and built its own local imagery, its process of assimilating and understanding the
environment seems still to rely on other dominant narratives, ending up recycling and reinforcing – in a different visual style – a deeply ingrained set of
images; raising the question of whether rappers have somehow internalized pre-existing media representations, then unconsciously reproduced, or whether
their hyper-masculine and universalist claims about banlieue lifestyles are to be intended as a form of legitimization, which attempts to mediate economic,
social and political disenfranchisement.
What is certain is that rap video culture has developed the scale and the non-gimmicky potential to heighten public awareness around contemporary urban
issues, and become a counterpart to hegemonic discourses about urban outcasts. But in order to do so,the genre needs to stop dealing with dispossession in a
one-dimensional way, and break the cycle of canonical rap imageries; starting from getting away from models of exclusion and opening itself to segments of the
community long disregarded and often kept outside of the frame, unless it was by accident.
Fred Moten, quoting Manolo Callahan
99,
argues that we need to learn how to renew our habits of assembly and recognize that we're part of a
common project, and this is exactly the only way rap culture can sustainably evolve and have the capacity to be relevant to more than a few listeners;
becoming the legitimate soundtrack of contemporary urban peripheries.
May, 2020
@Design Academy Eindhoven
The Critical Inquiry Lab
Thanks to:Saskia van Stein, Patricia Reed & Katia Truijen
Sofia, Matilde, Tasminder, Anna, Zee, Rachel, Mimo, Michael & José
Paul, Giulio, Emiliano, Francesco, Alessandro & Agostino