An article about French rap music and an accompanying photo caption Nov. 24 incorrectly described the Indian Ocean island Reunion as a French territory. Reunion is a political unit known as an overseas department and is considered part of France proper.
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In France, Anthems of Alienation
Boss 1, from the French territory of Reunion Island, says Marseille's rap artists "try to educate as well as describe."
(By Daniel Williams -- The Washington Post)
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The 'burbs are a time bomb.
In Oliviers, crime, drugs and politics blend as easily as hashish and tobacco in the joints that were being rolled for midday highs. The drug dealers rationalize their trade as a necessary livelihood and an in-your-face challenge to authority. They are proud to operate so openly. One waved a smoldering stick of hashish under a reporter's nose. "Smell the quality? Moroccan!" he boasted.
"These guys want to dress right, to go to discos, to do what everybody else does. This is the sure way for them to get it. It's a job. Even the cops know," said Skar.
The young men's outlook differs entirely from their parents, who, in the words of one cocaine vendor, "worked until their backs broke for nothing and were happy to do it."
"We don't think like that," said Skar. "We don't take Algeria or Comoros as our point of reference. We compare ourselves to white France."
Skar is a slightly built singer with a round face and almond eyes. He wears diamonds in his left ear. He arrived in France with his immigrant parents when he was 8, he said, flunked high school and entered a "second chance" academy run by the government.
He dropped out, worked odd jobs at construction sites and finally, with friends, formed the North Neighborhood Collection, six rap groups that pool money and produce records. They market the discs store to store. Distributors that operate as monopolies steal their music and don't pay, they claim.
Skar said Marseille suffered less violence than other French cities because, despite its problems, it is more integrated. The immigrant population lives not only in the outskirts but also downtown and moves easily between districts. In addition, Marseille's long rivalry with Paris makes its residents reluctant to follow the capital's lead. "We think more than those people in Paris do. Why burn your neighbor's car? When things blow here, believe me, the guys will be hitting the police station," Skar said.
RPZ, another Marseille rapper, said his city's rap output differs from Paris's because it occasionally puts in a word for social peace. "Paris is much harsher" and "goes for the commercial shock value. You know, calling France a whore and all that. Here, we actually believe in peace," said RPZ, whose real name is Samir Menouar.
He's a skinny Algerian-born man of 23 who admits to two loves: rap and the Olympique de Marseille soccer team. "Rap is my food. OM, my everything," he said.
At the Lyrical Lab, a recording studio near downtown Marseille, RPZ and buddies who go by the names Wawa, Stoof, DJ Lord M and DJ PM were viewing their latest video, passing around spliffs and beer and mocking Jean-Marie Le Pen, the anti-immigration far-right politician. "He deals in cliche. Arabs, Islam, crime. It's like a cartoon," said RPZ.
The video called "Without This Leading to Crime," though set among the trashy industrial sections of Marseille, sounded like a message from the National Council of Churches:
