The hip-hop movement was born in the United States at a time when being black was a real identity characteristic. Less than a decade after its creation, the Black Panther Party (BPP) movement, which would influence the form that rap would take, appeared in the New York neighborhoods, particularly in the Bronx. Moreover, rap will evolve as a consequence of the anti-racist struggle crystallized in a musical genre. The Last Poets, pioneers in the field, made their name by taking up the speeches of the BPP and mixing them with the technique of Spoken Word, the first form of rap. Since 1970, they have released one denunciatory album after another; the latest, Understand what black is, is no exception.

A beginning of anti-racist rap

The “rap” of the 1970s was built on a need for escape on the part of those excluded by society. It spread throughout the Afro-American community, which saw in this new form of expression a cultural revolution, through ‘block parties’, which allowed people to exchange around hip-hop culture. This spontaneity created a real counter-culture, accompanying the civil rights movement. Marked by the figures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the young New Yorkers sing what a whole community thinks down. The white man can be scorned freely here, the police violated in turn. Rap music peacefully expresses the pain of a youth evolving in an oppressive system.

Early rap was youthful and virulent; it railed against institutions and the post-apartheid American system. This new culture was not popular with the dominant culture. From ‘negro music’ to ‘barbaric sounds’, rap is lynched and little respected. Like 1920’s jazz or funk, it becomes a real safe space for a dominated community. Like any self-respecting counter-culture, rappers reappropriate racist words. The N-word is then a way to address directly his community in the texts and to rob the racists of their words. Rap appeared as the key to the social cage in which these racialized communities were evolving. Gradually, hip-hop made its way into the ears and across the oceans. The American group The Sugar Hill Gang participated in the mid-1970s in the expansion of this musical world and the universalist message behind it. The famous and iconic Rapper’s Delight then echoes like a message:

Europe is initiating similar movements, especially in the big capitals like Paris, Berlin, London, where the children of immigrants are trying to emancipate themselves from institutional racism. Groups began to appear in France, as they did at the beginning in the United States, in the remote areas of the suburbs. Competitions, battles and open mics were organized and young talents experimented with their pens and voices in a post-colonial Europe. The history of the grandparents of these young people is the history of the Senegalese riflemen, the history of the migrants called by France to provide labor. But the history of these young people is also the history of the rejection of the “second generation immigrants” forty years after the sacrifices of their elders, it is the history of those who do not see themselves in the history books of the “school of the Republic”, it is finally a history of racism that builds the suburbs of the 1980’s, a history of exclusion that gives birth to French rap.

TUPAC SHAKUR, the heir of the BPP.

Beyond his legendary discography, Shakur is the son and nephew of Afeni and Assata, two iconic BBP figures. Evolving in militant and offensive circles towards the institutions, very close to his mother, Tupac was built with anti-racism. He also knew an aunt imprisoned for her ideas and her participation in a discriminated party. Heir to his ideas, his discography is the mirror of an Afro-American youth inclined to question its identity. Thus, “if he doesn’t see any change”, he says he has the mission to change the world, to make mentalities evolve. If Shakur’s rage has been passed down through generations, he knows that to survive, he must fight against discrimination. It is by his pen that Tupac decided to fight. Democratizing the West Coast rap, he was the initiator of the rap of the 1990s. He is the artistic figure of the post-BBP era and embodied the new generation, at a time when the movement had died out.

A plural democratization

Taking place in different parts of the world as a cry of revolt of the racialized, the rap knows an explosion in the 1990s. Its success and the appearance of figures of the genre attracted the media and listeners, breaking out of the “entre soi” and allowing to reaffirm its anti-racist message. In France, rappers are not content to sing about anti-racism: they wage war on racism. Groups such as NTM or IAM, whose name is evocative, make provocations in the media and in their lyrics against racist France and the National Front. But rap can also call for unity and blame no one. At the same time, feathers like Oxmo Puccino’s were opposed to accusing figures like Kery James and his famous “Letter to the Republic”. This call for unity gradually gave birth to a plurality of rap, going beyond the simple musical genre that “transgresses”.

In France, the democratized rap sees imposing a diversity of artists. The transgressive message of the musical genre, opposing society, is attenuated to give way to a diversity of messages and aspirations. The white man becomes as bankable as the black man… But if we see racism – or rather anti-racism – as a constituent of rap, this openness can also be its continuity. Advocating openness and tolerance, democratization would then represent the culmination of rap’s anti-racist message. But the origins of rap do not disappear for all that. So much so that we call ‘iencli’ rap a white rap, which is far from the considerations stated above. If these same “ienclis” can claim a strong anti-racism, it is today a plural rap that is not only dedicated to a message against oppression.

The media and the touchy subject of race in rap music

As an irony of fate, Nick Conrad was recently accused of “anti-white racism”. As the little-known rapper released a song Pendez les blancs, a media lynch mob built around him. The rapper would be a “racist” calling for hatred of whites. Since the 1990s in France, the media have been very interested in the “slips” made by rappers on these issues. As if to reappropriate a domination that would be taken away from them through rap, the mainstream media likes to create controversy and reinsert the “racial question” into French rap, even though Thierry Ardisson tries not to deal with it anymore. In the United States, the affirmation of the anti-racist message in rap has remained very present in the media. Today, a show like Rhythm + Flow promotes the traditional image of hip-hop. The only white contestants were warned by a racialized panel of judges “you’re going to have to make your mark in this business, as a white person.” Kendrick Lamar had in 2016 invited a young fan on stage. As she chanted his lyrics that contained the “n-word”, he had taken over by telling her that she didn’t have to enunciate that word, infusing her with words that would not have been accepted by the French media, so fearful of the word ‘white’. The media took up the issue with much less enthusiasm than in the French controversies, re-launching the debate on the limits of the use of the n-word.

Today, rap has become the most listened to music in France. Its message is a way to educate and talk about what the “dominant” don’t talk about. Rappers almost cohabit with Victor Hugo or Balzac in the books of high school students. In the United States, it allows the voice of the suburbs to be reaffirmed and the relationship to “race” to be reexamined in the country. The question of the “N-word” was largely (re)posed thanks to rap and allowed major societal questions to be reopened. The democratization of the genre is therefore a way of making itself heard and has notably allowed social categories far from these issues to educate themselves.anti-racism has built rap, but the reciprocal is also true. This equation makes the two variants a relatively inseparable duo, and has been since its creation. By reversing the balance of power, it has allowed to really serve a form of struggle. If rap was at the beginning a consequence of anti-racism and one of its expressions, its scope has made it a solid pillar.