Christian Revolution: "Portraits De Cite'" A French Hip-Hop City Photos From The 1990's (Book Review)

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

"Portraits De Cite'" A French Hip-Hop City Photos From The 1990's (Book Review)

Portraits De Cite' (2008)
French Hip-Hop City Photos from the 1990's
With work by: Bakir Ziani, Richard Hort, Ambroise Mendy, Jean-Paul Gentile, Abdel Ben Massaoud & Mohamed Boughamni

On a recent trip to France I found this in a book shop, they really celebrate a varirty of French people representing Hip-Hop culture. Here are some of the highlights.

Raiders Caps

From an outsider, the French Hip-Hop scene has always looked amazing. In the 1990's Movies like La Haine, Graffiti Books like Paris Tonkar,groups like NTM, Assasin, Iam, MC Solaar, DJs like DJ Dee Nasty, Crazy Fast Camel (DMC Finalists); Graffiti Writers like Tran, Nasty, Color, Kay One GT (and his French Hip-Hop shop in London) and U.K. legend Mode2 (moving to Paris); and the many French B-Boy/B-Girls making a huge presence in the International Hip-Hop scene.

Headspin

Obviously France is a huge country, so the market is enormous and so can support a proper functioning Hip-Hop industry. Unlike the U.K., the French government also passed a law forcing French Radio Stations to play a large percentage of French Language music. This in turn has created a large selection of French Hip-Hop artists, and labels to sign them.

B-Boys

In the 1990's French Hip-Hop only Radio stations like SkyRock and others supported this progressive movement, and many local councils all over France have laid on big budget community Hip-Hop Events that feature B-Boy, Mcing, Dj and Graffiti. It is common for French Artists to do collaborations with high profile MC's like Nas, CNN, Wu-Tang, the late Guru and many others, French Graffiti Mags can be bought in the smallest village News Agents, and B-Boys who travel the country and world doing showcases. It would be useful for the UK scene to take note and learn from our French Family!