Reflexivity in French Rap: More Than a Mirror to the Republic (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780197781579)

Reflexivity in French Rap offers a new look at rap's position in the French cultural landscape. Emily Q. Shuman examines how French rappers hold up a mirror to themselves and to their social world, playing off the terms of debate over the music's aesthetic value and place in the French social imaginary. Shuman traces commonly held beliefs about French rap, from selectively legitimizing parallels to France's literary patrimony, to belief in its innate capacity to incite violence, to expectations that it performs racial difference, to lamentations of its commodified nature, to reinforcements of the mainstream media as its principal antagonist.

However, rather than writing off these representations as distorted exterior gazes projected onto the music, Shuman instead shows how French rappers channel them into the lyrical, sonic, and visual qualities of their performances. Featuring rappers and groups such as MC Solaar, Médine, Booba, Tandem, Sniper, La Rumeur, Youssoupha, Abd al Malik, Casey, PNL, Alpha Wann, Shay, NTM, Keny Arkana, and Vald, this fascinating book finds that the richest knowledge that French rap produces about its social and political context is entwined with its meta-commentary on its aesthetic form and anticipated reception.

Author: Emily Q. Shuman
ISBN-10: 0197781578
ISBN-13: 9780197781579
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/26/2026
Pages: 224
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.18w x 0.49d