Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Reflexivity in French Rap: More than a Mirror to the Republic examines how French rappers hold up a mirror to themselves and to their social world, reflexively playing off the terms of debate over the music’s aesthetic value and place in the French social imaginary. It moves through enduring frames in the reception of French rap, from selectively legitimizing parallels to France’s literary patrimony, to belief in its innate capacity to incite violence, to expectations that it perform racial difference, to lamentations of its commodified nature, to reinforcements of the mainstream media as its principal antagonist. Rather than writing off these representations as distorted exterior gazes projected onto the music, the book explores how French rappers channel these frames 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, the book finds that the richest knowledge that French rap produces about its social and political context is entwined with its meta-commentary on its aesthetics and anticipated reception.</jats:p>