For Booba, rap is a combat sport – BBC

The star of French hip-hop, back with a seventh solo album, is the undisputed champion of rap which also envisages as a struggle with his “mechanical bearings” and sometimes its bad shots.

“The rap game is competition between rappers, it has always existed. The beginnings of French rap, that already existed between IAM and NTM, “says AFP Booba, which receives the premises of his clothing brand with his eternal hat falling over his eyes. “Rap and sports go together, there is this mentality of wanting to win, this mentality neighborhoods, it is very tribal,” describes the rapper from Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), 38 and breadth of Athlete (1.92 m), which publishes Monday DUKE , his seventh solo album.

With its consistent sales (1.5 million solo albums sold since 2002, according to his entourage) and his keen business sense, former member of the group Lunatic is presented as the current champion of this “rap game”. Itself, like a boxer, claiming “zero loss” to his name.

The spirit of competition, “mechanical bearings” and songs doped ego, this is “almost a tradition of rap” and hip-hop in general (including dance and grafitis) says Mehdi Maizi journalist the ABCDR Sound , a specialized site on the rap, and author an anthology of French rap (published April 17 Editions word and Rest).

So, Booba, even if he “does not need to sell” discs, has gradually “hooked” of “clashes”, the exchange of teasing or threats between rappers, and likes to go blow for blow on social networks, added the specialist. His rivalry with Rohff, one of the most publicized recent years has seriously off track there a year with the aggression of a seller Booba distributing brand of clothes in a shop in Paris. A case in which Rohff present that day in the shop, continued.

Generally, the competition is limited to words and figures (sales or views on the internet clips). “But the rap, it’s still something commuter and, as in the street, it can derail at any time,” said Booba that minimizes this episode. This attack is the most serious spillover observed in France, where it stays away from violence caused by certain rivalry in the US, with the murders in the 90 enemies rappers Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace (called “The Notorious BIG” ).

However, the “rap game” still has a bright future in France with the arrival of a new generation of rappers followers of his ever heavier and urban, as Gradur , LaCrim ‘or Kaaris “We started to get bored, it’s there for new artists to perpetuate the game, the movement …” says Booba.

This competition rap fashion continues to seduce some young fans of hip-hop. But tired in other disappointed to see the “clashes” sometimes take over music, Mehdi Maizi. JoeyStarr himself recently returned Booba on the ropes: “We must distinguish the rap game and Booba is in there, and that thing has something to do with music called rap, hip hop» , pointed end of March the singer of NTM.

Booba replied that “it is primarily the sounds that people pick” in his albums. “They do not come for imaging, but for punchlines (shocks sentences rappers), metaphors, flows (rapper ways),” says the artist, Elie Yaffa real name, located in Florida in recent years .