Moving to Paris in 1992 as a black American kid was totally disorienting. Its underground rap scene became my map to the city, and the soundtrack to my formative years
In 1988, no one in France took the hip-hop movement seriously. It was the rec-room era. JoeyStarr and Kool Shen were just two kids from Seine-Saint-Denis, the 93rd ward, a neglected tract of housing projects on the northern outskirts of Paris. One black, the other white, they shared a love and a talent for breakdancing and got together practising moves in bleak lots and house parties. They started crews and listened to Doug E Fresh, Masta Ace, Grandmaster Flash, and Marley Marl. DJs played the breakbeats looped over jazzy horn riffs, cats sported Kangol hats and Cosby sweaters, and they tagged the walls of the city with their calling card: NTM, an acronym for “Nique Ta Mère” (Fuck Your Mother). There were no labels, no official concerts or shows, and the only airplay was after midnight on Radio Nova, a station dedicated to underground and avant garde music, created and directed by French countercultural hero Jean-François Bizot.
I was at a house party in a spacious bourgeois apartment somewhere in the 16th arrondissement when I first heard DJ Cut Killer’s track La Haine, better known by its infamous refrain “Nique la police” (Fuck the police). I hadn’t yet seen the film La Haine, which made the song famous, and remains arguably the most important French film of the 90s. I was at a boum, slang for a teenage house party and a tradition of Parisian coming of age that involves a great deal of slow dancing and emotional espionage. Sophie Marceau immortalised it as a mesmerising ingénue in the greatest French teen romance ever produced, La Boum. But I wasn’t dancing with Sophie Marceau. I was dancing with Caroline.
