La Rumeur’s Resistance to the Penalization of French Rap

This paper examines how the rap group La Rumeur sonically resisted their legal battle with then-Interior minister Nicholas Sarkozy. Over the course of eight years, the group were called to defend a promotional magazine that accompanied their first album. Therein, rapper Hamé wrote “Les rapports du ministère de l’Intérieur ne feront jamais état des centaines de nos frères abattus par les forces de police sans qu’aucun des assassins n’ait été inquiété.” Sarkozy brought charges for defamation of character on behalf of the national police. In the midst of the polemic, La Rumeur released the album Regain de tension. Many tracks take up the language of police procedures, courtroom rituals, and legislation. This paper closely analyzes two songs: “Inscrivez greffier” and “Maître mot, mots de maître.” The former engages with the value of material documents in the legal sphere, as well as embodied memories of colonialism. The latter plays with signifiers and metonymy to double down on. Hamé’s charges of police violence and systemic racism. In both songs, La Rumeur play upon the search for an identifiable event on which the case for defamation depended. The group thus aestheticize the legal criteria of their case in ways that center their vulnerability to weaponized state power, all while sharpening the music’s resistant edge.