This chapter offers an overview of the various spaces which have led to the racialisation of rap music in France using tools available to cultural sociology. It relies on several extensive case studies conducted in the past ten years on French rap music, its production, its consumption, and its media treatment. With the help of the “production of culture perspective”, the chapter describes how the music industry seized the opportunity to exploit a commercial niche that would later become a racialised professional segment central in its business. Focusing on the consumption of music, we then contest the representation of rap audiences as exclusively or initially male, non-White and working-class based, and demonstrate how these audiences have been socially diversified from the outset. These empirical findings are not contradictory with the capacity of rap to serve as a formative medium for racial self-understandings in contemporary France. Finally, the sociology of cultural legitimacy offers a framework to examine the political, legal, and mediatic racialisation processes which have incited moral panic relating to rap and rappers, such as lawsuits or attempts to censor their work.

This chapter offers an overview of the various spaces which have led to the racialisation of rap music in France using tools available to cultural sociology. It relies on several extensive case studies conducted in the past ten years on French rap music, its production, its consumption, and its media treatment. With the help of the “production of culture perspective”, the chapter describes how the music industry seized the opportunity to exploit a commercial niche that would later become a racialised professional segment central in its business. Focusing on the consumption of music, we then contest the representation of rap audiences as exclusively or initially male, non-White and working-class based, and demonstrate how these audiences have been socially diversified from the outset. These empirical findings are not contradictory with the capacity of rap to serve as a formative medium for racial self-understandings in contemporary France. Finally, the sociology of cultural legitimacy offers a framework to examine the political, legal, and mediatic racialisation processes which have incited moral panic relating to rap and rappers, such as lawsuits or attempts to censor their work.