French Hip Hop

French hip hop is rap music made in France, overwhelmingly in French, and the country's dominant popular genre since the 1990s. Rooted in the banlieues of Paris and Marseille, it pairs American-derived production, boom bap in its golden age, trap and drill since the 2010s, with dense, literary French verse that treats language itself as the instrument. From *IAM* and *Suprême NTM* through *Booba* to *PNL* and *Ninho*, French rap has outsold every domestic rival, sustained a permanent debate about identity, policing and the Republic, and become the francophone world's hip hop centre.