Quote:J'écris ce que je vis et vis ce que j'écris, logique
Tout ceci explique sûrement la rudesse de mon lyrics
Je canalise, centralise, réalise une parfaite analyse
je te remercie, pas besoin de psychanalyse
Que voulez-vous que je pisse sinon du hardcore.
Je fais partis du triste décor de la banlieue Nord
Mon style évolue, jamais révolu,
influencé par la rue
NTM - Pour un nouveau massacre
I only know the banlieu from second-hand experience. I saw that controversial and hard-hitting movie,
La Haine, and read how another filmmaker, who actually
was from the banlieue, critized it for setting an alarmist, stereotyped scene. I saw
Yamakasi, which portrayed the same scene with more cheer and optimism (but no less poverty and aversion to the city centre's gentlefolk) and
Bye-Bye, where the kids try their (lack of) luck in Marseille.
I read
Lila Dit Ca - now there's an amazing perplexing class-of-its-own book - but its in such a uniquely personal voice that it doesnt necessarily represent much wider. (Though the dreary banlieue setting provides the basic background / motivation for the protagonist's flight into fantasy, and the book's suffused with lingo). A. says there's a movie of it out now, I cant imagine, but she says its good.
I also got an NTM CD or two, some hardcore French hip-hop MP3s and apart from the usual MC Solaar / Soon E MC smoother stuff the
Les Cool Sessions compilation as well.
But still I cant really think what it must be like. In Holland, it's the neighbourhoods directly around the
inner city that traditionally are poor and multicultural. It's a wholly different scene. We're getting it, now, the crisis in outlying, post-war neighbourhoods where the usual trouble is escalated by the social alienation of one towerblock after another (and we always had the Bijlmer in Amsterdam), but still most of our experience with cultures of poverty are about "the people in the old neighbourhoods", as the politicians never stop referring to them. The neighbourhoods that my grandparents and uncles/aunts moved out from in the working-class "white flight" of the 70s-80s.
The diversity of the banlieue, meanwhile, is nicely expressed in this blog item I stumbled upon Googling for NTM lyrics, from a self-described "fille de banlieue", who is from 'out there' but nevertheless does
not, as people immediately assume, "inhabit an insalubrious 25 square meter flat where my four brothers and sisters and me share a matress" and did
not only "stop listening to NTM non-stop on the car radio of a stolen Mercedes" after high school graduation. Heh:
Good bye 4 000