Popular World Music: Hip Hop and Rap in France and Germany

I think what I wanted more of in my ethnomusicology class was more discussion about popular music in other cultures and not just the indigenous, classical or folk music.

I was listening to a neat performance on NPR that sparked me Googling French rap/hip hop and R&B.
I found various videos on YouTube including some playlists people had made of their favorite French rap videos.
Artists I came across were Kaysha, La Brigade, K-Reen, and several others.
Read more on Wikipedia.
While there is some presence of promiscuous sexuality in the videos and lyrics. It appears that most rappers tend to gravitate towards social and political issues in their songs.

Another think I found interesting between French and German rap is that the leading German rappers are white. In France, they are actually black. You can see and hear a little bit of the difference in the French and American, because the black culture in France is different from that in the US. On the other side of that German rap is almost identical except for the white artist part.

Below are a few of the videos I found most interesting.
Kaysha and K-Reen. Notice K-Reen (the female) and her clothing. That would never appear in the US. But that is juxtaposed with the very American styling for the scene with Kaysha. He has the "look" and the dancers and the car. Very typical of the American style.




La Brigade, very politically charged with strong visual images. Even if you don't understand the words, the message is pretty clear in the sound and the video.





Over the past few semesters in my German class with the much loved Mirko Hall, we were not only introduced to the language but also contemporary culture.
This included several showings of videos by top rappers in Germany. Mainly Sido and B-Tight.

The first videos ars of Sido, the top selling rapper in Germany. He's famous for this odd mask he wears.






Next is B-Tight. Warning this one is a little racy. B-tight is like Barack Obama, he is "mullato." Neither fully black nor white.
The embedding for all the B-Tight videos has been disabled by Aggro Records. So here is the link. Ich bin's


Ok. there you have a crash course...