Image via TH/Instagram
Samuel Lamontagne is the resident French rap reporter at POW.
Hip-hop first arrived in France in the ’80s, when foundational artists like PHASE 2, Grand Mixer D.ST, Fab 5 Freddy, and Rammellzee hopped on a flight and introduced Paris to the raw energy of the Bronx. More than four decades later, rap culture in France is a generations-deep tradition. It pulses through the banlieues (marginalized neighborhoods), shaped by a multi-layered African and Caribbean diaspora made up of people from Senegal, Congo, Algeria, Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Réunion.
This music isn’t just French artists remixing US rap–it’s a dynamic scene that reflects its own complex realities and speaks to global Black struggles.
Having lived in the US for the past 14 years, it’s clear to me that French rap stays under the radar. With hip-hop, like with most things, I’ve learned that Americans tend to be US-centric (no shade). And when folks do show a passing interest beyond their borders, they’re usually rattling off canonical names the algorithm safely fed them: MC Solaar, NTM, Booba, PNL. Beyond those safe bets, there’s an entire hip-hop ecosystem thriving in France.
Inspired by the classic POW Rap-Up column, here is a quick dispatch highlighting the political and experimental standouts from the Parisian rap underground and beyond.
Hailing from Bondy – a lower-class and heavily policed city on the outskirts of Paris – TH is one of the most important voices to emerge in recent years. Though raised in Bondy, he has roots in Martinique, the Caribbean island formerly colonized by France and birthplace of Black radical thinker Frantz Fanon. Like many banlieue neighborhoods, Bondy is largely home to descendants of people from formerly colonized nations. It’s also the hometown of soccer superstar Kylian Mbappé. Though life in the banlieue is far more complex than the clichés peddled by the media, rap has long been a mirror of the hard conditions shaped by the legacies of racism. TH’s music carries that reflection.
With a Drakeo-like style, TH depicts the dystopian realities of life in the banlieue. His somber and minimalist beats, falsely out-of-sync flows, apathetic and cryptic pen, carry lines about drug dealing, jail sentences, friends’ early deaths, fast money, luxury cars, automatic weapons, and the weight of colonial history. Through it all, his most loyal friend is a robot dog: the Unitree Go2.
After releasing her first album, Trap Mama, in 2020, Le Juiice established herself – as she likes to say – as the best woman rapper in France. She’s not wrong. While born and raised in a Parisian banlieue, her roots in Côte d’Ivoire are at the core of her visual world. She often travels to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire to shoot videos, and references Ivorian culture through nouchi slang and fashion. With several family members based in the US, she’s traveled there from a young age as well, giving her a more direct connection to American rap than most other French rappers.
Missy Elliott and Teyana Taylor were early inspirations – artists she says embodied freedom and exploration, both musically and in gender expression. French R&B artists of the 2000s, like Wallen, were also formative, offering a model to identify with for a young Black woman from banlieue. A little later, Gucci Mane, and the late-2000s ATL sound became major influences.
Where Lil Kim broke ground in the U.S. with Hardcore in 1996, Le Juiice is one of the first rappers to put women’s pleasure and getting money at the forefront in France. Although the core of her sound remains grounded in trap, her last project NOUS ART: Masterpiece (2024) explores pop sensibilities through various influences from French pop urbaine (urban pop) to afrobeats experimenting with more melodies and vulnerable themes.
Hailing from Strasbourg, a city in northeastern France, Kay The Prodigy has been based in Paris for several years. She originally moved to the capital to study ophthalmology, but eventually abandoned that path to focus on rap. Early influences include Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj, with her flow nodding to trailblazing French rappers like Ateyaba (formerly known as Joke) and Lala &ce.
Kay grew up surrounded by music, thanks largely to her father, a pastor, whose taste immersed her in jazz, soul and salegy, a genre from Madagascar. Her two projects to date Eastern Wind 1 and Eastern Wind 2 – both with covers she designed herself – were entirely produced by her close creative collaborator Mezzo Millo; EW1 was even recorded in his bedroom studio. This tightly-run, two-person operation allows Kay to open up her interior world, steadily flowing about her personal tribulations and fantasies in a patchwork of rhymes. She raps about her experiences with boys, smoking green, financial hardship and money dreams – over a soundscape rooted in DMV, Jersey Club, and especially sample drill.
Jwles has been recording and releasing music for over a decade. Though he started rapping in English, he has been spitting almost exclusively in French for the past 5 years. He made this shift after realizing that the only way to be understood and grow a French following was by using the language. He spent his early childhood years in NYC before growing up in the South of France, eventually settling in Paris, where his sound took shape, meshing plug, DMV, sample drill, and house. We can credit his genre experiments to working with producers like Blasé and Mad Rey, the latter signed to the iconic French touch label Ed Banger records.
While deeply tuned to contemporary rap scenes, Jwles’ style also draws from OGs like Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, whose influence echo in his pen game and idiosyncratic lingo with made up words like “les zins/les zines” and signature ad-libs like “Tululu Ta-ta-ta.” Lately, he’s been reaching beyond France, becoming one of the few French rappers to appear on On the Radar Radio, and collaborating with American rappers like Slimesito, Valee, and Sideshow.
Though little is known about his personal life, Huntrill’s been delivering high-quality raps since 2018. In 2020, he linked up with producer Hologram Lo’ – a longtime collaborator of Alpha Wann – which led to two joint projects: Replica (2022) and Replica II (2024), both entirely produced by Lo’ and released on Alpha Wann’s Don Dada Records imprint. Huntrill’s low-key and self-assured attitude compounds to form his mystique.
Over the years, he’s dropped a handful of tightly crafted projects marked by razor-sharp flows and visual punchlines recounting street tales basking in luxury goods: “Il paraît que j’ai un opp, mais je traîne que chez LV je peux pas le croiser / Apparently I have an opp, but I only hang at LV so I can’t see him” or “Pour manger toi tu crois que je chante, si le plan est dead je change, vu le temps passé au duty-free je m’en bats les couilles des Champs / You think I need to sing to eat, if the plan is dead I shift, given the time spent in duty-free [airports] I don’t give a fuck about Champs Élysées [boutiques]” on “DYBALA.”
His diction is extraordinarily articulate and captures his hustler mentality through smart rhymes. One thing he’s not shy about is the fact that he holds a M.S. degree in a field he keeps secret. But given his liking for dividends, we can guess Mathematics or Economics.
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