1000 lives: Diddy and the excesses of “gangsta rap”

What has changed, fortunately, is this stupid artistic-media injunction called street credibility. From rock to rap to R’n’B. Hip-hop culture had pushed the phenomenon into the red. It was always a question of who was the most badmean, real, born on the streets, former bad boy and all the circus that went with it. Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, so cool, old tune: by chance, for example, if the documentary “Cocksucker Blues”, signed by Robert Frank and filming the Rolling Stones in 1972, had not been banned from broadcast by the group itself, we would notice without doubt of the things that would lead them straight to court today. The phenomenon was the same: having a bad reputation gave certain artists a grotesque aura of “credibility”.

Sean Combs, known as Puff Daddy, known as Diddy, rap multimillionaire, clothes and vodka of the rich, is now in jail in the United States. He faces dozens of complaints for rape and organizing sex trafficking, after having played this famous card known as “gangsta rap” to the fullest for years. It was serious, you have to admit, not like with the hip-hop half-asses from France and elsewhere, who play tough because they once crashed at the convenience store.

The father of Sean “Diddy” Combs, a lieutenant of the dangerous Frank “American Gangster” Lucas, who flooded New York with heroin in the seventies, was shot down in Central Park when the future little Puff was only 2 years. Then, the American rap scene had learned to make people talk about itself: Tupac Shakur, assassinated in 1996, or the extraordinary The Notorious BIG (his “flow” remains unrivaled), killed at point blank range the following year, blew up the bank of their beneficiaries.

The producer of The Notorious BIG was Sean “Diddy” Combs, and here we go again. You add to his cocktail money in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the absolute sexism inherent to the gangsta genre, and above all the aphrodisiac thing that goes with it: the feeling of being above the law.

Because this is where they come together WeinsteinEpstein, Sean Combs, etc. In an outdated capitalist-contemporary Olympus, where partying, the “best parties”, means inviting “important” people to come and party with you. Alcohol, ecstasy, girls, orgies if desired. Tell me who you invite, I’ll tell you what you’ve become: politicians, stars, athletes, whores, always a bit the same, obviously, running to seem fashionable, not stuttering, up to date with what’s going on. walk.

It doesn’t work anymore, so much the better, it will end badly, with the freeloading coterie saying that they don’t remember very well. We must relearn to admire the truly admirable, the tender and the poets.

Christophe Passerborn in Fribourg, has worked at Le Matin Dimanche since 2014, after having worked in particular at Le Nouveau Quotidien and L’Illustré. More info

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