How French rap reclaimed the “Parental Advisory” logo, to the point of exhausting it
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The Marseille rap group IAM in 1994 and NTM (Kool Shen and JoeyStarr), in 1992. GEORGES GOBET / AFP; ROUSSIER/SIPA
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Series In the 1990s, French rap made the "Parental Advisory" logo a provocative emblem. Born in the United States to warn against explicit content in songs, it became, in France, a marketing tool and a symbol of rebellion for an entire generation.
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You have to imagine the beginnings of French rap in the 1990s. Microphones were cobbled together in the basements of Saint-Denis, samplers inherited from their cousins who had returned from the Bronx. The lyrics, under this urban revolution, became "sharp as a blade, pointed as a knife." A peripheral youth, tired of being hounded by the authorities and caricatured by the media, then took to the floor to express, in half-words, a long-contained, simmering anger. NTM, IAM, Ministère AMER, and Assassin rushed onto the free airwaves offered to them. They established themselves in record companies and fired off their verses against a state perceived as hostile. As radical as its American cousin, their rap was nevertheless never adorned with with a "Parental Advisory Explicit Content" badge. In France, this logo does not have the same legal weight as across the Atlantic. It is neither imposed nor regulated, but floats in the collective imagination like a false stamp. A sticker that has become a totem of authenticity.
“Give yourself a bad boy look”From 1993 onwards, JoyeStarr and Kool Shen reworked it in their own way. On the cover of their second album, "J'appui sur la gâchette," the black and white seal mutated into "Suprême NTM Explicit Lyrics," a provocative nod to their surname from Seine-Saint-Denis. Just like "Fuck RATP Movement," whose original design was created in the early 1990s by graffiti artist Colt, a member of the collective...
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