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Feminists win court war against ‘French Eminem’

French rapper Orelsan, known as the ‘French Eminem’ was convicted of insulting speech and incitement to violence on Friday over his violently misogynistic lyrics. The hip-hop star had been pursued in the courts by several feminist groups since 2009.

Published: 31 May 2013 17:52 CEST
Feminists win court war against 'French Eminem'
Rapper Orelsan, known as the 'French Eminem' performing in Paris in February 2013. On May 31st he was found guilty of incitement to violence for his lyrics. Photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP

A court in Paris found 30-year-old rapper Orelsan, known as the ‘French Eminem,’ guilty on Friday of insulting speech over the lyrics of one of his songs, sparking a row over artistic censorship.

The words“les meufs c’est des putes” (“women are whores”), from his 2009 song “Courez Courez,” which roughly translates as “Sleep around, sleep around"  were enough to have him convicted by the court.

Furthermore, he was found guilty of incitement to violence for the line “ferme ta gueule ou tu vas t’faire marie-trintigner” (“shut your mouth or you’ll end up like Marie Trintignant”) from the 2007 song “Saint-Valentine.”

Marie Trintignant was a French actress beaten to death in 2003 by her boyfriend, the French rockstar Bertrand Cantat.

Cantat, the lead singer of the band Noir Desir, served four years of an eight-year sentence for manslaughter, in a high-profile case that caused massive controversy in France at the time.

Orelsan, whose real name is Aurélien Cotentin, had been pursued in court since 2009 by five separate women's rights organizations.

The feminist group Chiennes de garde (Watchdogs), Le collectif feministe contre le viol (The feminist collective against rape), La fédération national solidarité femmes (The women’s national solidarity federation), and Le mouvement français pour le planning familial (The French family planning movement), united in bringing charges against the rapper.

For his part, Orelsan’s lawyer Simon Tahar condemned the court on Friday for “clearing a wide, deep path for the censorship of artistic creation,” according to Europe 1 radio.

Conversely, Alain Weber, lawyer for the five plaintiff groups, said he was satisfied with what he called a “legal precedent” in “the struggle for the dignity of human beings.”

Four years ago, Orelsan, originally from Alençon in Normandy, was unsuccessfully sued by French feminist group ‘Ni putes ni soumises’ for his song “Sale pute” (“Dirty whore”), which was a source of controversy at the time.

In court on Friday, he was ordered to pay a suspended €1,000 fine for his lyrical transgressions.

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CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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