Oliver says that while he expects more commercialisation of Black and Arab hip hop in France - because “money talks” - he does not foresee it becoming mainstream like in the US. “It would fundamentally challenge the notion of what being French is if you just saw Black and Arab people everywhere and I think they’re too racist to let that happen on a mass level.” Many of the themes embedded in their music are directly influenced by struggles that shaped them, especially the inescapable life of crime they hold no pride in. According to their lyrics at least, where they once existed in a world that rejected them, they now reject the world their success has given them access to. A light in France’s dark corners
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51