Did the Minister of the Interior fall with both feet into the trap set by a young rapper in need of notoriety? By precipitating the start of a police operation in the Mistral district in Grenoble, on August 26, after the broadcast of videos featuring heavily armed men near a deal point, Gérald Darmanin said he wanted to put an end to “ The enslavement of a minority of society”.
A week after his crackdown , the minister must today respond to growing doubts about the reality of the facts denounced.
“There was an opportunity to buzz”
On the evening of Monday , August 31 , the Grenoble rapper Corbak Hood uploaded the clip of his latest track “Chicagre”, in which he draws a parallel between the dangerousness of his city and that of Chicago, in the United States. A video that strongly recalls the images supposed to show over-armed dealers who caused such a scandal following their appearance at the end of August on social networks that the Minister of the Interior and the Prefect of Isère immediately seized on the subject to publicize a vast police deployment in the cities of the Mistral.
At the time of the police raid, already, residents had arrested the prefect, Lionel Beffre, to explain to him that he was on the wrong track and that the weapons exhibited were fictitious, but in no way the demonstration of force of a militia as he liked. to believe it. “It’s a rap clip. It’s a rap. We made a music video ”, launched a group of young people as the prefect passed by, who did not take the time to stop to listen to them, as a report from France 3 Alpes showed .
The regional station of France 3 has also ended up talking with the rapper this Monday, September 1. Facing the camera, Corbak Hood returned to his desire to make himself known by taking advantage of the media interest in Grenoble since rival gangs clashed there via social networks. “I made this clip because I had been rapping for a while and it was struggling a bit.
There was an opportunity to buzz, I used it, ”explains the 16-year-old. According to him, a marketing strategy directly inspired by the Belgian singer Stromae: “I let leak, like Stromae for the clip ‘Formidable’, images to prepare the buzz. I waited two or three days for the buzz to take hold, for it to go up, and there, I threw the clip ”, he explains.
“Ridiculing the police”?
In his clip, Corbak Hood makes a mockery of the political and media outburst around allegedly armed dealers at a point of sale. The video indeed shows the same places as the footage that went viral, but there, the traffickers actually seem to distribute candy and fruit juice, while some show their skill on motorcycles. At the end of the clip, a text completes the demonstration: “The weapons are fake, the products were only CBD, only the sweets are true”.
Real mistake or attempt to dodge? The young rapper will have to convince the investigators who placed him in police custody on Tuesday, September 2, in particular for “incitement to the use or trafficking of narcotics” and “prohibited carrying of weapons”. The day before, a team from BFMTV, which also interviewed Corbak Hood , recounted how the latter showed him “one of those guns which is indeed plastic”.
It also remains to be understood how a minister, a prefect, political figures,
“We’re not sure if it’s for a clip”, wondered Gérald Darmanin to whom France 2 asked this Tuesday morning if the main objective of the authors images at the origin of the scandal was not to “ridicule the police and the Republic”.
