Minstrel Showings #001: Cut Killer in ‘La Haine’

I’ve been mooting this feature for a while, but because I couldn’t get hold of Rollercoaster or The Spooky Sisters I put it on the back-burner…

However, the way it’s kicking off Franceside I figured why not just wheel out that clip of Cut Killer scratching NTM, Assassin, KRS-One, Édith Piaf and all in La Haine (aka the DJ Skud interlude)?

“La vache!”

Oh, and here’s the tune on its own:

PS Some more articles on the banlieue backlash:

Riot points to racially divided France (Associated Press, 30th November)

…Since the violence of 2005, France has earmarked billions of dollars for programs to improve housing and create jobs in tough neighborhoods. The government says that its newest “equal opportunities” program will be unveiled Jan. 22.

But it was hard to see among the burned out cars and blackened moods in Villiers that much has changed.

“The only thing they (the government) have done is build that police station,” said Frank Dosso, a black 16-year-old, referring to a $7 million police station under construction in Villiers. “But that’s not going to last long.”

France stunned by rioters’ savagery (Times, 2nd December)

…a mob of immigrant youths armed with baseball bats, iron bars and shotguns…sickened the nation…worrying new level of barbarity…

…organised gangs of rioters used guns against police…two-day rampage of looting and burning…urban “guerrilla warfare” being waged on French streets against the forces of law and order…

..the violence was a result of the “thugocracy” of the suburbs, where drug-trafficking criminals held sway…the suburban ghettoes remain a law unto their own…all the evidence seems to support the police version that the boys were thrown from their unlicensed motorcycle when it accidentally collided with a patrol car…

In many ways the Times piece is a work of unparalleled comedy genius – squeezed into just over 800 foam-flecked words we get shamelessly partisan opinion dressed up as objectivity, a healthy sprinkling of both loaded words (“rampage”, “barbarity”) and wink-wink coded context (“mainly Muslim”, “trouble-makers”), self-denying riot porn, no attempt to seek a broad range of viewpoints (only police officers and banlieue-bashing Prez Sarkozy get quoted), and even an entry straight out of The Hack’s Guide To Weights & Measurements (“a hole the size of a 10p coin”).

Good work, Matthew Campbell!

PPS The same Matthew Campbell wrote an earlier article, back in the Sunday Times of 18th November, crowing about how Sarkozy was enjoying ‘a Thatcher moment’ in his fight with French workers at a time when “even the once sacred ritual of the lunch hour is under revision: more and more people eat a sandwich at their desk”. Quality broadsheet journalism at its finest, clearly

Didn’t see the riots coming though, did he…

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