Decolonizing the ear : echolocating “race” in French rap music

This paper proposes using Pauline Alexis Gumbs’ re-definition of “Echolocation” in Undrowned (2020) as a means of re-thinking music intertextuality in the French Rap songs analyzed here. This process aims to identify discourses across transnational music by focusing on issues pertaining to race and environmental racism in the context of the French refusal to use the socially constructed term “race” to address racial discrimination in the country. This enables French rappers to inscribe their work within a discourse that embraces this vocabulary