Meet France's toughest rappers: - a programme I watched with Bilal

I don't know if any of my readers have heard of a French celebrity named Cléo Le Tan.  I use the term "celebrity" in the loosest sense of the word, as it would be legitimate to describe her as being famous for being famous.  As someone in the fashion industry, I am very aware of her antics as a party girl and her failed attempts to replicate the fame of her forefathers.  As a believing woman, I don't care much for many of the silly celebrities out there, but if one is a fashion magazine editor and owner, one has to know the industry very well in order to stay on top of the game.

Her father is the French painter Pierre Le-Tan.  Her father's father is the Vietnamese painter Le Pho (famous for exaggerating women's skinny figures, though mine needs no exaggeration, MDR), who came to France for his studies in fine arts and married a Frenchwoman: - no surprises there, though Vietnam is one of the few nations with thinner women than France!  Tee hee!  Her father's father's father was the last Viceroy of Tonkin (Northern Vietnam).  Her sister is Olympia Le Tan, who has had arguably more success, in her case as a fashion designer.  Cléo Le Tan is descended from royalty, yet she is suffering the ignominy of having to make herself famous by being a party girl.  As of late, she has tried to make a name for herself as an author, though not with any noteworthy success.Pierre Le Tan commented not all that long ago that his daughters were raised amongst antique dealers, designers, writers, decorators, architects, landscapers ... same-sex couples who lived together and dressed up to attend masked balls.  Being a believing woman, I am very glad I did not grow up around same-sex couples.  However, she has therefore had privileges I can only dream of, yet all she has managed to make of herself is a name for being a party girl.  Apart from anything else, I would never allow her to appear in my fashion magazine, as she isn't even thin by French standards!

Anyway, enough details about why Cléo Le Tan is a non-celebrity clinging to the coat tails of her forefathers, I recently watched a programme with Bilal presented by her called "Meet France's toughest rappers", in which she exposed the dark underside of the suburbs of France's large cities (though the programme only covered Paris) and the hip-hop culture that exists there.  I was curious to know what Bilal thought of the programme, as Bilal is by far the most hip-hop person I have any regular contact with.  He and I are very different in this respect, though I don't love him any less and I wouldn't want anyone else for a boyfriend.  Given that he spent much of his life in La Savine, I consider him an authority in hip-hop matters, MDR.

 The first thing Bilal noted is that the rappers in the video were not tough by the standards of La Savine.  As I have mentioned, Bilal works as a rolling stock engineer for the Métro de Marseille and for his training, he often travelled to Paris (one of very view exceptions in terms of his travelling habits).  When he was there, he got to know the local 'hoods and he says that although they are more numerous than in Marseille, La Savine is far tougher and he therefore viewed the people in the video as being merely wannabe tough rappers.

Another thing Bilal and I noticed during the course of the programme was when Cléo Le Tan started talking like a wigger.  She is an obviously upper-middle-class woman from the way she talks, both in English and in French (this is probably the only positive thing one can say about her), yet during the course of the programme, she is shown referring to women as "meufs" (verlan for "femmes"), translated in the subtitles as "chicks", though "birds" is another way of translating this.  I don't view it as being in the least bit unusual any more when I hear Bilal talking in verlan, given that he tends to use such words as if they were normal words.  However, an upper-middle-class woman like Cléo Le Tan (don't forget she is descended from Vietnamese royalty) sounds very silly when she uses verlan words.  As Bilal would say, "tu voit ce que je veux dire?", which is French street for "ya see what ah'm sayin'?"

  

Generally speaking, Bilal thought Cléo Le Tan stuck out like a sore thumb, no matter how hard she tried to ingratiate herself with the locals during the video, e.g. by helping them out with facilities to make a rap video of their own when their budgets would not stretch to this.  As British street people would say, it was a blatant case of somebody not "keepin' it real".  Maybe she was trying to portray herself as some sort of explorer, trying to get to know new things that she was not previously familiar with?  She still looked silly.

 

All in all, Cléo Le Tan is someone who doesn't appear to fit into either world.  She has not had much success of her own in the French celebrity circuit and she will soon be tomorrow's has-been and she certainly doesn't fit into the hip-hop world either.  Given that she is not pencil-thin like me, she certainly would look out-of-place in my magazine and there is no way I would feature her unless she lost a lot of weight!