… but not so good either!

The bad boys of the 16th have stuck. They’re not so bad* – they’re downright awful.

I feel a social responsibility to keep every Anglophone out there updated on the world of French novelty rap, so this instalment is devoted to the 2007 clip from the Dior Homme boys, Passy Mal, showing that even the gilded youth of the affluent Parisian 16th arrondissement can keep it real.

From Trocadéro to Passy, they’re the ones doing R’n’B…


The have some nerve though, going through the motions of a battle with the crowned sovereign of French “raparody”, Fatal Bazooka!

I guess the only reason this clip stirs a giggle from me is that they are from my ‘hood and some of the visual gags in the film clip are all too close to the truth. Their attempts at “hardcore” are pitiful though, as the only loaded weapons around here come in the form of stocks, bonds, trust funds and investments.

I’m here as an au pair, mind you. I’m not hereditarily stinking rich or shaking my stuff in finance. It’s eye-opening though and at times I have to concentrate on keeping a straight face when walking along Rue de Passy.

Guillaume and I saw some real, authentic basketball bad boys on 16th turf one night at a local supermarket though. But these Harlem Globetrotter hoodlums were buying a six pack of litre milk cartons and some cookies, so the cashier and queuing customers could only look on with doey glances from loving eyes and fond sighs at how it was just so adorable.

We hypothesised later that perhaps they were lining their stomachs before a heavy night of drinking, but the cookies were a little incongruous in that theory!

* The golden ghetto-wannabes Passy Mal play on the words pas si mal (not so bad) and their boutique-lined Rue de Passy origins.