He can’t play. Invited as the headliner of the first evening of Boomin Fest scheduled for March 18 in Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine), rapper Freeze Corleone will be banned from performing. Criticized for his words deemed anti-Semitic, the 30-year-old rapper never speaks in the press and casts doubt around the intentions of his lyrics. Anti-Semite? Racist? The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism said “yes” when it asked the Interior Ministry to open an investigation. Alerted by an elected opposition member in the fall, the mayor of Rennes finally decided to issue a municipal decree prohibiting the French rapper from performing in the Le Liberté hall.
Who is Freeze Corleone? The 30-year-old rapper, named Issa, is discreet and never speaks in the media. “I was born in Les Lilas, I grew up in Pantin and I did my high school in Dakar,” he simply told Inrocks. Double diamond disc, he is one of the rappers who popularized the “drill” in France. But more than his career, it is the rapper’s words that are controversial, especially when he declares: “I arrive determined like Adolf in the 1930s.” . And finally: “Build an empire like young Adolf.” “His label Universal had also dropped him in 2020.
To rule, Nathalie Appéré relied on the alerts of the Licra and more recently of the Breton branch of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif) to ask for the concert to be banned on the grounds of a “proven risk of disturbance of public order”. The mayor considers in particular that the remarks of the rapper “constitute real provocations and incitement to hatred or even violence”. She feared that the arrival of Freeze Corleone was “likely to greatly exacerbate the already strong tensions between various extreme political groups present in Rennes, who physically clashed a few months ago”.
The organizers have maintained the prog
The city had asked its public company Citedia, which operates Le Liberté, to request the deprogramming of the rapper from Krumpp, the production company which is piloting the event. “As the organizer has not modified its programming, after discussion with the prefectural authority, the City has issued a prohibition order. »