Banned from concert again, Freeze Corleone responds.
The lawyer of the rapper targeted by an investigation for "apology of terrorism" challenged Thursday before the administrative court the ban on his performance planned for the same evening at the city's Zénith, before another hearing in the afternoon for a concert in Lyon.
The prefect of the North had banned by decree the concert of this striking and controversial figure of French rap, scheduled for this Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Zénith, a 7,000-seat venue.
For the prefecture, “the lyrics of several songs” contain “conspiratorial comments, openly anti-Semitic and marked by admiration for the person of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich”.
Freeze Corleone (real name Issa Lorenzo Diakhaté) had already been the subject of an investigation in 2020, ultimately closed without further action, for “provoking racial hatred” after clips containing lyrics such as “I arrive determined like Adolf in the 30s” or “Every day RAF (nothing to worry about) the Shoah”.
Not a “thought leader”
The Northern prefecture also highlights “comments glorifying terrorism, which refer to the Nice attack” of July 14, 2016 on the Promenade des Anglais, which left 86 dead and hundreds injured.
“I come into rap like a truck bombing hard on the…” sings Freeze Corleone in “Haaland”, a duet with German rapper Luciano, released last week.
The words led to the opening of a preliminary investigation in Nice for advocating terrorism.
Also read: Darmanin, anti-Semitism… Freeze Corleone creates controversy with his new song
“
Haaland
will not be sung this evening (Thursday),” assured the rapper’s lawyer, Sanjay Mirabeau, before the administrative court.
His client is a singer, not an “opinion leader”, he insisted, deploring that we are making “a disparate sampling of comments which can shock the bourgeoisie”, while the artist has, according to him, the right to interpret the character he wants in a song.
The sentence of “Haaland” could as well end with “on the face of Lelandais” rather than “on the Promenade des Anglais”, he said.
For his part, the prefect's chief of staff, Christophe Borgus, denounced "terrorist proselytism" deemed "unsustainable" in a region "which experienced terrorism less than three months ago", probably in reference to the attack in Arras on October 13, 2023. A knife attack caused the death of a teacher, Dominique Bernard, and left three injured.
He also recalled that the rapper had not respected, during a previous concert, the list of songs on which he had committed to before the Council of State.
Another hearing must be held early in the afternoon in Lyon, before a concert planned for Saturday at the Tony-Garnier hall.
The Rhône prefecture had also questioned extracts from titles including “anti-Semitic references and advocating Nazism” during a concert in Paris in November.
This is not the first time that the rapper finds himself in the crosshairs of prefectures: in recent months, several other concerts have been banned.
Administrative justice allowed two of them to be held at the Zénith in Paris in November, but validated the ban on another near Nantes in December.