Miles Marshall Lewis To Shine Spotlight On French Hip-Hop With New Documentary

Veteran writer Miles Marshall Lewis has been known for putting on for the culture, but with his latest venture he’s putting on for the culture on a global platform.

With the launch of a Kickstarter to fund a new project that’ll add to hip-hop’s lineage, Miles Marshall Lewis announced his new documentary that focuses on French Hip-Hop titled Radical: The Savoir Faire of French Hip-Hop, that will place a lens on popular French magazine Radikal.

“I lived in Paris from 2004-2011 and when I first got there I discovered French hip-hop through the pages of Radikal magazine which is their version of Vibe or XXL or The Source, magazines that I’ve all written for here,” Lewis said. “I grew up in The Bronx and I saw hip-hop begin so I was like, ‘Wow, I should bring this to the masses and do a documentary.’”

The cultural documentary has already received a huge cosign with famed French director Essimi Mévégué signing up to direct the film. During an interview with Soulhead, Lewis spoke about how the decision came into play and also how many iconic artists from the movement were willing to participate, to help push the culture forward.

“Essimi Mévégué directed a film short about Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna being banned in France. We connected in the years I lived over there, and he offered to produce my documentary,” Lewis said. “we’ve spoken with rappers Solo, Disiz la Peste, Akhenaton, Abd al-Malik, Sly Johnson, and Sidney Duteil, who hosted the 1980s French rap show H.I.P. H.O.P. We also interviewed former Radikal editors-in-chief Valérie Atlan and Olivier Cachan. Cultural critic Greg Tate puts global hip-hop journalism in perspective, and we also talked to French rap music journalists like Yasmina Benbekaï, Epée Hervé, and others.”

In addition to interviewing rap legends, the production will also chronicle Radikal‘s heightened success and decline once magazines began to pivot from physical to online-content only.

“Radikal was a victim of the internet, like a lot of other magazines this century,” Lewis said. “I served as the music editor at Vibe back in 1999, and even those guys are online-only these days. Radikal and The Source magazine’s French version folded within weeks of each other, the market couldn’t handle it. We interviewed David Dancre also, the former editor-in-chief of The Source France about the overall French hip-hop media scene of the time. With a goal of $25,000, the fundraising will benefit “an editor, an American director of photography, music licensing fees for the French rap music in the film and a translator for English subtitles,”

Check out MML talking about Radical: The Savoir Faire of French Hip-Hop below, to learn more and support the Kickstarter campaign, click here.