A French rapper has been found guilty of incitement to violence and handed a suspended fine over a song called Hang White People.
In Nick Conrad’s music video, the 35-year-old was depicted torturing and murdering a white man and called for Caucasian babies to be killed.
A court has now handed him a suspended €5,000 (£4,280) fine after a trial. He was also told to pay 1,000 euros (£860) in damages to each of the two anti-racism groups that brought the case forward.
French rapper Nick Conrad (pictured) has been found guilty of incitement to violence and handed a suspended fine over a song called Hang White People
In Nick Conrad’s music video he was depicted torturing and murdering a white man and called for Caucasian babies to be killed
Conrad, who denies racism towards white people, says he will appeal and has argued the song was a fictional depiction of racism that was not intended to be taken at face value.
His lawyer said after the hearing: ‘The court had a reading of freedom of expression that does not satisfy us.
According to AFP, the court said in its judgement that if ‘the permissible limits of freedom of expression are assessed with greater flexibility’ when it comes to rap, ‘the freedom of artistic creation is, however, not absolute.’
Conrad could have faced up to five years in prison and 45,000 euro (£38,600) fines under the charges. But prosecutors requested the suspended 5,000 euro fine because he had ‘already to a certain extent paid the consequences’ after losing his hotel receptionist job.
In one scene from ‘PLB’ – short for ‘Pendez Les Blancs’, or ‘Hang Whites’ in English – the little-known rapper and an associate drag their white victim along the pavement and kick him in the head.
The attack appears to be a reference to a famous scene from the film American History X, in which actor Edward Norton plays a neo-Nazi who stamps on the head of a black man as he lies face down on the pavement.
The 35-year-old (pictured with his lawyer in January) caused outrage last year when he released the film showing a white man being abducted, tortured, shot and hanged from a tree
A gun is also forced down his throat and he is ordered to ‘suck it’.
The lyrics evoke the killing of adults and children and advocated killing ‘white babies’ and ‘hanging their parents’.
The rapper sings during one scene: ‘I walk into creches, I kill white babies, catch them quick and hang their parents.’
The video was taken off YouTube four days after its official release in September last year.
Conrad, who lost his job as a receptionist at a five-star hotel on Avenue de l’Opera as a result of the song, defended the decision to create the music video, claiming that it was not racist but ‘a message of love’.
By reversing the roles and showing whites being tortured and killed by black people, Conrad claimed he wanted to underline racial problems.
The rapper admitted that he understands those who are concerned by the clip, but denies being a racist.
The rapper says, ‘I walk into creches, I kill white babies, catch them quick and hang their parents’
Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux condemned the ‘hateful, nauseating lyrics in the strongest possible terms’ as did Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, who slammed the video’s ‘abject remarks and ignominious attacks’.
Conrad was born and grew up in suburban Paris, but describes himself as an ‘Afro-French’ citizen.
He regularly uses his Facebook account to call for ‘a mutiny’ against France, which he accuses of still being a ‘colonising nation’.
Anti-racism organisation LICRA, which filed a formal police complaint, also hit out at the rapper, saying his artistic freedom ‘is not the freedom to call for whites to be hanged because of the colour of their skin’.
Until becoming the subject of nation-wide media coverage, Nick Conrad was a virtual unknown, with only 40 monthly listeners on the music streaming platform Spotify.
The nine-minute video, which was uploaded onto YouTube on September 17, presents the action as taking place in the eastern Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Grand.
It contains references to a speech by US black nationalist Malcolm X.
On his Twitter account Conrad, who is of Cameroonian origin and has in interviews claimed to be influenced by American hip-hop, had presented it as his ‘first short film’.