Most French hip hop artists come from poor suburbs of Paris, Strasbourg, Toulouse or Marseille. Unlike the blacks living in urban ghettos in the United States, where hip hop began, France has had a much wider social safety net, meaning that poverty was rarely as extreme in France's North and West African immigrant communities (where most of the artists come from) as in African American ghettos.
Some of France's most important hip hop crews:
- IAM (Marseille) featuring members with (North) African, French and Hispano-Italian roots. Inspired by East Coast rap.
- Suprême NTM(Paris) featuring members with Caribbean and French roots. Inspired by East Coast (hardcore) rap.
- NAP (Strasbourg) featuring with African and Caribbean roots.
- La Cliqua (Paris) featuring Rocca, bilingual rapper with Columbian roots.
- KDD (Toulouse) hardcore
- Manau (Bretagne) rather commercial group mixing hip hop with Celtic music.
- MC Solaar considered as commercial by some. It sucedeed writing rap songs with a strong "Chanson Francaise" influence his lyric style has been compared to Serge Gainsbourg.
- Sniper () ..
- Saïan Supa Crew () ..
- Stomy Bugsy (Cape Verde)
- Red One (Morocco)
- Le Specialist (Madagascar)
- Bissao na Bissao (Democratic Republic of the Congo/Republic of Congo)
- INTIK (Algeria)
- Bidew n Bess (Senegal)
- Taj Kul B (Morocco)
- M.A.M (Cote d'Ivoire)
- Kaysha (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
- Tana-Cergy (Madagascar)