‘Tout de noir vêtu’: Skin and surface in the rap of Abd al Malik

Abstract

This paper investigates the visual aesthetics of French rap with regard to questions of race and subjectivity through an analysis of both the lyrics and music videos of the rapper Abd al Malik. Abd al Malik addresses the central question of corporeal visibility in a ‘colour-blind’ French society. His performance depicts the skin as a surface, rooting his corporeal subjectivity in a tactile experience. Through the use of light, oversaturated colour and constantly shifting forms, Abd al Malik’s videos test the limits of vision to create a sensorial experience that incorporates, yet transcends, the visibility of epidermalised blackness. The consciousness of self and others is therefore not achieved by an unmasking or a shedding of blackness, but through the recognition of skin as a material surface that both challenges the presumption that an individual’s interiority is legible on the body’s exterior and invites the more complex, sensorial contact of universal, human relationality.