A French court on Monday sentenced a French rapper to a 15-month suspended jail term for ‘defending terrorism’ over a song that appeared to reference a 2016 terror attack that left 86 dead.
The trial focused on a 2024 track by Freeze Corleone in which he compared himself to a truck, a line seen as an allusion to an attack in Nice where a man drove a 19-tonne vehicle into crowds, leaving hundreds more injured.
While the duet with German rapper Luciano does not name the avenue where the attack took place, the line “I arrive in rap like a truck that bombs hard on the…” is preceded by lyrics that rhyme with Nice’s Promenade des Anglais and followed by a pause before the rapper resumes.
In addition to the suspended jail term, the court ordered Corleone — whose real name is Issa Lorenzo Diakhate — to pay a €50,000 fine.
He was also handed a three-year ban from entering the Alpes-Maritimes region, where Nice is located.
Public prosecutor Damien Martinelli, who had sought an 18-month suspended sentence, told the trial that while art should “challenge us”, Corleone was fuelled by an “ideological undercurrent” and “a desire to provoke for commercial gain”.
A lawyer for the 33-year-old, who was absent from the trial, said he would appeal the ruling, slamming the decision as “more authoritarian… than based on the law” and arguing the conviction was based on unspoken words.
The rapper has faced repeated criticism since 2020 when he compared himself to Adolf Hitler in his debut album and many accused him of antisemitism.
In his lyrics, he said that he arrived “determined like Adolf in the 1930s”, that he doesn’t “give a damn about the Shoah” or Holocaust.
The album also contained references to popular conspiracy theories.
Universal Music dropped him in 2020 following an initial investigation into incitement to racial hatred, though that probe was later dismissed.
Corleone, whose father is Senegalese and mother Italian, was born on the outskirts of Paris but has also lived in Canada and in Dakar.
