La Fouine

Born Laouni Mouhid in 1981, La Fouine grew up in Trappes, a distant suburb of Paris. The young Mouhid was raised listening to a variety of music, from Jacques Brel to the Jackson 5, with a fondness for rap acts like Snoop Dogg and NTM. He left school at 14 to become a rapper; he was a drug dealer by the age of 16. In 2003, having made a name for himself on the rap scene with a freestyle appearance on the mixtape Violences Urbaines, he was signed to Sony. He also became a mediator for youth groups in urban areas for his town at this time. His first release for the label, after...