Writer Miles Marshall Lewis has launched a kickstarter to fund a new project that’ll add to hip-hop’s lineage. Titled “Radical: The Savoir Faire of French Hip-Hop” will place a lens on popular French magazine Radikal, that covered all things hip-hop within the European country.
“I lived in Paris from 2004-2011 and when I first got there I discovered French hip-hop through the pages of Radikal magazine which is their version of Vibe or XXL or The Source, magazines that I’ve all written for here,” Lewis said. “I grew up in The Bronx and I saw hip-hop begin so I was like, ‘Wow, I should bring this to the masses and do a documentary.’”
The production will also interview French rap legends and chronicle the publication’s heightened success and decline once a bevy of magazines began to pivot to online-content only. “Radikal was a victim of the internet, like a lot of other magazines this century,” Lewis said in an interview with Soulhead. “I served as the music editor at Vibe back in 1999, and even those guys are online only these days. Radikal and The Source magazine’s French version folded within weeks of each other, the market couldn’t handle it. We interviewed David Dancre also, the former editor-in-chief of The Source France about the overall French hip-hop media scene of the time.
With a goal of $25,000, the fundraising will benefit “an editor, an American director of photography, music licensing fees for the French rap music in the film and a translator for English subtitles,” Lewis added. You can support the kickstarter here.