Juliette Mita's 'Rap: littérature 2.0' Bridges Hip-Hop and Classic Literature

Journalist Juliette Mita has published 'Rap: littérature 2.0' (Leduc editions), a book that creates a dialogue between rap and literature by pairing rappers with canonical authors. On her Instagram account Mots Croizés, she forms unexpected duos such as Shay and Sagan, Jul and Maupassant, Orelsan and Kafka, suggesting porosity between the arts. For fans of Lacrim's 'Réda' trilogy—a bloody revenge narrative—she recommends Alexandre Dumas's 'The Count of Monte Cristo,' noting similar themes of betrayal, imprisonment, and retribution. Mita argues that this comparative approach aims to dust off Dumas rather than legitimize Lacrim, as rap is already legitimate by its own codes and can help readers approach works whose language has aged. She asserts that rap is 'the most evolved expression of literature,' the latest heir to a long tradition of writing spanning the 19th-century novel and the lyricism of Leonard Cohen and Léo Ferré. Literature was originally oral, and rap—slammed, chanted, declaimed—reminds us of this. However, Mita emphasizes a dialogue rather than a filiation: rappers are not disciples of writers and have no duty to engage with literature. She avoids terms like inspiration or intertextuality, stating that one need not claim Dinos read Duras to connect his 'Les pleurs du mal' with 'La douleur.' The book was published on April 29, 2026, and Mita was interviewed on RFI's 'De vive(s) voix' program.