| Sumario: | Since the mid-1990s, French rappers have faced legal action from police unions and the Ministry of the Interior for defamation, insults or inciting violence towards law enforcement and government officials. The reduction of rap lyrics in these condemnations to unambiguous messages and to essentially anti-French expression denies the genre's place in a longer French tradition of critiquing social inequalities and abuses of power through satire, parody and caricature. The present article focuses on French rap performances that employ humour and sexual themes, as well as racial and gendered stereotypes, to ridicule two of the genre's conventional targets: law enforcement and far-right politicians. It close reads Ministère A.M.E.R's 'Brigitte femme de flic', Sofiane's 'Marion Maréchal' and Roll.K's 'Commissaire Bandemou'. The notion of complicity will encompass the imagined intimacies of sexual fantasy and rappers' situated positions within the power dynamics they critique, as well as the shared secrets, laughter and pleasure at the heart of the performances. Rather than using such entanglement to discredit humour's potential for critique, the author argues that both the critical potential and the ambivalences of these performances lie in the way they situate themselves within the racialised, gendered and sexualised mechanisms of power of the figures they make risible.
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