Booba
Élie Yaffa, who performs as Booba, broke through in the French duo Lunatic in the 1990s before launching a fiercely influential solo career in 2002 defined by minor-key, bass-heavy production and blunt, materialistic storytelling. Albums like "Ouest Side" and "Nero Némésis" made him the reference point for French gangsta rap's harder, more explicitly American-inflected register, a lane he has held for two decades as one of the best-selling rappers in French music.
Booba's French Wikipedia page documents him naming the late-80s/early-90s American hip-hop scene as formative listening, citing 2Pac by name alongside Biggie and Wu-Tang; the fatalistic, confessional street-narrative mode 2Pac popularized runs through Booba's own grittiest storytelling.
listen forThe same stark, minor-key backdrop for autobiographical hardship-and-defiance verses, redone in French slang on "Boulbi."
The same sourcing names Biggie among the New York rappers who shaped Booba's sense of flow and hustler-narrative songwriting, part of the dark-melody, raw-lyric New York style he has said runs through every one of his albums.
listen forThe boastful, luxury-and-danger hustler narration Biggie built "Juicy" around, echoed in the flexing verses of "Pitbull."
Rounding out the same 80s/90s New York hip-hop lineage Booba names as his influence, Wu-Tang's raw, cinematic street rap and dense internal rhyme schemes fed the darker, grittier register he built his solo career on.
listen forThe sparse, menacing boom-bap of "C.R.E.A.M.," carried into the murky, foreboding production of "DKR."