« The South has something to say “. It was 1995 and no one has forgotten the formula. For some, it would even have deserved to be set up as a national anthem. That evening, in the middle of the Source Awards ceremony, the tension between East Coast and West Coast is at its peak, driven by the deadly rivalry between the Death Row and Bad Boy records labels. In the midst of insults and threats sent by speeches interposed by the big calibers of rap from New York and Los Angeles, it is a young duo from Atlanta named Outkast who comes to collect their prize for best new rap group, under the boos of the public present in the room. Not enough to scare André 3000 who takes advantage of the moment to remind us of this shock formula that we also rap in the South of the United States.
Twenty-five years after this now famous episode, we have to admit that Outkast was right. Because Atlanta has become not only the world capital of hip-hop but also the epicenter of the trap movement which influences pop around the world. However, the city has not been fundamentally transformed. In the South and East neighborhoods where most of the local rappers come from, life goes on far from the gangster clichés often associated with trap. It is to this reality that the French photographer Vincent Desailly decided to confront each other in order to recount with rare delicacy the daily life of those who gravitate around this music. “ Atlanta is a rather paradoxical environment. There is the humidity of the South of the United States and a very developed vegetation that is not found in other large American cities. As the population density is quite low and the neighborhoods are geographically very scattered, you have to drive a lot, in settings that sometimes resemble countryside landscapes. So there is something quite sweet, which contrasts with the poverty and lack of means of certain neighborhoods “, explains the photographer who wanted to highlight these contrasts in a photo book called The Trap and published in 2019 by editions Hatje Cantz.