The undisputed king of confrontations, Booba never misses an opportunity to attack his rivals in the rap scene. After Kaaris, La Fouine and Rohff, the Duke of Boulogne has chosen Gims as his new target for several years.
After songs, montages and insults, the confrontation took a legal turn in August 2024, when Gims and his ex-partner Demdem filed a complaint against Booba for moral harassment and cyberbullying.
They accuse in particular the rapper from Hauts-de-Seine of “attacking” them “for six years”, “encouraged” by “an absolutely impressive number of his fans”, creating “a terrible situation of cyberbullying”.
This Wednesday, October 15, the case took a new turn when Booba was taken into police custody in Paris. The opportunity to return in detail to the origins of this conflict that has ignited the French rap scene for several years.
Tensions born in 2018
The rivalry between Booba and Gims began in April 2018. At the time, the interpreter of Pretty publishes a video in which he points out, without naming them, French artists who use illegal techniques to inflate their streams in order to generate more money.
Visibly moved, Booba rushed to broadcast the video, accusing Gims of making “anonymous complaints.” The former member of the Sexion d’Assaut then becomes the new scapegoat of the DUC.
In July 2018, tensions rose when Booba posted an audio recording of Gims on X (which was still called Twitter), verbally attacking him.
“Three days ago I made an invocation, I prayed (…) I asked for the annihilation of Booba, I asked for his destruction because of the damage and humiliation he wants to try to do to me. I asked Allah, God, to find a favorable result for me, you see,” is heard in this excerpt.
If some Internet users questioned the authenticity of this recording, which appeared to be pirated, Booba immediately published a video (now deleted) in which Gims once again appeared threatening towards him. “Booba has to stop him (…) I’m going to take care of him, I’m going to get him dirty,” declares the singer in particular.
“The guy, because I said he looked like a Simpson without his glasses, went to invoke the almighty for my destruction. Well, Morray, luckily I didn’t fuck your wife,” Booba wrote on Twitter in reaction to this video.
A rivalry that continues on social networks
Since then, Booba and Gims have never buried the hatchet. Every word, every post, every allusion becomes an excuse to rekindle the fuse. The two giants of French rap immediately take out their phones to attack each other with tweets or videos, a true digital soap opera in which each tries to discredit the other.
True to his taste for provocation, Booba enjoys provoking his rival by making fun of the fact that he constantly wears sunglasses. When Gims showed his support for Kaaris, one of the Duke’s oldest enemies, in 2020, Booba responded by exhuming a photo of his opponent without his polarized glasses.
That same year, the rapper took the provocation a little further. In an Instagram post, he states that he will never perform a deed with Vald, considered “too contaminated by the Scourge.” A play on words aimed directly at Gims and their self-titled album, released that year and on which Vald had collaborated.
But Gims, far from accepting without responding, retaliates several times. In 2022, for example, he posted a series of incendiary stories on Instagram in which he questioned the career, mental health and even the charisma of Booba, whom he described as an “empty shell”, “prey” and “victim”.
In 2023, another episode will fuel the rivalry between the two artists. During an interview for the YouTube program. Yes hustleGims multiplies the allusions to conspiracy theories and claims in particular that the Egyptians had access to electricity in ancient times. The bad rumors are immediate, and Booba obviously doesn’t miss the opportunity to openly mock it in X.
In 2025, the war continues in the same tone. In early July, Booba ridiculed Gims by sharing a viral video of the artist at the Ardentes festival where he appeared on stage with a visible stain on his pants.
Gims struck back in August, ironically due to the financial difficulties of the agency Starting Blok, founded by Booba. In this battle of egos that has never ended since 2018, the slightest misstep of one becomes the trophy of the other.
The turning point of the “Dolce Cámara”
But the true culmination of this long dispute remains the song. Dolce Camara., at the center of the complaint filed by Gims in August 2024. Published in early 2024, this piece, in which Booba raps alongside SDM, takes a step forward in his rivalry with Gims by directly targeting Demdem, the artist’s wife (from whom he is now divorced).
“We like them fresh, very michtos, who know how to welcome like Demdem,” Booba raps in this title, which he performed especially at the end of his concert at the Arena Paris La Défense, on October 10.
Booba, who has since welcomed the success of this song with more than 126 million streams on Spotify, justified in particular this attack on Demdem by stating that Gims, for his part, would have insulted his daughter Luna.
The rapper’s lawyers also invoked “freedom of artistic expression”, estimating that “it would be worrying for the future of the rule of law if artistic creations could be the subject of criminal proceedings, also for reasons of moral harassment.”
Now in police custody in Paris, Booba, named in several other court files, could be released at this time or presented before a magistrate for possible prosecution.
Source: BFM TV
