Behind The Campaign: La Rvfleuze
French drill rapper La Rvfleuze (real name: Seny Bengaly) released his debut album, ‘Numéro d’écrou’, in March 2026. He had begun by releasing tracks via DistroKid in 2022 but was later jailed for burglary and eventually released in 2025. During his time in prison, tracks were leaking and going viral. He signed with Warner Music France, via La Triade and Serrure Records, last year, having released a flurry of tracks throughout 2025. Shaï Sadoun (project manager, Warner Music France) explains how the label built on the public and media interest in La Rvfleuze, why football-centric posts on TikTok helped accelerate his rise (despite him not actually being on TikTok), where a Colors session helped change the narrative around him, and how his album release strategy had to be structured with a pause during Ramadan.
Table of Contents
- Actionable takeaways
- Signing a growing artist – who then went to prison
- The post-prison accelerated release strategy
- Harnessing football edits on TikTok
- A surprise-release track brought him to new heights
- Planning an album release around Ramadan
- The Colors session
- Building beyond the album release
- International plans
Actionable takeaways
Compiled by Music Ally’s team of marketing experts, these condensed action points are to help you get started and apply them to your own work:
- Monetise unauthorised leaks: Transition leaked tracks or snippets into official digital releases to neutralise piracy and capture organic momentum.
- Weaponise fan-driven UGC: Scale TikTok presence using fan-curated UGC, localised micro-influencers, and subculture trends (e.g. football edits) if the artist doesn’t – or can’t – post.
- Try radical transparency: Lean into un-sensationalised, authentic life issues within the creative output to build deep audience empathy.
- Package raw authenticity: Use unedited, hyper-realistic personal artefacts – like scanned inmate cards — for album packaging and merchandise.
- Appropriate cultural scheduling: Design the marketing timeline around relevant religious or cultural periods (e.g. pausing promo during Ramadan) to maximise post-period impact.
- Execute zero-tease drops: Deploy spontaneous, unannounced singles via direct messages to trigger immediate viral fan chatter and high open rates.
- Focus on contiguous markets: Try prioritising close-border collaborations with shared aesthetics (e.g. street fashion partnerships) over US market expansion.
Signing a growing artist – who then went to prison
A self-starter, La Rvfleuze released a run of tracks via DistroKid and quickly established himself as a new voice in Parisian hip-hop. A prison sentence, however, did not derail his career. When tracks he had worked on started to leak, he leaned into it and started putting out more tracks officially.
He is an artist from the nineteenth district of Paris in Porte d’Aubervilliers. He did a few freestyles in 2022, notably one called ‘Serrure #1’ [translating as “lock”, as in “door lock”, which became the name of a series of tracks, each with a different number rising numerically].
Why he called this freestyle series ‘Serrure’ is because he’s a guy who actually used to rob places. He used to break the locks. He went to prison after the release of the third track in the series.
The first track he ever recorded was ‘Serrure #1’. So the first three tracks of his career were actually the first three tracks he ever recorded [in 2022]. Something started to grow there.
2022 was a year when the artists from his area had a bit of hype around them in Paris. There was something happening in the environment and in the collaborations between the acts. There was big hype on TikTok and big hype on social media.
He went to prison in 2022 for his actions. A few tracks leaked during his time in prison. Between 2022 and 2024, people were talking about him. Every time you’d hear a new track from him it went viral and new things were happening. But it was still niche; it was people listening to underground Paris rap.
In 2024, he released an EP [‘EALS’] but was still in prison at the time. He was tired of leaks. There were few tracks that were already on social media and had already leaked on Telegram. It was released by a friend of his, a partner who was not in prison.
The post-prison accelerated release strategy
On release from prison, he put out a new track every month, steadily building his profile, something that was super-charged through collaborations with some of France’s most acclaimed rappers.
He got out of prison in 2025, but he was still wearing an electronic bracelet [to limit his movements].
As soon as he got out, he continued the freestyle series. His biggest track at that moment was ‘PIB’ [meaning “GDP”].
It was his first real single that came out of the underground scene and went more mainstream. It will soon be diamond status in France [based on 250,000 sales or 35 million stream-equivalents].
The first track was in April and every month that year saw a new single from him. The rollout was really spontaneous, because he was the only one handling this. He was really sharp where it was single one, single two [and so on].
He did a performance at a famous festival in Paris called Yardland. At the festival he appeared with Gazo, a major artist in France.
After that festival, he did a track with Gazo in July, and another track in August. These two tracks, ‘KAT’ and ’Serrure #5’, are now along his biggest tracks. They are both diamond status.
Harnessing football edits on TikTok
While he was not on TikTok himself, it proved to be a key platform for him, with his music being used around football-centric clips. Some French rappers have a viral moment, but he was able to transcend this and not be condemned as a one-Tik wonder.
What really helped him during his career were football edits on TikTok. ‘Serrure #5’ blew up. You couldn’t be on TikTok without seeing a football edit using that track.
The discussions with Warner had started before that point. Until then, he was self-releasing on DistroKid.
He just kept on releasing tracks. He did a feature with Leto [‘Connexion Macabre’], who is a big rapper in Paris. At the end of 2025, he also did a track with Gims [‘Garantie’], who is a big star here. He ended the year with several hits.
We have a lot of rappers in France who just go viral. But here he was not only viral – his name and his face were well known. People were talking about him and not just his music.
It’s been a long time since we have had a pure, authentic rapper who raps and that’s it.
In his lyrics, he always name-drops sports people, such as footballers and tennis players. He is really into sports. All the rappers started to do the same. His style of rapping and his voice really created something new in France.
He does not actually post on TikTok. We were asking him to post, but he never posts. His last TikTok was about a track released in 2025 and he didn’t post anything on there during his album roll out. He is more of an Instagram and Snapchat guy.
TikTok for him is being driven by fans. On TikTok, we pushed some edits and pushed some UGC. We post on TikTok but he doesn’t. We work with some influencers and accounts on TikTok.
A surprise-release track brought him to new heights
A new track brought his prison story to the wider public who were able to get a non-sensationalist understanding of what his life behind bars had been like.
At the end of December, he texted my boss and said he had the Colors performance for this track ‘Argent Sale’, which means ‘dirty money’.
After summer 2025, he was no longer wearing the electronic bracelet, but he was still sleeping in prison. He was out from 10am to 10pm and was in jail from 10pm to 10am. He wrote in prison, went to the studio in the morning at 11am and recorded. He did two tracks in two consecutive days – ‘Argent Sale’ and ‘Parlu’.
In December he said that we had it. We started 2026 with a freestyle. We wanted to catch people and to give them something easy to read in order to start the rollout. That was ‘Serrure #667’, which featured Freeze Corleone who has worked with a lot of rappers and he had set up a label called 667, which is why it’s called ‘Serrure #667’.
There was no teasing. The track was released on a Thursday night. On Wednesday, we were shooting the video clip, and later that day a few images of the video clip were going on social media. On the Thursday at 10pm we asked him to put up an Instagram Story saying, “I won’t be out at midnight, but the new track will be released at midnight. Go and hear it.”
This made people understand how his life had been for the past six months, always sleeping in prison. This story made quite an impact. This was his most successful release at that time. It went directly into the top 10 on the charts in France.
Planning an album release around Ramadan
Many French rappers cease activities and marketing around Ramadan so this had to be factored in for the marketing of his debut album.
After the first track we quickly announced the album. A lot of people [in France] who listen to rap and who make rap are Muslims. So during Ramadan, we don’t release rap music. Ramadan was from the middle of February until the middle of March.
We wanted to release the track [‘Serrure #667’] and announce the album before Ramadan and then release the album right after Ramadan. So we had a month and a half from ‘Serrure #667’ until the album.
Before Ramadan, we released ‘Serrure #667’. We announced the album with just the artwork, which is a rough scan of his prison inmate card. We wanted to show how authentic it is. That’s why it was the cover. There are photos of him holding the card, so you can understand it’s the real thing.
We started to tease some merchandise with the number on it. The album is called ‘Numéro d’écrou‘, which is the number you are given when you go into prison. On the merchandise, his number, his real number, was written on it.
His prison story went big. On the post we had 150,000 likes – and at the time we had around 200,000 followers.
At the beginning we were discussing if we needed to show the entire card. We did a few tests, and thought it was better not to stick too much to the reference [to the ODB album Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version]. The only stuff he had [coming out of prison] were papers with rap text on it. So we scanned that and we put in the artwork.
The Colors session
Colors has repeatedly proven to be an important campaign platform for many musicians and in this case it brought out a whole new side to La Rvfleuze’s sound and lyrics.
The Colors session was the turning point. It was the first time releasing this kind of track [more piano-led]. On this track he was talking about his reality, talking about his life, talking about how he ended up in prison – without saying he’s proud of it. You could feel it during the performance and you could feel it in the lyrics.
It worked immediately. In the first 24 hours, there were a lot of creations on TikTok [eventually reaching 50k+ in the first week]. People were not doing their own videos, they were just reposting the Colors video. You could see the brown background everywhere during the first 48 hours. That was on 16 February, and Ramadan started on 18 February.
During Ramadan, we stopped communicating and things went by themselves. He got to number two on the French charts. We hadn’t expected that much of a hit because it’s not a track you expect to stream worldwide.
All four featured rappers [Gazo, Hamza, Freeze Corleone, Koba LaD] on the album are big in France. He didn’t have features with the people of his generation. He went with the big guys – the Mount Rushmore rappers.
The track ‘Promendae’ is with Koba LaD, who is a French rapper and who is currently in prison. The title is a reference to walking exercises in jail. The track ‘Parlu’ also went viral.
Building beyond the album release
The goal is to make him the most discussed rapper in France, using the album as the starting point for a much broader rollout of activities. The album went to #1 on the French charts and stayed there for three weeks, achieving gold status (50,000 sales) in a month.
Sometimes people like a guy because he does something, and if he does something else maybe they are done with it. Everybody was loving the track. When you have this, you know it’s a risk [but this worked].
Streaming-wise, it started very well. The feedback on the album and the features was great. We did a pop-up store tour from Friday to Monday around France to meet fans.
The album started with a certain amount of streams in the first few days, but the listening was not dropping off [across the first weeks]. In May, he released a track with Aya Nakamura [’Sexy Nana’].
When Gazo released his first album, it was a big wow and […] everybody was calling him. For his second album, you could see him on featured tracks and having hits with everyone. Right now it’s not the strategy we have settled on, but I think it’s what he needs to do. He needs to be the one that you think about.
International plans
Francophone rappers do well at home and in certain markets where French is the first or second language. There are plans, however, to push him deeper into Europe and the UK, although the US is not a priority… for now.
He has done a few collaborations with Corteiz, the UK clothing brand. So he is close to this aesthetic, at least. We can export from the French aesthetic with images to go somewhere else. The music will follow. He needs to settle down and not go too fast. He only came out of prison last year.
He needs to collaborate with a few artists in Europe. For French rappers right now, it’s not a good idea to go into the US. In Europe, we have a big scene and there are common interests. We used to collaborate with the US rappers, but they don’t care about France, they don’t care about these rappers. With the UK scene, it’s more of a connection and where real bonds are being created.
I work with Tiakola in France too, and we saw that happen with Dave on ‘Meridian’. They had a real connection and a real moment. La Rvfleuze needs to do these kinds of things, just like Gazo in the UK and in Europe.
