10 Most Controversial Music Videos Of All Time

A 7 minute tour de force set in Paris, the music video for Stress follows a group of young Parisian adolescents engaging in gang crime throughout the city. Citizens are terrorised, property is vandalised and car is stolen and eventually set on fire. The predominantly black cast lead to accusations of racism against the makers of the video.

Justice member Gaspard Augé responded to the racism allegations in an interview for the Quietus, saying “We were expecting some fuss obviously, but definitely not on those topics. If people see racism in the video, it's definitely because they might have a problem with racism; because they only see black people beating up white people, which is not what happens."

The video was rocked by furious criticism on all fronts, quickly leading to a complete ban from French television. Justice eventually released a statement on the music video: “The film was never intended as a stigmatisation of the banlieue, nor an incitation to violence, nor above all, as an underhanded way to deliver a racist message. From the beginning Stress was meant to be a clip unairable on television for a track unairable on the radio and we have refused any television broadcast of the clip, so as to impose it on no one.”