Filing cabinet tidbit:

This article, on rai music, which I found by way of the Wiki article on the same.

From point 59 of the .pdf:
No matter how we identify with rai, it stimulates us to take an assertive stand. Rai is compelling and challenging in all its facets: ideology, lyrics, and music. In its rebellion against the establishment, whether Algerian or French (Western), rai artists negotiate and appropriate issues regarding tradition, originality, authenticity, universality, identity, and sexuality. ...An artist like Khalid, for example, emerges as a hero and an enemy, Arab and French, a rebel and a model citizen.

So it turns out I was wrong about the whole "as subversive as the Backstreet Boys" thing, not because of the content so much as because of the context.

On the upside?
I have a new respect the genre's philosophy, in addition to an appreciation for sound of it.

And I have a translation of lyrics to Rachid Taha's "Ya Rayah".

Oh departing Traveler, where are you heading?
Your journey is bound to failure
How many travelers before you
Have sought the path with similar results?

How many cities and deserts have I roamed?
How much time have I wasted
Touring from one place to another?

Oh lost one, no matter how much you run away
Your destiny will end in exhaustion
Time has passed you by
And you have yet to notice it.

So.
There's that.