A little-known French rapper has caused outrage by calling for whites to be killed in a video depicting a white man being tortured, shot and hanged from a tree. 

The video by Nick Conrad -- which controversial black comedian Dieudonne M'bala M'bala , a convicted anti-Semite, linked to on his Facebook page on Saturday -- was viewed thousands of times on YouTube before being taken down on Wednesday.

In one scene from 'PLB' (short for 'Pendez Les Blancs', or 'Hang Whites') the rapper and an associate drag their white victim along the pavement and kick him in the head, in an apparent reference to a scene from the film American History X, about the abuse of blacks by American neo-Nazis.

The lyrics evoke the killing of adults and children with the rapper singing: "I walk into creches, I kill white babies, catch them quick and hang their parents."

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux condemed the "hateful, nauseating lyrics in the strongest possible terms" as did Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, who slammed the video's "abject remarks and ignominious attacks".

The Paris prosecutors office opened an inquiry, with the rapper likely to face charges of incitement to hatred under France's strict hate speech laws. 

Anti-racism organisation LICRA, which filed a formal police complaint, also hit out at the rapper, saying his artistic freedom "is not the freedom to call for whites to be hanged because of the colour of their skin."

Until becoming the subject of nation-wide media coverage on Wednesday, Nick Conrad was a virtual unknown, with only 40 monthly listeners on the music streaming platform Spotify.

The nine-minute video, which was uploaded onto YouTube on September 17, presents the action as taking place in the eastern Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Grand.

It contains references to a speech by US black nationalist Malcolm X.

On his Twitter account Conrad, who is of Cameroonian origin and has in interviews claimed to be influenced by American hip-hop, had presented it as his "first short film".