Alfaress - Zan9a

With his first album still in the works, Alfaress has released a couple new songs. One of them, "Zan9a", tells the story of a kid on the street. Alfaress describes the video as a "street video," unlike the more official one for "Ana Almaghribi" because it uses selected clips from the Egyptian movie Tito (2004) to give the viewer a an appropriate visual to match the song's tone and subject matter. Like hip hop, this video embodies the spirit of collaboration and/or building upon an existing form or piece of art in order to create something new. For listeners who understand the lyrics of the song, certain scenes from Tito might have associations or connotations to that would allow the song to have that much more of an influence on the listener.

For me, the music, lyrics (from what I can understand) and the video are all reminiscent of 90s American rap tracks addressing street life. Like Ice Cube in Rabat. In this way, this video shows that rap is not a uniquely American musical genre, but rather an artform that allows artists like Alfaress to delve deep into the emotions of street life in cities across the world, even in the Middle East.

"Zan9a"

Alfaress

Surfing YouTube a few weeks ago I came across Alfaress. He's a Moroccan-born rapper now based in the States. Check out a more complete bio here on his site. Because he raps in Moroccan darija, his songs sound nothing like the hip hop music coming out of Palestine, Lebanon, or Egypt. Even for most native speakers of Arabic, the Moroccan dialect is difficult to understand, therefore making some of his texts inaccessible. At the same time, however, you can appreciate his flow and the sound patterns and rhymes unique to darija. My favorite elements are the strings of consonants that you don't find in other dialects of Arabic, let alone English, like mzen and bzef.

Alfaress is currently working on his debut album, Ana Ntouma Hia ("You, Me and Her") but has a few tracks out now, including two videos on youtube. His myspace page has three mp3s up, including a recent song made in response to Israel's attacks on Gaza, "Koulna Ma3k Ghazza." ("We're all with you Gaza")

Here are the two videos up on the internet. "Ana Almaghribi" is by far the most listened to on his myspace page. "Gharib" is the other single. Both videos were shot in the States. Like many other independent rappers producing Arabic-language tracks, Alfaress has been able to use the internet to get his music out there to anyone looking to listen.

"Ana Almaghribi" feat. Samy



"Gharib"



Also check out this freestyle with Country Boys that's up on YouTube. When juxtaposed with lyrics in English, the darija sounds even crazier. Once you get over trying to understand the meaning of the words, you can really get into his flow and the delivery.

The Narcicyst

I recently stumbled across Iraqi-Canadian rapper The Narcicyst from his "The Real Arab Money," his response track to Busta's latest hit, "Arab Money." You can check out an article on what went down here. He's performed all over the world, including the Trinity Hip Hop festival in CT in 2006 (performance here.) He released two albums with two other artists with the group Euphrates and has since been working on some solo stuff. He has two mixtapes you can download for free from his site. Narcy also made another album with a couple other artists under the name Arab Summit.

His two solo mixtapes are definitely worth downloading. Most of the tracks are short instrumentals of popular American hip hop songs: Jay-Z's "Roc Boys" becomes "Iraqafella," Busta's "Put Your Hand Where My Eyes Can See" becomes "Put Her Hijab Where My Eyes Can See," NWA's "Straight out of Compton" becomes "Straight out of Basra," and a funny interlude playing on DJ Khaled's "We Takin' Over." A lot of his lyrics deal with being Arab in an insightful yet humorous way, often peppering in some Arabic phrases or even whole segments in Arabic. What I love the most about three albums of Narcy's that I've downloaded is the way he uses other songs and clips to enhance his own music with sampling and interludes. While so many people continue to complain about the lack of originality in today's hip hop game, really creative use of existing media is to me the beauty of hip hop. I admit that sometimes sampling goes to far, but The Narcicyst has got it just right.

One of the coolest (re)uses of media is on the Arab Summit album. The album is framed by clips of Sean Connery talking from The Next Man. For one of the interludes entitled"Al-Jaz Islam," they took a one-minute clip from the popular Al-Jazeera show al-ittijah al-mu3akis where the two guests are arguing about whether or not Sadaam Hussein was a martyr or tyrant. The full youtube clip of the show can be found here and you can download the album here.

Another thing I really like about Narcy and his music is his blog. I love the picture on the top of it: a stencil of Oum Kalthoum saying "Boos al-Wawa," the title of one of Haifa Wehbe's latest hits. His posts vary from youtube clips to political commentaries to downloads of his mp3s. One of the most recent posts was "Hamdulilah Gaza Remix" featuring Shadia Mansour. Someone posted it to youtube:

Desert Heat

One of my favorite acts from what I've seen of Hip HopNa around the internet has to be Desert Heat. The group is comprised of two brothers living in Dubai, Illmiyah (Salim) and Arableak (Abdallah). Their performance in the Hip HopNa finale got the crowd going more than any of the other artists. Their lyrics are mostly in English, adding in Arabic here and there. They sometimes perform in traditional Arab gear (as seen on the right) which makes them stand out from other artists coming out of the region.

Their album When the Desert Speaks came out in Spring 2008 but unfortunately it's only available in the Middle East right now. You can listen to a bunch of their songs on their official page and their MySpace page. They have two singles out now with videos that you can check out on youtube:

Keep It Desert


Under Her Feet - I love the form of the rhymes in English and the chorus in Arabic. Iraqi rapper The Narcicyst just came out with a song for Gaza using a similar structure.

Hip HopNa

In November of 2007, MTV Arabia started broadcasting around the Middle East. Based in Dubai, the station broadcasts some American programming and some original programming, including Hip HopNa. Hip HopNa, meaning "our hip hop" in Arabic (sick logo on the left) is a kind of talent-search show looking for some of the best young, undiscovered hip hop talent in the Middle East. In the first season, the two hosts, Qusai and Fredwreck, traveled to eight Middle Eastern cities including Beirut, Cairo, Jeddah, and Dubai. The winner of each city's competition got a chance to go into the studio and produce a track. The finale in Dubai featured all of the local winners together on stage in a live concert. The show was a success and is in the filming of its second season.

The show featured a lot of great artists including Desert Heat and the eventual winnner, Omar Boflot. Here are the two groups' performances from the finale:

Desert Heat


Omar Boflot

Why blog?

The purpose of this blog is to explore the ever-expanding influence of hip hop culture and music in the Middle East. Posts will most likely take many forms, including profiles on artists making their mark on the global hip hop ummah. While this blog will focus primarily on current Arab hip hop, it will also be a forum for postings illuminating the role Middle Eastern culture, most notably Islam, has played in hip hop since its origins in urban American culture.