Desert Poets: An Introduction

Later on in the ’90s I started hearing about Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia having rapidly growing hip-hop scenes. It started with the Moroccans and Algerians who lived in Europe (especially France) and traveled back with them to their homelands. It’s also worth mentioning that popular groups in France, such as Saian Supa Crew and IAM, had Arabic members.

Shortly after that, occupied Palestine caught up on hip-hop, and found it a suitable form of music to express their anger and sorrow and desire to rebel against the oppression they have been facing for decades. If media, art, and music are ignoring your struggle and pain, why not express it yourself? If I am to mention whom out of Palestine first made an impact on me, it has to be DAM (Da Arab MCs). The three-man group has been doing shows all over the world and releasing independent albums since the mid-’90s, and has created a huge name in Palestine and among Arabs all around the world. They have been blessed to perform all across Europe and the US, and have been talked about so much by US (and even Israeli) media. Yet Arabic media has ignored them all these years!

Not far across the border, we heard a very talented DJ in Lebanon who called himself Lethal Skillz. Lethal Skillz had been DJing a lot of underground hip-hop parties and supporting new acts such as Aks El Seir, appearing in their low budget yet creative video shot in the mid-’90s, in the midst of a not very accepting environment. Fast forward to 2006, and Lethal Skillz made a lot of news and created a huge buzz, leaking songs online with his newly formed group, 961 Underground, which included English-language rappers such as Omarz and MC Moe; others who rap in French, such as female rapper La Gale (now based in Switzerland); and still others rapping in Arabic, such as RGB and female MC, Malikah. It wasn’t long till Lethal Skillz released an album, New World Disorder, featuring most of those 961 talents, as well as other MCs from Palestine and Syria.

Now let’s flash back a little bit to Egypt. Hip-hop had been creating a small buzz among DJs and club goers in the ’90s, and a huge b-boy scene emerged around that time. But it wasn’t until 2004 that an actual hip-hop event took place. At my own risk, I flew RZA of Wu-Tang over from Italy during his tour to throw him a show in Giza, Cairo, in Siag Hotel—as close as we were able to get to the pyramids. RZA came with Kinetic of Killarmy and Cilvaringz (who’s Moroccan-Dutch and was the first Arab to get signed by an American rap group), as well as Moroccan rapper Salah Edin. Salah must have been the best Arabic rapper I had met at that time, and was really using a lot of traditional Arabic instruments on his songs, and sampled some very well-known Arabic classics on his beats, which enabled him to steal the attention in Cairo.

During that time I was rapping in an independent group I had formed called MSE (Madd Skillz Empire). It consisted of mostly non-Arabs that live in Cairo, and three other Egyptians. We were recording songs at home, printing them ourselves, and selling them in private schools and out of a backpack in clubs. The only hip-hop I heard in Egypt at that point, other than us, was MTM, Asfalt, and Y Crew (from Alexandria).

In 2006 I ran into E-Money (who was then in Asfalt) and Sphinx (who was visiting Egypt from LA). We got into a cipher outside the club and, two weeks later, formed Arabian Knightz. At that point in time MySpace was making it really big so we decided to dedicate a few months to record and leak some songs and add friends and see what the feedback would be like. And indeed the feedback was insane! We approached 100,000 track views before we even had a single show or a plan of what to do with the group!

A few online contacts went back and forth and soon we were talking to legendary LA producer Fredwreck (originally Palestinian) who hadn’t heard any Arabic rap prior to us, other than DAM. He was excited to fly over to Cairo and start working on our album. We had no budget to spend days and days in the studio, so we laid the first single, “Fokkak,” in the studio the same day that he made the beat. We had one day to shoot the video, and boom! A few months later it was all over Arabic TV and radio. It was the first Arabic rap song to reach the number-four position in the Arabic top ten a few months in a row! Fred’s saga in Arabia didn’t end at that point. After laying six beats for Arabian Knightz and going back to LA for a few months, he was contacted by some people from MTV Arabia. Fast forward a few months, Fredwreck is shooting a pilot for the new MTV Arabia reality hip-hop show Hip-hopNa with his Saudi Arabian co-host, Qusai, in Dubai.

Arabian Knightz signed a deal, but we had to break out of it a year and a half later and go independent because it was the most unfruitful part of our career. It may mean a lower budget, but at the same time, we can’t leave the destiny of Arabic hip-hop in someone else’s hands, now can we?