Contents of the book
- Introduction
- Marwan Moussa: Love has Negative Effects
- Abyusif: Sisyphus of Egyptian Rap
- Marwan Pablo: Where is love?
- Joker: Singing the Old Way
- Wegz: TNT Bomb
- Shaheen: The Genius
INTRODUCTION
The project begins by paying attention to the spread of rap music on social networking sites and various musical platforms and the reflection of this on the Egyptian street, and then trying to analyze this spread and mention its social, political and cultural factors, which cannot be ignored, in addition to following the project of every rapper as a leader on the scene at some point, and to emphasize the connection of these songs to their authors as writers, as rap in particular is not separate from literature as writing in a different way, which certainly depends on musical factors that contribute to its final form as a song, but its author is a writer who relies on a specific or general topic and uses the mechanisms of writing literature sometimes in the form of a short story more clearly. I seek to find the idea on which each rapper’s project is based through extrapolation – i.e. re-reading each song as a short story or a blog post interested in something – in addition to that, I try in my book to compare the musical scenes with each other, the Egyptian with the Arabic, and the Arab scene as a whole with the global, in terms of the circumstances of its emergence and the motivations for what the producers of these scenes reached. The book maintains its locality and approaches each surge with the one that followed it. During the first surge from 2003 to 2007, the first singers appeared who relied on their writing and their limited capabilities in the music industry, and they succeeded in appearing in a small way. Then came the second surge from 2009 to 2014 and brought a renewed appearance of pioneers after a break, in addition to the emergence of new names carrying more vibrant ideas that succeeded in attracting greater attention with the beginnings of the rise of music platforms and social networking sites after the Arab Spring. Then came the most famous and mature surge beginning in 2017, which marked the beginning of the rise and spread of Trap music as a musical genre emerging from Rap music, and then we all had to pay attention to the fundamental difference between them, in addition to the deeper spread in the life of the listener of social networking tools and musical platforms, which contributed to paying attention to these artistic projects and including them in the general music scene, then adopting them as a special musical style that made its way to the forefront. The book attempts to ask questions about the reasons, and to analyze the spread that began slowly many years ago and then came to prominence. The book stands at the threshold of artistic projects and analyzes the reasons for the popularity of each artistic project independently, and therefore tracing the social landscape and recorded marks is one of the reasons I wrote this book as a chronicle of what came before.
Street Art is a book that aims to introduce the Egyptian listener to rap, its beginnings, the reasons for its spread, and what are the motives that led to its prominence in the Egyptian music scene. Through a careful reading into the depth of the Egyptian social and political scenes over twenty years, I seek to analyze the scene closely, and engage with the concepts of prominence, quality, and continuity, relying on what others presented previously and what these leaders in our current time said about themselves in the beginning.
From the beginning, I thought about the reasons that contributed to rap music being at the forefront of a diverse music scene that includes many different colors and social classes. Through research, reading, and tracking the scene over the course of two years, I found several answers that I seek to present in a book that those interested in music can read, and those interested in historical writing can refer to, and those who are busy studying the social, cultural, and political causes of a current era can read, as it aims to analyze what was referred to as a mere phenomenon with condescension and lack of appreciation. I write in literary criticism and am interested in public affairs in all its social, cultural and political aspects. The change in the music scene cannot be overlooked due to a change in one of these aspects. Through my tracking of the scene as a listener and interested person, I found its connection with all the changes that are slowly occurring in all the aspects mentioned above, so this is where the idea came from. If it is necessary to write about the beginning stage and experimentation in rap in order to reach prominence and greatness, then this is my business, and if this task is difficult because of its connection to many public or academic contexts in music affairs, then I clash with it to simplify this for myself and the interested reader without neglecting the role of its makers, their special vision, and their continuous attempts to create a special product despite the constant harassment of them by censorship, and accusing them of spoiling public taste, which leads to continuous disruption of their path. In my book, I seek to bring together points of view and analyze the individual speech of each performer as a different form of self-expression. The idea of the book began with the question, “Where did the classic song gone? When did all these stars appear among us who promise society to make a breakthrough in this field by relying on what the previous ones presented in an attempt to develop the Egyptian singing scene to keep pace with the international singing scene? Street Art is a book built on an environment that produced for us stars with limited capabilities to lead a scene that relied, over twenty years, on enormous financial capabilities and production companies that produced for us many useless, worthless and packaged artistic forms.
The book targets multiple layers of readers, interested in the musical or social issue that led to the rise of rap to the top of the pyramid of the music scene, in addition to providing important definitions of the artistic differences in the various colors branching out from rap music. The book is aimed at readers and writers, as every rapper is essentially a writer, so reading a song is no different from reading literature. The book is directed to a general audience, generally young people who listen most to this type of music, in addition to general critics in music and literature, through advertising campaigns directed at young people and including a definition of the book in the text, with the release of the book in electronic and audio formats, it is expected that the book will reach a greater number of people interested in knowing the details of the current music scene or the reasons that contributed to rap’s rise to prominence and a comparison between the current scene and previous scenes in which one musical color replaced the other, and one artist replaced another in the same or different musical color. In short: the book targets musicians, young people, writers, and academic researchers.
Why Rap?
A question I ask myself. The desire to write a book that tells about all the details that include winning and losing in the game of quality and mediocrity, leading and disappearing, value versus quality, and other minute details that may seem to others to be things that are not important or clear. I write here, mostly usuriously, about the intersections between the world of rap as a fantasy world and the real life imposed on all of us indiscriminately. “I keep forgetting that I’m Shaheen, you are a star but I am not – because I am already a star”. From a sentence in a forgotten song among dozens of songs by every rapper, the desire to complete this book comes back to me. I see intelligence and talent in every line written by those who emerged from the margins and whose boldness was included in the text. Unlimited trips back and forth, retirement and brilliance, at the forefront and celebration, then completely disappearing for any reason. Here is an exhausting attempt to find out what each of these writers is motivated to enter multiple battles and come out with major defeats and then return again to resume the fight.
*1“They still take me for granted. I still write a song that reflects the hopes and worries that are in me.”
What are the motives? What is the secret of many trying to be present on the scene?
Every attempt to answer any question that might seem ordinary or just an empty philosophy would explode dozens of questions in my face. For the post-revolution generation in particular, rap music is the most expressive of them in its complex form, apparently limited to satire of others and excessive self-pride, and in a deeper form in attempts to emerge from depression or self-expression, the most complex process for an entire generation that grew up in dispersion and confusion, a generation that grew up in crisis did not know a worse companion than depression, nor did it know a friend closer than the telephone handset that isolated it from the world. Any artistic work released after major social and political events is another way of expression, a way of trying to say what has not been said for any reason. Therefore, the post-revolution music that came with all this noise, and which was accompanied for a long time by destructive criticism and all accusations of corrupting public taste, had to come youthful in its full force, loud and containing noise that may seem exaggerated, containing a directive speech for younger age groups, considering that experiencing revolutions is an experience that not all people may have. It contains personal life details as attempts to express the self that no one has, and is boastful and filled with satire of enemies that may not exist in an attempt to overcome depression or general frustration.
*2“Fearless, don’t care a whit. Fearless, don’t care a whit”
Rap is inseparable from real life in any society. The life experience of each one of us is reflected in his art, regardless of the type of this art, and since rap relies on self-writing originally, the intimacy of the relationship between the text and its owner pushes the recipient to dive deeper into the details of the musical world or symbolized in each song as a way of voyeurism and investigation at the beginning, reaching the stage of admiring the artistic project as a whole, or ignoring and rejecting it if it is not expressive enough.
*3“The bone here is dry, we immersed our worries in a salty sea, and it melted. What should we do? Can we avoid loneliness by all means?”
Many have been busy criticizing the duality of boasting and satire, as they are the two most prominent aspects of the musical environment corresponding to the world of Western street gangs, even though, up until the time of writing these words, it was not possible for any rapper to lead an Arab or Egyptian music scene full of stark cultural and social contradictions like our society, if everything he says only helps inflate the ego.
There are many other very specific things that prompted every singer to try to change this scene and change the mental image of rap in Egyptian society, whether these reasons were due to a strong hatred for the centralization of the capital, or all of these people came from popular classes and residential areas, which made their success a success for all members of the broad segment of our society, the success of one of whose members in difficult social circumstances is an exceptional event. Because of the isolation that surrounds the musical and artistic community in Egypt, the most prominent reason for which is Egypt’s geographical location compared to the countries of the Arab Maghreb, whose proximity to European countries or the presence of a second language that works with the same efficiency as Arabic allowed them to learn about more developed experiences, and to be influenced by them, and influenced by them, what was produced by the makers of the first and second surges of rap in Egypt is the most prominent influential factor in our arrival to the most prominent surge of Trap music, which contributed to changing the Egyptian music scene as a whole.
“Hate me freely, my dear, and get angry. If you eat my flesh and you will find me a controlling butcher. My brain, which threw my brick, is on fire. *4 Sobky, Above all. I will come after you., and kick you as a ball with all my power. This is my business; this is also my business as well”
On the other hand, before the commercial spread of the big rap stars and their sweep of social networking sites and the fame of their star, the writing of each singer is evidence of the existence of talent. Rappers do not hire anyone to write their songs. In fact, in the beginning, some did not hire music makers to be in the background of the words due to the lack of budget, which made everyone in their beginnings make their own music, relying on the comprehensive knowledge of making a song that is branching from the musical genre of hip hop and includes the basic characteristics of a rap song! Therefore, the cultural background from which all of these people come is essentially present and depends on understanding the basics of content creation and knowledge, and having their own dictionary that enables them to say the simplest colloquial words that may have pornographic or non-common meanings, or relying on classical Arabic words included in each song to indicate a deeper culture, or to use English words, as happens in trap music songs, which are usually also colloquial or suit the musical rhythm and rhymes of each verse.
*5“Everything ended already and I don’t care a whit”
What we write is a reflection of life experiences or the outcome of our diverse culture. Therefore, writing cannot be practiced consciously unless there is a real culture or different and profound life experiences to appear in a valuable or attractive work of art. All of this may seem too profound to include the vision of the singing projects of young people who started writing when they were under their twenties or in their early twenties. Most of them stopped, and some of them continued amidst radical transformations in the scene or in private life. Therefore, I write to appreciate experiences that without their emergence, an entire music scene would not have been possible.
*6“Just as life is against you and insisting to bring you down, you have hope to move forward despite everything that brings you back!”
Bonocchio, Raad, Hani, Azrael, Mazen, Omar Harb, Santiago, and Haitham / Ahmed, The Joker / Ahmed Ali, Wegz/ Dama, Pablo, Marwan Ahmed Mutawa / The Genius, Shaheen / M.M., Marwan Mousa.
Multiple personality game is every rapper’s favorite game. Depending on the experiences and temporal context of each group of songs, each singer succeeds in presenting himself to a different category of a wide and multi-faceted fans. Fans differ in each field regarding value, importance, and aesthetic standards, but the honesty and quality of the product remains the first criterion. Each character has special circumstances, a dramatic depth suitable for presenting tragedy in the theater to extract recognition of merit or value. Each character emerges to break silence or boredom, change skin, or present what is best and most important at a different life stage, with the basic themes of the twenties, the fluctuation that struck all of these was enough to push me to extrapolate the texts and between the lines. This quest’s primary goal is to find out what they said, why, and how?
*7“What is the subject of my talk? This is all that concerns you?”
In light of the spread of rap songs at the expense of all other types of songs, more than one question arises about the reason. In light of the significant decline in the appearance of traditional songs on the main platforms, from opening tournaments or even large concerts, we find that rap stars are almost completely dominant on the singing scene. It seems that rap has become the most prominent artistic form that expresses youth and is in line with their artistic taste, which leads to its spread and control over public taste as a whole.
Several years ago, it was difficult to hear “track” rap anywhere. But at the present time, it is very easy to know the most prominent rap stars through television screens that host “rappers” as bright stars and owners of the musical “trend” with their news, songs, and even advertisements for famous brands.
Dawn of Rap
Rap is a musical form branching off from hip-hop that began in America and then to all countries of the world accordingly. “Rappers” specific to each country create appropriate words and topics. Rap relies on the fast rhythm of the words and the “beat” music that the “rapper” determines to come out with the “track” song in the best possible way. Rap depends on the performer’s narcissism, his pride in himself, and his ability to belittle other “rappers” in the context of “track,” including the performance of their songs and extending to their lifestyle, and this is similar to satire in poetry. Songs or compositions, as they are known, rely on the fast rhythm of the words with a musical timbre, which makes it easier for the recipient to listen to the song and highlights the capabilities of the “rapper.” One of the reasons for the spread of the art of rap at the present time is the emergence of “trap” as a new form of rap that relies on music as an essential element in the track and the reliance of words on rhyme and ease of pronunciation to include the largest possible segment of expression.
“Rappers” writes all the lyrics of his songs and performs them, but the track does not come out complete except in the presence of the music maker “Producer,” who determines the appropriate rhythm and appropriate music for the track.
Rap and the Recipient.
Rapper depends primarily on his followers, in a real and fundamental way. Rapper’s fans – more than any other fans – are the ones who love the owner of the content the most. It is enough for them to participate and watch the content as soon as it is released to put it on the most watched or listened to lists. It is enough for them to attend the concerts of their favorite singer to support and hear him, and if the support is limited to these pictures only, it remains at its best. The real advantage of the rap fans is that they are the most important critic of the rapper. They are the most prominent in the process of artistic criticism of the content and the first to contribute to raising its level. Rapper fans are people with different artistic tastes. They appreciate any content worthy of appreciation, even if it is from a rising rapper, and they criticize bad or easy content that the owner did not work hard to highlight in the best light, even if the rapper is closest to them. Therefore, you find rap at the present time in constant and noticeable development because of the audience that shares a company’s advertisement because of its track, and shares the track immediately after it is uploaded to YouTube because of the clear writing and photography capabilities and the effort expended in it, or as we say in our appreciation of good content, “well made.”
Perhaps this is what drives big brands to use rap stars as their advertising face, starting with Abio and Marwan, owners of advertising contracts for the companies “Pepsi” and “Chipsy”, in 2019 at the time of Egypt’s hosting of the African Nations Championship, and then in the beginning of 2020, Marwan and Abio were chosen to be the advertising face of the same international soft drinks company, all the way to Wegz, Shaheen, Abyusif, and Marwan Moussa, who have become the most prominent faces of mobile network companies in Egypt from a year ago until now.
We are currently witnessing one of the most prominent times for the spread of rap and the decline of all other types of music before it. The main reason is the ability of rappers to reach people and for none of them to remain in a high tower separating themselves from their fans. This, in my opinion, remains one of the most important reasons for the success of rap at the present time.
Why is Rap on Top?
In a previous interview with Abyusif in 2018, Youssef explained, through his previous work in the field of advertising, that advertising materialism aims to keep up with what is trendy, new, and different. If the current star is a football player, they will seek to sign Messi, Ronaldo, and other Arab and international football stars. If the trend is the product of a musical star, then they will contract with a first-class star to give the brand part of its brilliance, and if the trend is a specific musical genre, such as rap, then all rappers will become stars of brand advertisements, and this is what actually happened. Abyusif’s explanation refers to the presence of rap in all advertising content, and the contribution of its stars in changing the views of brands and highlighting more unique and different singing projects.
What’s new in the World of Rap?
Each wave of rap is characterized by different characteristics. In the beginning, the pioneers tried to introduce people to their musical product, clarify its features and most prominent characteristics, which can be summed up in self-expression in all its aspects, and highlight the negatives that no one had ever talked about before, as it is an essential part of the formation of any of us, in addition to the praise and praise that are the origin of rap and the secret of the uniqueness of every singer, no rapper can achieve any status except through his unlimited abilities to formulate the largest number of ideas in very few sentences, which is the subject of the song. Also, a rapper cannot ignore others’ belittlement of him or his colleagues’ criticism of his topics, and this is what produced the most special style in the world of rap, which is the Diss respect track, which is based on the use of profane words and terms from the street dictionary to preserve status and restore respect, which contributed to giving rap more space for listeners, as it is a part of their ordinary lives, but in a musical form. In successive waves, each singer will be forced to announce his true talent in writing, but without verbal expressions or clashing with conservative public taste or general topics that are more sensitive to the danger of that. Each singer will resort to choosing a specific style, segment, and topics that concern him alone, to get more fame and reputation on it, for people to adopt him as a favorite artist, and for him to gain greater areas of social acceptance that would qualify him to appear on the screen as a star, in true equality with the stars of spent and empty topics that – surprisingly enough – received the place they did not deserve in our musical memory.
Rap in Egypt
In Egypt currently, the most prominent current “rappers” are “Abyusif,” “Shaheen,” “Wegz,” “Marwan Moussa,” and “Marwan Pablo.” Marwan is one of the most prominent rappers of the current generation, along with “Wegz”, who was one of the most listened to stars in 2020 on the song application “Spotify”, “Abu Al Anwar”, and “Marwan Moussa”, who performed at the opening ceremony of the Handball World Cup held in Egypt since 2020.
The real fame of the rapper begins from the time he took control of the “trend” and the presence of his tracks among the most listened to on visual and audio platforms such as “YouTube”, “Spotify” and “Sound Cloud”. Since the spread of “EL GEMEZA” by Marwan Pablo, his star has begun to rise, whether to ridicule or to praise a young man who has swept the platforms with a new color and different visual and audio content.
As for the seniority, the most established and the spiritual father of rap in Egypt, he is “Abyusif”, who has a long history that may reach 15 years in presenting rap. “Abio” was famous for his ability to present “rap”, “trap”, and the satire known in the world of rap as “Diss”. Abyusif was famous for his ability to praise himself, disparage his enemies, and highlight their weaknesses in rap battles known as “Battle”, which depend on the long-term, endurance and the ability to come up with new terms in which he praises himself and criticizes others.
Retirement and Repeated Return
Every artist goes through a moment when he wants to stop presenting what he offers, and these moments often occur to rap stars, whose periods of hiatus may last for many years, such as “MC Amin” and “Ali Al Shaer”, who are among the oldest rappers in the first decade of the current century, while Abyusif, Wegz, and Marwan Pablo are the most prominent of the current generation who announced their cessation for several reasons, such as Pablo, who announced his retirement through a “Story” story on the social networking apps “Instagram,” and then in a live video broadcast on Facebook, which he opened with the phrase, “I’m just sad, not dying,” explaining the reasons for his retirement, the most prominent of which remains the hatred of some people for him, whether within the rap field or the public, which has always highlighted its hatred for Marwan in Facebook comments and their reaction with the expression “Angry” on most of his pictures, especially the pictures that were taken of him at the concerts of the Cairokee team, whose fans kept repeating angrily that Marwan’s presence was not desirable at any team concert.
*8″MTM started it by opening a door, Mekky continued it, Zap opened a drawer, but I opened a whole room.”
Returning to Abyusif, the author of the previous statement, who founded the dawn of rap and video clips for tracks in Egypt. He is the most famous in Egypt, and one of the first to collaborate with popular singers to mix rap and popular singing in the song “I will not appreciate anyone” with the late Shaaban Abdel Rahim. Abyusif is in a special place, far removed from the “Joker” Ahmed Nasser, who has almost the same years of presence in the rap scene, but without a clear personality. Sometimes he presents explicit rap and Diss that witnessed his brilliance and spread, and sometimes he turns to physical and chemical equations with which he proves his genius, so he places himself in a middle point between rappers and poets, between the struggle of good and evil and responding to skeptics, between giving advice in a fatherly or brotherly way and rhyming poetry with complex words, you will not find it among the most listened to or “trend” lists from time to time.
*1 Wegz’s song “21”
*2 Abyusif’s song “Salby”
*3 Marwan Moussa’s song “Zahab w Awda”
*4 Sobky Are Egyptian Film maker Company and This family also are Working in Butchery and animal meat trade.
*5 Abyusif’ song “Azraeel”
*6 Eljoker’s song “Infisam Had part 2”
*7 Eljoker’s song “Monaliza Tania”
*8 Part of context, Abyusif talking about Egyptian Rap Scene in documentary
SULFUR 